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Tyndale Open Bible Dictionary

KEYS OF THE KINGDOM

Symbolic description of the authority given by Jesus to Peter in Matthew 16:19: “I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven” (rsv).

Many ancient peoples believed that heaven and hell were closed by gates to which certain deities and angelic beings had keys. In Greek mythology, for example, Pluto kept the key to hades. Jewish writings near the time of Jesus give God the key to the abode of the dead. In the book of Revelation, John sees Christ holding the keys of death and hades (Rv 1:18; see 3:7).

In Matthew’s Gospel the keys symbolize the authority to open and shut the kingdom of heaven. In response to Peter’s declaration that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God (Mt 16:16), Jesus entrusts authority to “bind” and “loose” to Peter (v 19). This authority is later extended to the other disciples (18:18). The words “bind” and “loose” were used by rabbis near the time of Christ to declare someone under a ban (“binding”) and relief of the ban (“loosing”). Sometimes this referred to expulsion or reinstatement at a synagogue. At other times binding and loosing indicated consignment to God’s judgment or acquittal from it. The “power of the keys” (or binding and loosing) of which Jesus speaks is a spiritual authority like that he gave the disciples in John 20:23: “If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained” (rsv).

The Pharisees and scribes assumed that as teachers of the law they had power to shut the kingdom of heaven against others (Mt 23:13). Yet as blind guides they failed to recognize what Peter had acknowledged—that Jesus was the one in whom God’s kingdom had come. The keys of the kingdom authorized the pronouncement of judgment and the promise of forgiveness—not by human authority, but on the basis of Christ’s word.