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In our last entry, we demonstrated that the entire exchange between Jesus and Peter in Matthew 16 was centered on the Word of God that Jesus had come to preach, a ministry He would shortly confer on the apostles. Jesus had been commissioned to “bind up the brokenhearted” and “to proclaim … the opening of the prison to them that are bound” through the preaching of Good Tidings (Isaiah 61:1, Luke 4:18), and had come as the Good Shepherd to “bind up that which was broken” and to loose “the bands of their yoke” (Ezekiel 34:16,27). His preaching ministry was nothing other than a ministry of binding and loosing—binding the wounded and loosing the captives—by delivering the Good Tidings from His Father. He commissioned the disciples to do the same after Him: “as my Father hath sent me, even so send I you” (John 20:21). The disciples, too, therefore received a ministry of binding and loosing — that is, preaching the Good Tidings — and so Jesus sent Peter and the rest off to “bind” and to “loose” (Matthew 16:19, 18:18), just as He had been.