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.

In John 20:23, Jesus instructed the disciples, “Whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained.” Although that promise was not part of His response to Peter in Matthew 16:19 or to the rest in Matthew 18:18, the passage has nevertheless been used to reinforce the erroneous Roman Catholic interpretation of “to bind” and “to loose.” The Council of Trent linked the three verses together to assign to the Roman priest “the power of binding and of loosing,” such that “priests alone” are given the authority to remit and retain sins (Council of Trent, 14^th Session, Canon X). Such a reading, however, makes the passages logically incoherent. Because “to bind [up]” and “to loose” both refer to the Good News of remitted sins — to wit, the binding up the brokenhearted and the loosing of the captives — that “power of binding and of loosing” can by no means be understood to refer to the power to retain and remit sins. Such a rendering would conflate the Good News of wounds bound up with the bad news of sins retained. Jesus did not claim in Luke 4:18 to have been anointed to preach the “Good Tidings” of binding men by retaining their sins. He had been anointed to preach the remission of sins by which the brokenhearted are healed (bound up) and the captives freed (loosed). Binding and loosing both refer to the remission of sins. Therefore, Rome is incorrect to equate “binding” with retention, and “loosing” with remission.

That is not to say, however, that the Apostles did not receive a ministry of remission and retention of sins. They surely had. We may discern the extent to which the apostles were authorized to remit and retain by first understanding how Christ appropriated such authority to Himself. As we shall see, even Christ did not claim the prerogative to remit and retain sins. The prerogative to do either lay not with Christ but with the Words His Father had commanded Him to preach. Truly, “the Son of man hath power upon earth to forgive sins” (Luke 5:24), but the power was in the preaching of His Father’s Words.

When He said to Mary, “Thy sins are forgiven” (Luke 7:48 [John 11:2]), it was an announcement, not an absolution, for she had already been forgiven before He said it. Before telling Mary her sins were forgiven, Jesus informed the Pharisee that the forgiveness of her sins had already taken place: “Her sins, which are many, are forgiven” (Luke 7:47). That is the explicit meaning of His words, and the logical implication of John 5:24: “He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life.” Mary had heard and believed the preached Words of the Father prior to Jesus’ arrival at the house of the Pharisee, and therefore she had already escaped condemnation, and already possessed eternal life. She was already forgiven before He announced it. “Thy faith hath saved thee” (Luke 7:50) He said, linking the forgiveness of her sins not to His announcement but back to the point of faith well before her arrival at Simon’s house.

Just so with the palsied man in Capernaum. “Thy sins be forgiven thee” (Matthew 9:2, Mark 2:5, Luke 5:20) was announced as an accomplished fact, not because the man and his friends had come requesting forgiveness, but because Jesus had “preached the word unto them” (Mark 2:2) and they had already believed. That is why they, like Mary, had gone to such measures to reach Him (Matthew 9:2, Mark 2:5, Luke 5:20). Any who claim that Jesus at that moment remitted Mary’s sins (as Roman Catholics so claim), must explain how Jesus could have declared Mary’s sins already forgiven before He absolved her of them. Jesus was just the messenger. His Father’s Words did the remitting.

Of the retention of sins, likewise, Jesus claimed that it was not He, but His Father’s words that retained the sins of men, for “if any man hear my words, and believe not, I judge him not,” Jesus insisted. Rather, “the word that I have spoken, the same shall judge him in the last day” (John 12:47-48). It was not Jesus, but His Father, Who retains the sins of men, and the sins of men are retained in the  preaching of the Father’s Word: “Whosoever will not hearken unto my words which He shall speak in my name, I will require it of him,” the Father declared (Deuteronomy 18:19). Jesus was just the messenger. His Father’s Words did the retaining.

Did Jesus have authority on earth to remit sins? He surely did (Matthew 9:6, Mark 2:10, Luke 5:24), but according to His own testimony, it was not He, but His Father’s Words that remitted them. His only duty was to preach (John 12:50). Did Jesus have authority on earth to retain sins? He surely did, but it was not He, but His Father’s Words that retained them. “And if any man hear my words, and believe not, I judge him not: … the word that I have spoken … shall judge him,” that is, the Word of His Father (John 12:47-48). Sins are either remitted or retained by the preached Word, not by the preacher. To the extent that Jesus preached the Father’s words — “the words that I speak unto you I speak not of myself” — sins are either remitted or retained. The apostles would shortly be commissioned to preach the same message.

As the power to remit and to retain is intrinsic to the message, not the messenger, we may safely conclude that neither the apostles nor their successors were imbued with such power as Rome claims for her priests. Even Christ did not claim it of Himself, but only of the Father’s Word.  “The disciple is not above his master, nor the servant above his lord” (Mathew 10:24), and therefore the ministry of the disciples cannot have exceeded the ministry of the Son. Sins are remitted by the preaching of the Father’s Words, and they are retained the same way. How and whether the Words of the Father remit or retain the sins of the hearer is His prerogative alone. He hides the Gospel “from the wise and prudent” and reveals it to “unto babes” (Matthew 11:25-26, Luke 10:21-22). He reveals “the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven” to the elect, and withholds it from the reprobate “lest at any time they should … be converted” (Matthew 13:15). He forbids the preaching of the Word lest the hearers be saved (Acts 16:6-7), and commands the preaching of the Gospel to open the hearts of the hearers (Acts 16:10-14).

