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“Epic,” as in Your-Salvation-and-Mine-Rides-or-Falls-on-This. I kid you not.
This PODCAST is going to be fun, and so instructive. Instructive on two levels.
- Instructive as we discover together exactly what Jesus meant here in Matthew 18:18-20.
- Instructive as we are handed, courtesy of Jesus, an opportunity to learn what to do, and perhaps more importantly, what not to do with the Bible.
As you are about to see, we must bring to this passage every interpretive tool in the tool box in order to arrive at an accurate interpretation and application of this passage.
Let me put it this way: The Apostle Paul encouraged his protégé, young Pastor Timothy, to “Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the word of truth” (2 Timothy 2:15).
Do you know why Paul encouraged Timothy to handle the word of truth correctly? Because there were then, as there are now, scores of people — pastors, teachers, conference speakers, authors, commentators — who routinely handle the word of truth incorrectly.
In 1 Timothy 1:3, Paul similarly wrote Timothy, “I urged you to stay there in Ephesus and stop those whose teaching is contrary to the truth.” Why? Because there were Sunday school teachers or small group leaders in Timothy’s church who were teaching error.
It is so easy to make the Bible say whatever we want it to say. It is so easy, too easy, to carelessly teach what the Bible does not say.
Case in point: Matthew 18:18-20. A commonly-quoted passage made to mean all sorts of things that, to be perfectly honest with you, Jesus never intended. A passage so often applied in ways that Jesus did not have in mind. He would cringe today to see what so many have done with this passage.
And, as you are about to see, this passage will indeed require us to bring to its interpretation and application a whole set of interpretive tools — a knowledge of language, history, geography, culture, chronology, context, literary & Jewish background — all in an effort to understand what Jesus did indeed intend to convey to His disciples and to us at a singularly watershed moment in Jesus’ ministry.
So in this podcast, dear friend, we have a lot to talk about.
So, let’s begin by reading Matthew 18:18-20,
18 “Assuredly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.
19 “Again I say to you that if two of you agree on earth concerning anything that they ask, it will be done for them by My Father in heaven. 20 For where two or three are gathered together in My name, I am there in the midst of them.”
This is a passage that, at least in part, has been quoted over and over again to mean multiple different things to well-meaning Christians around the world and over hundreds of years. Yet, I fear that Jesus was cringing when He heard some of the contexts for which His words were used and how His words have been mis-used.
To properly interpret this passage, as well as any Scripture, we must consider the original language the Scripture was written in, the historical and geographical contexts it took place, the culture and chronology of Jesus’ life when He spoke these words, not to mention the context of these three verses in light of the entire speech Jesus was offering. We also have to take into account the literary background of the passage – why was it included in Matthew and none of the other three Gospel accounts. And, we have to consider the Jewish background of all of these concepts.
We need to bring all of this to bear in order to understand this passage.
This was, in Jesus’ ministry, a “watershed moment”.
Now, for a moment, let me lay out some of the interpretations that I have heard for this passage over the years:
- I’ve been taught that it means that we Christ-followers have the ability to bind Satan. But if this were true, wouldn’t the devil had been bound by SOMEBODY by now?
- I’ve been taught that whenever two or more Christians gather and pray, Jesus us there in their midst. But, doesn’t this imply that there is a “special” visitation of Christ when two or more people pray together, as opposed to when we pray alone as individuals?
- I’ve been taught that whenever two or three people agree together in prayer, concerning anything that they ask, God is obligated to answer that prayer in the affirmative. But if this were the case, wouldn’t at least two or three people have agreed in prayer by now to eliminate world hunger and disease and they would be wiped from the globe?
- I’ve been taught that this passage, as well as those before and after it within this speech of Jesus, is all about Church Discipline. A prominent pastor once wrote: “We are never more like God than when we are actively confronting and correcting sin in the lives of fellow believers, because that’s what God does. And Jesus, here in Matthew 18, assures us that when we confront and correct the sins in the lives of the people around us, Jesus promises that He is there with us, giving us heaven’s approval for our confrontation and correction.” However, if this were the case, wouldn’t it also be the case that spiritual abuse (abject condemnation with the backing of a memory verse) be running more rampant than it already is throughout Christianity?
All this brings me to this one question: What did Jesus really mean when He said to His disciples, ”Assuredly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.
Again I say to you that if two of you agree on earth concerning anything that they ask, it will be done for them by My Father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered together in My name, I am there in the midst of them.”
I think that, in order to get down to Jesus’ meaning, we have to understand one word. It’s a word that Jesus and His disciples were abundantly familiar with; as was Matthew, the author of this Gospel and the Jewish people whom Matthew was writing to. You see, from beginning to end, the entirety of Matthew’s Gospel account circumvents around the thought that he was going to convince his fellow Jews that Jesus Christ was and is the promised Messiah.
Consequently, they all knew the word, S’michah.
S’michah is a Hebrew (Old Testament) word with the Greek (New Testament) equivalent of Exousia. Either way, the word means “AUTHORITY”.
