The Jewish phrase behind the promise, the Greek tense people argue about, and why these verses were never a license to bind the devil or to control people.
When Jesus said whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, He was using a Jewish teaching phrase for forbidding and permitting, and He handed that responsibility to His followers: to declare, under His authority, what His Kingdom allows and what it does not.
It is about discernment and restoration inside a community. It was never about commanding spirits or controlling people.
That answer puts some popular teaching out of work, so let's walk through it slowly.
Nobody standing with Peter heard “bind and loose” and pictured chains on a spirit. They heard classroom and courtroom language. When a Jewish teacher ruled on how the Torah applied to daily life, what counted as Sabbath work or which vows held, he was said to bind or to loose. To bind was to forbid. To loose was to permit.
Hebrew for to bind or to tie. In the language of Jewish law, something ruled asur is forbidden.
Hebrew for to loosen or untie, used of permitting something. What has been permitted is called mutar.
The Greek verb Matthew uses for bind. It is the same verb Jesus uses for binding the strong man in Matthew 12:29.
The Greek verb for loose, untie or release, used elsewhere of untying a sandal strap or releasing what was held.
The phrase was not limited to debates between scholars. The historian Josephus, writing later in the first century, describes the Pharisees in the days of Queen Alexandra, who ruled Judea roughly seventy years before Jesus was born. With the queen leaning on them, “they bound and loosed [men] at their pleasure,” as the classic Whiston translation puts it in Jewish War 1.5.2. Binding and loosing was real authority with real consequences.
So the disciples knew exactly what Jesus meant. The Pharisees, whose world we sketch in who the Pharisees were, had long used this vocabulary. Now Jesus was handing it to fishermen.
The saying appears twice in Matthew, and each setting tells you what it is for.
Right after Peter confesses Jesus as the Christ, Jesus gives him the keys of the kingdom of heaven and the authority to bind and loose. We look at the rock and the keys in upon this rock.
Two chapters later the same words go to the whole group, in the plural, in teaching about a brother who sins.
The risen Jesus speaks of forgiving sins and withholding forgiveness. It is a close cousin of the same responsibility.
The apostles and elders decide what to ask of Gentile believers and write, “it has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us.” That is binding and loosing in practice.
“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.”
Matthew 16:19, ESVNotice that the binding and loosing comes attached to keys. In Isaiah 22:22 the steward over David’s house is given a key that opens and shuts, and in Revelation 3:7 Jesus claims that key as His own. We trace that line in the key of David. A steward runs the house for the king, by the king’s word. That is the posture of binding and loosing.
And the keys were used. Peter opened the door at Pentecost, then to Samaria, then to the Gentiles in the house of Cornelius. In Acts 15 the church loosed Gentile believers from circumcision. Nobody was tying up spirits. They were deciding, with the Spirit, what faithfulness looked like in a new covenant.
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Manage My Giving"Each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver."2 Corinthians 9:7
Here is where good Bible teachers genuinely disagree, and I want to lay it out fairly.
In both verses Matthew does not use a simple future. He joins the verb “will be” to a perfect participle: estai dedemenon in 16:19 and estai dedemena in 18:18. Grammarians call this a periphrastic future perfect. Most English Bibles translate it “will be bound.” The NASB 1995 translates it “shall have been bound in heaven.”
Heaven ratifies what the church decides. Most translations lean this way, and some grammarians argue the construction often worked like a plain future in this period.
The church declares on earth what heaven has already settled. The perfect participle points to a state already in place. Heaven does not follow the church. The church follows heaven.
Both readings have serious scholars behind them, and grammar alone will not end the argument.
At Sound of Heaven we believe binding and loosing is the church discerning and declaring what God has already made known in Jesus. Our authority is real, and it is always derived. We do not create heaven’s will by announcing it. We recognize it, and we answer to Jesus for how faithfully we do. That is our reading, and we hold it plainly.
So we reject the idea that a pastor or a prayer group can bind whatever it likes and obligate God to sign off. We reject the opposite error too, that the church has no real authority at all. Jesus trusted His people with real decisions.
However you translate the tense, the church never outranks heaven. The keys belong to the King, and we use them His way.
Read 18:18 where Jesus put it. Just before it, a shepherd leaves ninety-nine sheep to find one that wandered (Matthew 18:12 to 14). Then Jesus gives a path for a brother who sins.
“If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother.” The goal is written into the first step.
Witnesses protect everyone, including the one confronted, from a single angry voice.
The community weighs it together, not one leader acting alone.
The relationship changes. But remember who wrote this down. Matthew was a tax collector, and Jesus ate with tax collectors and called them to follow Him.
Then comes verse 18. The binding and loosing there is the community’s decision about a real wrong: whether a person stays bound to it or is released from it. Verses 19 and 20, which we cover in where two or more are gathered, promise that Jesus stands with a community that decides in His name.
Paul shows the other half. After the church in Corinth disciplined a man, Paul told them the discipline had done its work and it was time to bring him back.
“So you should rather turn to forgive and comfort him, or he may be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow. So I beg you to reaffirm your love for him.”
2 Corinthians 2:7 to 8, ESVLoosing belongs to this as much as binding does. A church that only knows how to bind has misunderstood Jesus. Matthew 18 goes straight on to Peter’s question about forgiveness and Jesus’ answer of seventy-seven times, which we unpack in forgive seventy times seven.
