Binding and Loosening, How Much Authority Do We Have

During the sermon last Sunday, I addressed Matt 16:19. I thought it might be a good idea to go into a bit more detail on that thought here.

“I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; and whatever you bind on earth shall have been bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall have been loosed in heaven.”

The contemporary interpretation of this verse usually goes something like this, "We have been given the keys to the kingdom. Therefore whatever we bind down here will be bound in heaven. We have authority over spirits, demons, gifts,etc." This leads to prayers of a familiar sort for many of us, "I bind the (spirit, demon, etc) of (darkness, evil, depression, heaviness,etc) in the name of Jesus Christ!" This gives the believer tremendous power over his spiritual life. "Let's go zap some demons, guys!"

Or does it?

We need to be careful here! Others have tried this with disastrous results (Acts 19:13-16).

Let's break this verse down into its individual components and then put those components into context within the passage.

First, the keys mentioned are in relation to the revelation that Peter has been given in Matt 16:16. That revelation is that Jesus "...is the Christ, the son of the Living God". Peter is then told that God will build His church on that singular truth. All the teaching, development and growth of the new church will pour out of that reality. The keys to the kingdom are contained in that revelation.

This revelation, far from being some delegation of unique powers or gifts, is the Gospel. The Gospel is what Christ is building His church upon. Please don't misunderstand what I'm saying here. There will obviously be some power and gifting that flows through all believers in declaring that revelation. Unfortunately, many folks loose their focus on the message of the Gospel and concentrate far too much on the power and gifts, failing to declare the Gospel at all but instead declaring their own authority or power over some situation.

Let's move on to the binding and loosening phrases:

The key to understanding the application of these phrases is in the tense of the two verbs used. The tenses are either future perfect passive or future passive, depending on whether Luke was writing in the Classical Greek or in Hellenistic Greek, a more contemporary (for his time) style. There is not universal agreement on this issue. In either case, the binding and loosening referred to has already been accomplished...in heaven. Any prayer or declaration that presumes to bind or loosen here on Earth first would contradict this plainly stated truth.

Still, we're in what some may claim to be a gray area here. Depending on how we interpret the material we've covered, there can be multiple meanings and multiple applications. So let's try to bring some clarity for all of us, particularly for those of us who have been taught that we can use this verse to exercise authority over the spirit realm.

Verse 19 has to be taken in the context of Peter's revelation and Jesus' declaration of what that revelation means. The misconceptions about how this verse applies to our daily lives all occur out of lifting it out of context and divorcing it from the passage.

Let me quote from the New American Commentary;

A long and somewhat stalemated debate has centered around the future perfect passive verbs in v. 19. In Classical Greek a reasonable translation of these two verbs (“will be bound” and “will be loosed”) would be “will have been bound” or “will have been loosed” (NIV marg.). Jesus would then be stressing how God’s sovereign initiative is worked out in the church. But in Hellenistic Greek this construction was often roughly equivalent to a simple future passive (as in the main text of the NIV), in which case Jesus teaches that God has delegated his authority to the church, which he leaves to act on its own initiative to bring people into the kingdom, which entrance he then ratifies. A mediating solution, supported by recent linguistic research, may be best with the translation will be in a state of boundedness/loosedness. Jesus’ point, then, will simply be that God promises that all who enter the kingdom do so in accordance with God’s sovereign will, without specifying one way or the other whose action caused whose response. (emphasis mine - jk) Blomberg, C. (2001). Vol. 22: Matthew (electronic ed.). Logos Library System; The New American Commentary (255). Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers.

We can actually spend quite a bit more time trying to explain this in more detail. But, in short, this verse is not about "our authority" over the spirits. It is about our authority to declare the gospel, our authority to declare the forgiveness of sins, our authority to declare divine sovereignty over the Body of Christ and all else in creation, our authority to declare the beauty of the already completed work of God. To use it as justification to "bind" bad spirits and "loose" good spirits or gifts is to place ourselves in a dangerous position.