Dr. John Bergsma

The plain sense of the text implies a decision.

If you forgive...

Okay, that's like your decision to forgive.

The sins of any, they are forgiven.

If you retain, they are retained.

And if you get into the Judaism of this or the background in Judaism, you find out that this statement is related to binding and loosing that shows up in Matthew 16, 18 and 19 and Matthew 18, 18.

whatever you bind, whatever you loose.

So binding and loosing was related to the forgiveness or the retention of sins, as well as other things like the interpretation of scripture.

But then I'll tell you, Matt, for this objector who, and like you, I commend their honesty, is wondering like, why do I have to confess to a priest?

There's an even more direct passage in James 5.

that I wanna talk about.

And I have a whole talk that I often share at parishes on how I encountered the sacrament of reconciliation.

But I was preaching through James as a young pastor in my 20s, and I was doing a sermon on each of his five chapters.

And it was going well, I got through one, two, three, four, okay.

And then I got to five,

And in 5.14, it says, is any among you sick?

Let him call for the elders.

And the word in Greek is presbuteroi, from which we get priests, okay?

Of the church and let them pray over him, anointing with oil in the name of the Lord.

Now look at this, our objector, objected to like prayers of other Christians, right?