Small Catechism: The Ministry of the Keys

Sermon on the Chief Parts of the Catechism, Part 5

2 Samuel 12:1-15 +  Matthew 16:13-19

The Fifth Chief Part of the original Small Catechism was simply entitled, “How the simple should be taught to confess,” providing Christians with a basic outline of what private confession should look like. It assumes that Christians are going regularly to confession, as had been the practice in the Church for centuries by Luther’s time. It also assumes that Christians already know about the authority of a minister to pronounce absolution in God’s name. Later generations added a preface to that, dealing specifically with that authority that God has given to His ministers, which we call “the ministry of the Keys.”

Let’s start with that. We’re talking here about the Keys of the kingdom of heaven, which Jesus spoke of in Matthew 16, which you heard this evening. Jesus had asked His apostles, Who do you say that I am? Peter answered for them, saying, You are the Christ, the Son of the living God. That’s when Jesus said to him, Blessed are you, Simon, son of Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but My Father who is in heaven. And I also say to you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build My church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it. And I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.

Jesus describes here what the “keys” are that He promised He would give to Peter. They’re the authority to “loose” a person from his sins, or “bind” a person to his sins. Now, He’s not talking here about sins people commit against one another. Each person has the right to forgive sins committed against himself. When someone sins against you, you have the “right” to give forgiveness to the person or to withhold it, the right to stop holding that sin against them or to keep holding that sin against them, as far as you’re concerned. Now, if the person comes to you in repentance and you choose to withhold forgiveness, then that’s how God will treat you when you come to Him in repentance, so you’d better be very careful if you want to refuse your forgiveness to the penitent. But you still have the authority to refuse it.

No, what Jesus is talking about here is the authority to forgive sins committed against God, the authority to speak for God in either absolving (or loosing) a person from his sins, or to refuse forgiveness, with the assurance that God in heaven is acting through these keys, either forgiving or retaining sins, unlocking or locking heaven to a person.

To whom has God given this authority? In every case where Jesus speaks of it, He’s speaking to His twelve (or eleven, or ten) apostles. Here in Matthew 16, He’s addressing Peter, who has just answered for the other disciples. But He repeats it to all of them in Matthew 18, and again in John 20, after Jesus rose from the dead, where Jesus breathed on His ten disciples (the eleven minus Thomas) and said to them, Receive the Holy Spirit! If you forgive the sins of any, to them they are forgiven, and if you retain the sins of any, to them they are retained. The “power” or “authority” of the keys was given to the ministers of the Church at that time, just as the command to baptize was given to the eleven apostles. In fact, baptism itself is one of the uses of the Keys to forgive sins, as is the Lord’s Supper, as is the preaching of the Gospel in general. This is what the office of the ministry is primarily for, for men on earth to forgive sins in the name of God, with the full authority and approval of God. That’s why we call the ministry of the Word the Means of Grace, because the God attaches His promises of grace to Word and Sacrament, persuading us to believe what He promises and so to receive the promised gifts. The Lord Christ authorized the original ministers to act in His name, and then, through the call of the Church, He authorizes more and more ministers to go forth and act in His name and by His authority.

But God’s authority also comes with God’s instructions. God doesn’t authorize ministers to forgive whomever they please or to refuse forgiveness to whomever they please. He has instructed them to forgive those who repent and look to Christ for forgiveness, just as He has instructed them to refuse forgiveness to the impenitent and unbelieving. When ministers act according to God’s command, then we should believe with the certainty of faith what we confess in the catechism section on the ministry: I believe in what the called ministers of Christ do among us, by His divine command—especially when they exclude public, impenitent sinners from the Christian congregation, and when they absolve1 those who repent of their sins and are willing to mend their ways—that it is all as valid and certain in heaven also, as if our dear Lord Christ did it Himself.

So a minister first uses the key of forgiveness on a person in Holy Baptism as the personal application of the forgiveness of sins. He uses them in the Lord’s Supper. He uses them in a general way, by preaching the Gospel. And he may also use them in the private setting of confession and absolution.

Going regularly to private confession was never commanded by God. It wasn’t even practiced in a widespread way for the first few hundred years of the Church’s existence. It became more common, but still optional, in the 5^th through 9^th centuries. It grew in use until the year 1215 when, at the Fourth Lateran Council, it was first required to be practiced by Christians in the Roman Catholic Church at least once a year, where people had to list every sin for which they wanted forgiveness. Then, in the centuries leading up to the Reformation, it became more common for priests to require it as a condition anytime someone wanted to receive Communion.

That was the practice Luther inherited. And he didn’t entirely reject it. Instead, Lutherans confessed in the Augsburg Confession: We also retain (private) confession, especially on account of the absolution, as being the word of God which, by divine authority, the power of the keys pronounces upon individuals. Therefore it would be wicked to remove private absolution from the Church.

So, as Lutherans, we retain private confession, but not as a requirement. One could argue that requiring private confession, at least occasionally, made more sense in the large churches they had 500 years ago, where the pastors had much less individual interaction with most of their members. But even now, in our small congregations, our members should know that they can sit down with the pastor anytime they want and confess, in confidence, the sins that are weighing on their hearts, so that they can receive, one on one, both the word of absolution and personal encouragement and guidance from God’s Word. At the same time, that one-on-one setting allows the pastor to tend his sheep better, to find out about the struggles his sheep are facing, and to make sure that they aren’t going astray in any direction but are staying on the narrow path toward the heavenly pasture.

In any case, the Fifth Chief Part of the catechism provides us with a simple format for private confession, similar to what we use on Sundays in our general confession, where confession consists of two parts: First, that a person confesses his sins. Second, that a person receives the absolution or forgiveness from the minister, as from God Himself, not doubting, but firmly believing that his sins are thereby forgiven before God in heaven. Because, as we said, the forgiveness that the minister gives is not his personal forgiveness, but God’s own forgiveness, given by God’s command, given through means, given through a humble servant of God, so that his words carry the full weight of God’s own words: And I, by the command of our Lord Jesus Christ, forgive you your sins, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit! Amen.