1. Nature of the Power:
We sum up what seems to be the teaching of Scripture. We conclude that the power is not a special privilege and extraordinary authority, but a responsibility entrusted by Jesus Christ as the method of extending His work. There is in it nothing magical, mysterious, or arbitrary; not ecclesiastical or official, but spiritual and primarily personal. The keys of the kingdom of heaven are first of all the gospel of salvation through Jesus Christ. By this means men are admitted into the kingdom. The fully attested method of using the keys is that of witnessing personally to an experience of Jesus Christ. He was conferring power for saving and not for barring from salvation. Let it be borne in mind always that Jesus was offering Peter not power but duty, not privilege but responsibility. Neither of these terms, "power" and "privilege," that have come to be associated with the gift of the keys occurs with that gift in the words of the Master. The keys are primarily for admitting to the kingdom of heaven, not for barring from the church.
2. Agent of the Power:
The holder of the keys is any man with that experience that called forth from Jesus the assurance that Peter should have the keys. Such a man will be in fellowship and cooperation with like men, in a church, and the Spirit of Jesus will be present in them, so that their decisions and their testimony will be His as well as theirs. There is a corporate, or church, agency, therefore, and the man who would ignore that lacks the experience or the Spirit needful for the use of the keys. Yet the church is never to overshadow or exclude the individual responsibility and authority.
3. Scope of the Power:
It is to be understood that the keys of the kingdom of heaven confer no political authority or power, save that of holy and redemptive influence. The kingdom of Jesus is not of this world. Its power is spiritual and is to be exercised always primarily in the saving of men. Men do not need to be locked out of the kingdom. They are out, and too contented to remain so. It does happen that evil men seek to take possession of the kingdom for evil ends, and then it is that the authority rests in spiritual men to exclude. Men that are to be brought into the kingdom of heaven are now in sin, and where the duty of releasing them is not discharged by Christians, the sinners are left bound in their sins.
There is also involved of necessity the duty of declaring not only the conditions of entrance into the kingdom, but the courses of conduct appropriate to the kingdom. It is thus that binding and loosing in teaching devolve upon the holders of the keys. To that extent, and in that sense, alone, is there the power of "legislating" within the kingdom. This is only interpreting and applying the principles that are given us in the Scriptures.
See further ABSOLUTION; IMPOSITION OF HANDS; PETER; ROCK.
William Owen Carver