Here is the essence of true Christian experience and joy -- we have seen the Lord. We have not just heard about Jesus, nor have we simply understood truths and doctrines concerning him, though this is essential and important, but we have seen the Lord. It is possible to know a great deal of Christian truth, and believe it is true with our understanding, and even accept this truth, and yet still not belong to the spiritual and real family of God. The true believer is one who has seen the Lord.

Our seeing is spiritual only. We can’t look on the risen Lord with our physical eyes, but for the disciples at the time of the resurrection, the true seeing was within their souls as they knew Jesus was indeed alive and that he had claimed them by costly redemption, and that they were united to him as one body for all eternity. This is what Paul speaks of in Romans 6. We know ourselves one with him by an inner spiritual union of soul and spirit. We are his and he is ours, and the life we now live within is no longer us living, but Christ living in us. (Galatians 2: 20). This is the true believers experience. We know it in reality, though it is so difficult to describe it in words.

In themselves, just like us, the disciples were weak and people full of fear. They were showing this here. They were hidden in a locked room because they feared the Jews. We are only strong in the Lord and the power of his might. Jesus came to them and made them strong by joining them to himself by powerful faith.

See what powerful evidence Jesus gave them, and us through them, that he had risen and was the victor. He showed them his hands and side, that is his wounds of crucifixion. It was at this point that they knew him and were joined to him in spiritual seeing. They saw him as they had never seen him before. There is no joy on earth like this joy.

Immediately Jesus appeared in the locked room where the disciples were hiding he spoke peace to them. He said “Peace be with you”. After he had shown them the proof of his resurrection in his wounds, he repeated this message and greeting “Peace be with you”. What a wonderful and glorious message this is. It was not simply a form of greeting and of friendship. It was much more than this.

When Jesus said “Peace be with you” he was telling them, and all of us who believe, that because he has risen from the dead, and been victorious in his great work of reconciling us to God by his life and death for us, we have peace. What is this peace which is ours through Christ.

Peace is the product of Christ’s finished work for us. Because Jesus is alive and we are his people by faith we have the peace of knowing that our lives are in the hands of our powerful victorious Lord. We have peace because the resurrection of Jesus and his victory prove to us that Jesus is God as he claimed. It assures us, and this is our peace also, that we can rely on all he said because we now know truly that what he said is the very word and promise and assurance of God. We have peace because we can rely on the whole Bible now as the true word of God, because Jesus accepted the Old Testament as the word of God, and he is God. What peace this gives when the doubts and the intellectual unbelief of the world is hurled at us.

Then there is the great peace which the Gospel speaks of through Christ’s finished work for us. We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, because on the ground of what Christ has done for us, by faith we are accounted just in the eyes of God, and welcomed back into fellowship with God.

Then there is the peace which the Gospel brings within us. Our conscience is given peace as we are free from guilt in our conscience, because Christ has born our guilt away in his body on the cross. Further because of the new life which we have through Christ, we have peace with each other as the love of Christ in us, binds us together in love. This and much more is bound up in this greeting. In Christ we have peace, and not least peace from the fear of death.

Then Christ goes on to bless the disciples and give them his commission. What this breathing of the Holy Spirit was, specially in the context of the outpouring of the Spirit at Pentecost, and the fact that the disciples had already known the working of the Spirit in their lives, is hard to tell. What we do know is that Jesus blessed them with his grace and power through the Holy Spirit. But what is this authority that he gives them.

Many use this to validate the idea that priests, canonically ordained, are able to forgive sins. Such an idea is quashed immediately by the fact that the Apostles never claimed such authority, and never exercised such authority anywhere in their actions recorded in the Bible. Further, this authority was given to the whole company in the room, and it is impossible to believe that only the eleven disciples were there. There would have been others there, friends and women as well.

The only way, which fits the whole teaching of the Bible, in which this authority can be understood, is that it is the authority which all Christian have who have been saved and received the peace which is in Christ. We know the forgiveness of sins through Christ. This is the most precious secret, which must not be kept a secret. We forgive others sins by speaking to them of the forgiveness of sins we have experienced and telling them that they can know this forgiveness by faith in Christ. People will not be forgiven if we do not tell them of the forgiveness of sins. So it is true we can bring forgiveness of sins to people, but if we do not tell them of this forgiveness, then they will remain unforgiven. What tremendous responsibility rests on us to share the blessing we have with others.