Tim Staples dives deep into the profound meaning of “binding and loosing,” referencing the Catechism and exploring its Old and New Testament roots. He explains how Jesus bestowed this authority upon Peter and his successors, granting the Church the power to declare truths and forgive sins. Discover how this power impacts our lives today, emphasizing the importance of evangelization and the sacrament of Confession.
Transcript:
Hey, Tim. Thanks for taking my call. Yes. My question is from… So in Matthew 16, Jesus talks about…
He says, “I will give you the keys “of the kingdom of heaven. “Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven. “Whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.” What exactly is the power of binding and loosing, and how does the Pope today, Right. or maybe recent Popes exercise that?
That is a great question and an important question. And I would refer everyone to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, Section 1445, which is one of these great little… You know, you guys have heard me say, I absolutely love the Catechism of the Catholic Church, but this is one of those… It answers your question, and it says, for some reason, my computer’s not pulling it up. I was gonna quote it, but just going from memory, it says, “When Jesus says the words to bind and loose, “this is what it means.” I love that. You know, I love when the church does that, right? Because people often ask, you know, what does this verse mean? And I love it when I can just go, here, this is what it means. But now, this is not giving an exhaustive definition of what binding and loosing means, but it does say, and again, I’m not quoting it, I’m going from memory here, but it says, “Whoever you include in the kingdom of God, I include, and whoever you exclude, I exclude.” Right?
That is powerful stuff. This is, you know, binding and loosing, which goes back, as you may know, brother, to the Old Testament, in the Book of Isaiah, uses the language, doesn’t say explicitly binding and loosing, but uses similar language with regard to, in Isaiah chapter 22, the ministry of what was called, it’s kind of like a grand vizier in more modern terms, but the prophet Isaiah refers to, in verses 20 through 22 there, the master of the palace. He was kind of the prime minister under the king. And he says, “Whatever door you shut will remain shut, “and whatever door you open will remain open.” And by the way, Jesus himself uses that very language in Revelation chapter three verse seven of himself. “I am the one who I close the door, “it remains closed, I open, it remains open,” right?
Well, the king in the Old Testament, I think at the time Isaiah’s writing, it would have been King Hezekiah, is talking about the authority of the prime minister, he speaks and acts in the name of the king. Now in the New Testament, of course, we know Jesus Christ is the king of kings and Lord of lords, 1 Timothy chapter six, the Book of Revelation says it as well, right? The king of kings and Lord of lords. But in the Old Testament, the context is, the king is communicating that authority to his prime minister to act in his stead. Well, guess what? Jesus, who has the authority to close and no one can open and open and no one can shut, is communicating his authority to Peter.
And so now, whereas in the Old Testament, it was very much a sort of this worldly emphasis, he had power over the household, the palace and such, the kingdom on earth, well, yeah, Peter has authority over the kingdom of heaven on earth, which is the church, but this extends into heaven itself, in the sense that, again, what the Catechism says, whatever you bind on earth. And it’s a fascinating thing here. I love this text because it actually uses what’s called a perfect, or I should say not a perfect, a future passive tense in the Greek language, the Koine Greek, a future passive, right? And there’s only four times that this is ever used in the New Testament, right? It’s used here in Matthew 16, 18 and 19, and it’s also used in Matthew 18, verse 18, where Jesus says, “Of the church in union with Peter, “whatever you bind on earth will have been bound in heaven.” But it basically means, see, and it’s not often translated this way because it’s a little funky. What is a future passive?
Well, it means whatever you bind on earth will have been bound in heaven. It’s kind of a strange, because it’s a future, but a passive. So will have in the future sort of already been done, right? So a future passive, which means basically whatever you bind on earth, it is so bound, because we’re talking about a divine operation here, it will have already been bound in heaven by God. That’s what the church means by saying, whenever the church declares something bound on earth, it’s bound in heaven. And that’s what, now, to get more specific to your question now, what does this refer to practically? Well, it refers to a couple of sort of major categories. One is, it’s a declaratory power.
Whatever, you know, just like when Jesus Christ walked this earth. And I love the text there in Mark chapter six, where he sees the people and the crowds, and they’re wandering around like sheep without a shepherd, and he has pity on them, and he began to teach them many things. It was in the sacred heart of Jesus, his desire was to teach, why? Because he was sent to heal us, and one of the ways that he heals us is the word. Psalm 107 verse 20 says, he sent his word and healed them. John 15.3, Jesus says to the apostles, on the night before he would be crucified, right? Jesus says, you have already been made clean to the apostles now, because you have received my word, right? His word sanctifies, it changes hearts. Just proclaiming the word, and you and I receiving it, sitting right here in this office, it can purify us, right?
Transform our lives, right? So, we’re talking about a declaratory power, just like Jesus had when he proclaimed his word it healed, it sanctified and such, right? So, it’s a declaratory power. Well, Jesus gives that authority to the church. Now, of course, that authority is limited because Jesus said, whatever you’ve been on earth. So, there’s criteria involved here. It’s not just any time. Jesus, every single word he spoke was healing.
