The Keys of the Kingdom

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

Matthew 16:19

When the Jews made a man a doctor of the law, they would give him the key to a closet in the temple where the sacred books were held, and they would also give him tablets to write on, meaning that he would have authority to unlock the truth and expound on it. From this cultural background Christ spoke of the authority of the apostles, and especially of Peter’s role in the expansion of the proclamation of the gospel.

The commissioning of Christ of His disciples particularly spoke to the Jewish mind — and the Jew was the target audience for Matthew’s gospel. A religious Jew could logically ask whether Christ had ever commissioned His apostles with authority to unlock the truth and to expound upon it. This spoke both of their interpretation of His ministry and of the Old Testament as a whole.

Here Christ answers that question. Yes. He gave authority to the apostles.

But there is a danger of misinterpretation, that this authority passed down through the centuries to the leaders of the church — the idea of papal succession. Such an idea was upheld for centuries in Catholic churches, that the pope stood the “shoes of the fisherman” or in the place of Peter. Yet this interpretation contradicts the very passage itself — for though Peter and the other apostles were given authority to loose and to bind, they did not use that authority to name successors, but rather it was used to teach and promote and permit the individual freedom of the believer under the leadership of the Spirit and the Lordship of Christ.

It was through Peter that the Gentile community was brought into the believing family. Acts 10 tells the story, but we have to realize that Peter himself was just trying to keep up with the movement of the Holy Spirit, and barely, it is revealed in the historical account, was able to do so. God had to send a vision three times to Peter, had to rush Him from Joppa to Caesarea, had to usher him into the house of Cornelius. And after he had only begun to speak the message God gave him, “The Holy Spirit fell upon all those who heard the word” (Acts 10:44). As often has happened in the history of world evangelization, the evangelist himself barely got there in time to witness the movement of the Spirit.

And what was unloosed by Peter? First, the truth that “What God has cleansed you must not call common” (Acts 11:9). Second, the truth that, “God had given them the same gift as He gave us when we believed on the Lord Jesus Christ,” namely the Holy Spirit, and this led to his conclusion, “Who was I that I could withstand God?” (Acts 11:17)

So what Peter and the other apostles unleashed, and what is so plainly seen in the book of Acts and in the apostolic letters of the New Testament, is way that people shall come into the kingdom of God. They will hear the gospel message, be convicted by the Spirit of their sins and also by the Spirit be convinced of the truth of the gospel, they shall repent of their sins and believe in Christ.

But there was still more unloosing to be done. The Apostle Paul, whose writings interpreted so much of the core doctrine of Christianity, was not among those original apostles. But Peter wrote of Paul, calling him “our dear brother Paul, according to the wisdom given him, has written to you” and called “all his letters” “scripture,” meaning the inspired and authoritative word of God (2 Peter 3:15–16).

What the apostles did not loose was a continual authoritative writing process of God’s Word beyond the apostolic period. They likewise did not loose on the world the idea of apostolic succession, with new apostles coming after them. They bound these things.

Adam Clarke gave this paraphrase (which I have also paraphrased into modern English):

The the words be applied by way of paraphrase to the matter that was transacted at present with Peter: “I am about to build a Gentile Church,” said Christ, “And to you, O Peter, do I give the keys of the kingdom of heaven, that you may first open the door of faith to them; but if you ask by what rule that Church is to be governed, when the Mosaic rule may seem so improper for it, you shall be so guided by the Holy Spirit, that whatever of the law of Moses you shall forbid shall be forbidden; whatever you grant them shall be granted; and that under a sanction made in heaven.”

Matthew Henry divided the intent of Christ’s command into two categories. The apostles were given (1) the key to doctrine and (2) the key to discipline. The Spirit established through their writings and teachings in the New Testament, the proper understanding of the gospel of Jesus Christ, what someone must do to be saved, and how the church is to conduct itself. All the apostles have long since died out, but we can see by the continued existence of the church that they did their work well. False teachings and false prophets and false apostles have, of course, risen through the years, but the true church has persisted by the work of the Spirit.

There is another aspect of this commission that is stressed in the Great Commission of Matthew 28:18–20, that the disciples of Christ in each generation are given the privilege and responsibility to unloose the gospel to the nations, to spread the good news of Christ to the whole world, and to bind immorality and injustice through their lives and witness.