<p>18:18&nbsp;<i>Truly I say to you: Whatever things you shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever things you shall release on earth shall be released in heaven-&nbsp;</i>&lsquo;Binding&rsquo; is associated with the binding of the rejected in condemnation at the last day (Mt. 13:30; 22:13; Rev. 20:2). The idea of binding and loosing occurs here in the context of warning us not to be too hasty to cast a brother out of the ecclesia. The earlier context of this section is of not causing others to stumble. It doesn&rsquo;t mean that any ecclesial decision has God&rsquo;s automatic sanction. But because salvation is related to remaining in the Christ body, the Lord may be saying: &lsquo;By unnecessarily expelling someone from association with My people, not &lsquo;receiving&rsquo; them, you are endangering their salvation. I won&rsquo;t necessarily come to their rescue; I have delegated the keeping of that brother to you. You are your brother&rsquo;s keeper. If you throw them out, they will probably lose their salvation. What you do on earth in these decisions is not necessarily overridden by Heaven. The eternal saving of a man is delegated to his brethren, and therefore you also have the possibility of causing him to stumble from salvation&rsquo;. The implication of this is surely that we should only cast out of the ecclesia those who openly and beyond doubt have placed themselves outside of God&rsquo;s salvation- and we cannot judge whether they have or not. And the Lord surely meant us to compare this against His command not to judge. He is surely saying in this passage: &lsquo;You can argue it out with your brother, and eventually get the ecclesia to disfellowship him. But by this you&rsquo;ll be saying that he is out of the way of salvation, and what you do may well drive him to condemnation; for it&rsquo;s a hard and unlikely way to the Kingdom without your brethren. And you know that you mustn&rsquo;t condemn him. So better just forgive him, 490 times / day, unconditionally&rsquo;. Paul takes this idea seriously when he says that if he forgives anybody, he does it &ldquo;in the person of Christ&rdquo;, and so, by extension, the church at Corinth did too, seeing they were partakers in that same one body of His (2 Cor. 2:10).</p>
<p>Another approach is suggested by the consideration that the Greek words for binding and loosing, along with their derivative words, are often used in the NT for binding in prison, and loosing from prison&rsquo;s bonds. In this case, as in 16:19, the Lord may simply have the idea that through the power of the Gospel (16:19) and through forgiving and receiving sinners (here in chapter 18), we have the power to loose people. The &ldquo;keys of the Kingdom&rdquo; are in our hands. And if we don&rsquo;t do that, then we effectively bind them. And God [&ldquo;Heaven&rdquo;] will not as it were come rushing in to change things. He has given us genuine freewill, which means that our decisions with regard to others have significances which He doesn&rsquo;t necessarily mitigate. For otherwise, human behaviour would lose meaning and ultimate significance.</p>
<p>We should note that here the language of &ldquo;the keys of the Kingdom&rdquo; used in 16:19 to Peter specifically is now repeated to all the disciples. It is not so that Peter was given some unique power which the others were not.</p>