Conclusion

Here we conclude our analysis of Jesus’ words to Peter at his tardy confession, and to the Eleven in Matthew 18:18, and (because of Rome’s propensity to misunderstand them) His words to them in John 20:23. In Part 1, we demonstrated through the harmonization of the Loaves Narratives that Peter had not been the first of the Eleven to believe, but rather had been the last, completing Jesus’ task to deliver the Father’s Word to the Eleven (John 17:8). When Peter’s confession is thus understood as the completion of a task rather than its beginning, the focus shifts away from Peter and back to the task: delivering His Father’s Words. The subsequent promises are understood in light of that task alone. In Parts 2 and 3 we demonstrated that Peter’s confession, like the conversion of the witnesses of the first miracle of multiplication, had been the fulfillment of Isaiah 54:13 (John 6:45), where Isaiah identifies the teachings of the Father as the stone foundation He would lay for His Church (Isaiah 54:11), the very chapter from which Jesus derived His parable of the house built upon the rock (Matthew 7:24, Luke 6:48). In Part 4, we demonstrated that “the gates of hell” simply refer to death, and those gates can never prevail over the Church because he who believes the Words of the Father “hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life” (John 5:24). When Peter and the others received “keys of the kingdom,” what they had received was a preaching ministry, for men gain access to the kingdom by the “key of knowledge” (Matthew 23:13; Luke 11:52) and by the key of faith, both of which are delivered by preaching the Word of the Father (Romans 10:17). In Part 5, we demonstrated that Jesus had been sent by the Father with a ministry of binding up the wounded and loosing the captives by preaching the Good Tidings of His Father (Luke 4:18, Isaiah 61:1), in fulfillment of the Good Shepherd prophecy of Ezekiel 34 in which the Good Shepherd binds up the wounds of the sheep (Ezekiel 34:16) and breaks the bands of their yoke (Ezekiel 34:27). When Jesus told the apostles they, too, would “bind” and “loose” (Matthew 16:19, 18:18), it was a simple commission for them to continue the preaching ministry He had received: “as my Father hath sent me, even so send I you” (John 20:21). And in this entry, Part 6, we demonstrated that the ministry of retaining and remitting sins cannot be understood as the same commission to “bind” and to “loose,” for binding and loosing both refer to the remission of sins of the elect (Isaiah 61:1). Remitting and retaining of sins, on the other hand, refers to the effect the Father’s Words have on the elect or the reprobate hearer. He that believes has already passed from death to life (John 5:24), but he who does not believe has as his judge the Words of the Father (John 12:48-49). It is the Words of the Father, not the preacher, that remit or retain the sins of the hearers.

As the below graphic illustrates, two different religions arise from the words of Jesus’ exchange with Peter—one focusing on the power of Peter and his successors, the other on Christ’s ministry to deliver His Father’s Words.

Jesus’ words to Peter and the apostles in Matthew 16 and 18 and John 20 are therefore pregnant with the seeds of two different religions, and like the twins in Rebekah’s womb, they are perpetually at war with one another. Misunderstanding His words, Rome thought Jesus would have built His Church upon Peter, and that the gates of hell could not prevail against him and his infallible successors, and that by the keys of the kingdom, they could open or bar the door to heaven, binding men in their sins, or loosing them through priestcraft and sacramental superstition, remitting or retaining sins by “the pope’s universal coercive jurisdiction” (Catholic Encylopedia, The Pope). Such a religion requires men to put their “faith in the church” (Catholic Catechism 976) and makes merchandise of the souls of men (Revelation 18:12-13), shutting up the kingdom of heaven to them, neither entering themselves, nor suffering they that would (Matthew 23:13).

But the people of Christ understand that “the purpose of God according to election” (Romans 9:11) is accomplished by the Word of the Father. His purpose was determined before the Word ever left His mouth, and cannot return unless it “accomplish that which I please” and “prosper in the thing whereto I sent it” (Isaiah 55:11). That religion understands it is not Peter but the Word of the Father that is in view.† According to Isaiah 28:16 and Isaiah 54:11, the Lord promised to build His church “upon this rock,” not on Peter, but on the stone foundation of the Father’s Words. The gates of hell cannot prevail, not because of the infallibility of Peter, but because by His Word, the “covenant with death shall be disannulled” and the “agreement with hell shall not stand” (Isaiah 28:18), for he that believes the Fathers words “is passed from death unto life” (John 5:24). The keys of the kingdom of heaven refer not to an administrative gatekeeping function, but rather to a ministry of preaching the Father’s Words, because by the “key of knowledge” (Luke 11:52) “mixed with faith” (Hebrews 4:2) the hearers “do enter” (Hebrews 4:3), for both knowledge and belief come by the preaching of the Word of the Father (Romans 10:17). The power of binding and loosing is no priestly administrative function of keeping men in their sins, but a commission the Good Shepherd had received from His Father “to bind up the brokenhearted” and “to proclaim … the opening of the prison to them that are bound” by the preaching of Good Tidings (Isaiah 61:1 [Luke 4:28]). “As my Father hath sent me” to bind up and to loose, “even so send I you” (John 17:18) — to bind up and to loose (Matthew 16:19, Matthew 18:18). By these carefully chosen words of a Shepherd (Ezekiel 34), “Peter” and his “successors” are relieved of the awful burden of administering the effectual call of the Father. While John 20:23 was not spoken in the context of Peter’s confession, nevertheless, the Scriptures teach us that the authority to remit and retain sins refers not the preacher’s “coercive jurisdiction,” but simply to “the foolishness of preaching,” whereby the sins of the hearers are either remitted or retained by the Father’s Word, for He opens or closes the ears of the hearer according to the pleasure of His will, and not according to the will of the preacher. Such a religion invites men to believe the Father’s Words, a religion of the sons of Abraham who, like Abraham, believed “the word of the Lord” and by that faith receive righteousness (Genesis 15:1-6), justification (Galatians 3:8) and salvation by the grace of God (1 Peter 1:10).

† The popular view that Peter’s confession is “the rock” is not correct, but not so very far off as Rome’s, for the object of Peter’s belief was indeed the Word he had been taught by the Father.