Some of you have been on the wrong end of these verses. You were shamed from a platform, cut off by a few leaders behind closed doors, or told that disagreeing with a pastor was the same as disobeying God. If that is your story, hear this: what happened to you is not what Jesus described. Matthew 18 protects the person being confronted and aims at bringing them home. Using it to silence questions, cover a leader’s wrong, or punish someone who left is a misuse, and it is wrong.
You do not have to trust a church again overnight. If you want someone to pray with you, with no pressure attached, our team would be glad to.
In many churches Matthew 16:19 is best known as a prayer formula. I bind you, Satan. I bind every spirit of fear over this house. I loose angels over my family. The people who pray this way usually love God and are fighting for someone they love. So let me give their case at its strongest.
Jesus really did speak of binding the strong man. When He was accused of freeing people by the power of Beelzebul, He answered with a picture.
“But if it is by the Spirit of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you. Or how can someone enter a strong man’s house and plunder his goods, unless he first binds the strong man?”
Matthew 12:28 to 29, ESVSet that beside Matthew 16:19 and it can look like a mandate to bind spirits in prayer. It is an understandable connection. It is also the wrong one.
Matthew 16:19 and 18:18 give believers a formula to bind Satan and demons and to loose blessings, angels or money, by speaking the words with enough faith.
Binding and loosing is forbidding and permitting, given to a community deciding matters of faith and conduct. Neither passage mentions spirits. The pronoun is neuter, whatever rather than whoever, which fits matters and rulings, though we would not rest the case on grammar alone.
In Matthew 12 it is Jesus who binds the strong man, and the proof is people set free. It describes the Kingdom of God arriving in Him, and it has arrived. It is not a script He hands us to recite.
There is a deeper issue too. At Sound of Heaven we do not believe demons are personal beings you can address and tie up. The Bible’s language of Satan and demons names real forces: accusation, deception, trauma, chaos and oppression. Those forces are broken the way Jesus broke them, by truth, by the Spirit and by a renewed mind. We explain that in what deliverance really is and in who Satan is.
Binding prayers also do quiet harm. When a fear comes back, the person assumes they did not bind hard enough. Freedom does not come from a formula. It comes from the truth about Jesus taking root.
To a first-century Jewish listener, what did binding and loosing mean?
Binding and loosing was a Jewish teaching phrase for forbidding and permitting. Jesus gave that responsibility to Peter first and then to the disciples together. It was never about restraining spirits or forcing God’s hand.
Strip away the folklore and this passage is more beautiful than the version many of us were taught. Jesus trusted fishermen and a tax collector with real responsibility in His Kingdom, and He gave them Himself as the final word on what God is like.
That is still how it works. The Kingdom is here now, and the church is a steward inside it, not the owner. When we declare what is allowed and what is not, we answer to Jesus. When we bind, it is for the sake of someone’s healing. When we loose, we are doing what He loves to do, setting people free.
To go further, read what the church is, the community He trusted with the keys, and biblically accurate demons for what Scripture actually describes on the spiritual warfare side. If you are looking for a church that handles authority with care, we would love to meet you when you plan a visit.
Binding and loosing is the church, under Jesus, forbidding what harms and permitting what heals, declaring on earth what heaven has already settled, and always aiming to bring people home.
If a church decision left you bound up, or you are trying to walk someone back to freedom, tell us. Someone at Sound of Heaven will pray with you.
It means Jesus gave His followers authority to forbid and permit, declaring how God's will applies in real situations. Binding and loosing was a Jewish teaching phrase for exactly that. In Matthew 16:19 Jesus gives it to Peter with the keys of the kingdom, and in Matthew 18:18 He gives it to the disciples together while teaching about a brother who sins. The authority is real but derived. The church declares what heaven has settled, and it aims at restoring people.
Binding and loosing is Jewish teaching language for forbidding and permitting. When a teacher ruled that something was not allowed, he bound it. When he ruled that it was allowed, he loosed it. Josephus even describes the Pharisees under Queen Alexandra binding and loosing with real civil power. Jesus took that vocabulary and gave it to His community. Acts 15, where the apostles and elders decide what to ask of Gentile believers, shows it in practice.
Matthew 16:19 and 18:18 say nothing about spirits. They are about forbidding and permitting inside a community. The strong man Jesus binds in Matthew 12:29 describes His own Kingdom arriving, not a prayer formula for us to repeat. At Sound of Heaven we read Satan and demons as forces of accusation, deception, trauma and oppression rather than personal beings. They are broken by truth, the Spirit and a renewed mind, not by getting the right words out.
The Greek uses a periphrastic future perfect, will be joined to a perfect participle. Most translations say will be bound, which suggests heaven ratifies the church's decision. The NASB 1995 says shall have been bound, which suggests the church declares what heaven already settled. Scholars disagree, and grammar alone does not settle it. We hold that the church discerns and declares God's will rather than creating it. Either way, the church never outranks heaven.
Matthew 18:18 comes right after Jesus lays out how to handle a brother who sins: go alone, then with one or two others, then to the church. Binding and loosing there is the community's decision about a real wrong. The goal, stated in verse 15, is to gain your brother. Paul shows the other half in 2 Corinthians 2, urging the church to forgive and comfort a disciplined man. Discipline that never aims at restoration misreads Jesus.