Every word he spoke, everything that he did, every action, right? Why? Because of course, he had to be a tific vision. You know, every word he said was the word of the Father. I love John chapter five, verse 19 on this point where Jesus says, the Son of Man can do nothing on his own, but only that which he sees the Father do, right? So, what he is speaking is the word of God all the time, right? Well, he limits that authority when communicating to the church. It’s whatever you will have bound on earth. And the church, of course, over the centuries has developed and understood that in a deeper and deeper way. But from very early on in the history of the church, it was understood, in fact, from the first century, it was understood, this is an infall, this is a gift of infallibility that Jesus is giving first to the Pope, that is to the Saint Peter in Matthew 16, 18 and 19, but also to his successors.
And then in the same way in Matthew 18, where that binding and loosing language is used again, he gives it to all the bishops, but in union with Peter and his successors, right? So, that’s that declaratory power, so that when the church declares, let’s say, right, when Pope, we could do any Pope, Benedict XII, when he defined the fact in the 14th century that when souls go to heaven, they attain to the beatific vision, even before the final judgment, right? He defined that in a document, in Apostolic Constitution called Benedictus Deus. I forget the exact year, 13-something, all right? So, when he declared that, that is just as though Jesus Christ spoke it and said, guess what, any saint that goes to heaven, he has attained to the beatific vision, he sees the face of God, right? So, if you deny that, guess what? You are denying Jesus Christ, because in the same way that Jesus walked this earth, and when he declared the word of God, if you rejected it, you’re not just rejecting the word of a man, you’re rejecting the word of God.
Well, the Popes, that is Peter, and his successors, as well as the apostles in union with Peter, that would include the bishops in union with the Pope, when they declare something in that way, if you reject it, you are rejecting not just their word, but you’re rejecting the word of God, because they are giving you the definitive, this is not new revelation. They do not, like Saint Peter and the apostles, uniquely had, along with the apostolic men, who wrote scripture, had a particular gift of receiving the revelation that was given once for all, as Dave Verbum, I think it’s paragraph eight, says in the Dogmatic Constitution on the word of God from Vatican II, it was given once for all in the first century. So, the role of the church now is to develop that, which was given once for all, but it’s still the binding and losing, because the revelation is defined by, developed by, so that you and I can understand it. But the same principle, though, if you reject it, you’re rejecting God. But then real quickly, there’s a second aspect to this, the binding and losing. It not only refers to that declatory authority, but it also refers to the forgiveness of sins, and in fact, that’s what the Catechism section 1445 focuses on, that the keys also include the forgiveness of sins, right?
And so, this would include things like indulgences, the forgiveness of, you know, punishment due for sin, as well as the keys of the kingdom in remitting sin as well. And this is why, my friends, we need to evangelize as Catholics, we need to evangelize, because we have the fullness of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the revelation given once for all, and the definitive interpretation of that revelation, as well as the gift of the keys of the kingdom, which means the remission of sin. And you see that in John 20, 21 through 23, where Jesus institutes the sacrament of confession, right? Whosoever sins, you forgive or forgiven, whosoever sins, you retain, they are retained. That is an exercise, now the priest, by delegation is exercising the keys of the kingdom in that sense, but Peter and the bishops were commissioning, given that power, so that, I mean, this gives me goosebumps whenever I think about it, but when I go to confession, like me and my whole family did on Saturday, Cy, when you go to confession and you hear those words, I absolve you of your sins, those sins are being remitted by the power of Jesus Christ, unless of course you put up some obstacle, you know, you’re not being truthful, you’re lying, you’re not really sorry.
Those sins are taken away, they are obliterated. Yes, you may have some punishment, yet do temporal punishment for those sins, but the sin itself is absolutely obliterated through that gift of binding and loosing, that gift given by Jesus Christ in the first century, so I hope that’s a help for you, brother. I figured out what was wrong with the computer, and I did wanna quote this, this is so beautiful, Si, the Catechism section 1445, as I mentioned, listen to this, the words bind and loose mean colon, I love that, whomever you exclude from your communion will be excluded from communion with God, whomever you receive a new into your communion, God will welcome back into his, reconciliation with the church is inseparable from reconciliation with God, close quote. We’re talking two sentences there, laid out everything, it took me 15 minutes to try to explain, but it lays out everything. Now of course included in that statement, we would add that some people are not explicitly going to experience this by going to confession because they’re not Catholic or by being baptized and becoming Catholic, so people can experience in some sense that God knows and will know at the other side of the veil, like our Protestant friends, if they are invincibly ignorant of the truth of Catholic faith and where they are through no fault of their own and they do the best they can, cooperating with God’s grace and so forth, and there’s more to it than just that, they have the possibility of salvation as does everyone outside of the visible boundaries of the Catholic church. Of course this applies in a special way to those who know the truth of the Catholic faith. If you reject that, there is no other way to heaven, my friend, apart from Jesus Christ and his church, and that’s, I think it’s so powerfully put there.
Hey, thanks for watching. If you like this Catholic Answer, be sure to like, subscribe, and check out our live streams, Monday through Friday, 3 to 5 p.m. Pacific, or find the episode after on YouTube, your favorite podcast platform or our Catholic Answers app.