We find another usage of this word in Matthew 7 when Jesus was concluding His Sermon on the Mount. When He had wrapped up His sermon, we read this about the people’s reaction:
28 When Jesus had finished saying these things, the crowds were amazed at his teaching,29 for he taught with real authority—quite unlike their teachers of religious law. (Matthew 7:28-29)
But wait, didn’t the teachers of the Law in Jesus’ day have authority? What could this passage mean?
Every Jew reading Matthew’s Gospel knew what this meant. Because they understood S’michah – AUTHORITY.
You see, there were two types of Torah teachers in Jesus’ day. The first type were those who were limited in their teachings to only repeat the accepted teachings of their sages. So, the bulk of their teachings would be made up of quoting the sages from years past. This is not unlike many Sunday School teachers today in our tradition. Many Sunday School teachers today merely teach their students what their given curriculum tells them to say. This is understandably due to the fact that most of these amazing volunteers simply haven’t had the training to write their own lessons. These are our esteemed Sunday School Teachers, in the same mold as the Teachers of the Law in Jesus’ day.
Then there were those who were in the “upper echelon” of Torah teachers who were recognized as Rabbis who had authority… S’michah. And Jesus taught in this manner – with REAL S’michah! The closest thing we have to this in our current tradition would be ordained pastors.
The difference between these two “echelons” of Torah teachers was that the Teachers of the Law could only teach the accepted interpretations and applications of the sages from years gone by. However, if you were a S’michahed Rabbi, you could teach your own interpretation and application of a passage of Torah. That’s authority!
And that’s why Jesus was able to say throughout His Sermon on the Mount, “You have heard the law that says… But I say unto you…” This explains why the people listening’s collective jaws dropped and they were amazed at the S’michah with which Jesus spoke. He was speaking His own interpretation. These were interpretations of the Torah that they had never considered before and it blew their minds!
Now, consider the Apostle Paul. Paul was under attack for his teaching. He was teaching interpretations of the Torah that did not coincide with what the sages of years gone by had taught. He taught that every verse of the Old Testament was pointing to Jesus. “The Messiah is coming. Guess what, He came. And His name is Jesus!” The Jews of his day wondered, “What in the world gave Paul the authority (the S’michah) to teach this?!”
Paul said: “I am a Jew, born and raised in the city of Tarsus in Cilicia. I was a student of Gamaliel and was taught to follow every single law of our ancestors. In fact, I was just as eager to obey God as any of you are today.” (Acts 22:3)
Gamaliel was an esteemed S’michahed rabbi. That’s what gave Paul the authority to speak new interpretations. And the minute he said Gamaliel’s name, known by every Jew in the room at the time, his authority was understood and accepted.
Jesus, Himself had his S’michah questioned in the Temple, as we read in Matthew 21:23 –
23 When Jesus returned to the Temple and began teaching, the leading priests and elders came up to him. They demanded, “By what authority are you doing all these things? Who gave you the right?”
Jesus didn’t give an answer to those priests and elders that day, but His answer is a pretty simple one for us today. Do you remember, before Jesus even uttered a single syllable of public teaching, what happened at the Jordan river?
16 After his baptism, as Jesus came up out of the water, the heavens were opened and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and settling on him. 17 And a voice from heaven said, “This is my dearly loved Son, who brings me great joy.” (Matthew 3:16-17)
You want a S’michahed Rabbi? This was God’s Son! Paul’s teacher Gamaliel, who was so respected by the Jews, was small potatoes compared to God Almighty! Jesus possessed inherited S’michah by His very nature!
Which brings us back to Matthew 18:18-20.
Now, at this point in Jesus’ ministry, He knew that He was roughly six months away from His own crucifixion. And He knew that His apostles’ faith would falter and collapse. So, He needed to remind them again of His authority. The authority that came from God the Father and would be bestowed upon Jesus’ Apostles, when Jesus ascended to heaven, and they would teach from. Jesus knew they would be teaching new truth, all of which would flow out of the Torah and point toward Jesus.
So, who gave the Apostles the S’michah to teach in the place of Jesus and in Jesus’ name? Jesus did.
When did He do that? Here in Matthew 18:18-20. This is where Jesus passed the baton… a passing of EPIC proportions! It is after this discussion, in Capernaum, that Jesus begins to pass on His S’michah.
We may not understand this, since we were not raised in the same Jewish culture as Matthew and the other apostles, but it is right there in the text. For starters, note at the beginning of Matthew 18 that Jesus was only addressing His twelve chosen disciples, not the masses that often followed along. In fact, it can be argued that He didn’t even say these words to us.
Matthew 18:18 begins, “Assuredly, I say to you”. Jesus was speaking directly to the twelve apostles who were with Him in that room. “…whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.”
Again, referencing the time and culture of their day, “binding and loosing” was a common Rabbinical expression that Jesus’ disciples immediately understood as Jesus imparting to His men His S’michah (authority) to bind and loose.
No one alive today has Jesus’ S’michah. We weren’t there as one of the twelve. Even the greatest of teachers today are limited to teach what the sages have taught.
And this is what they have taught (from the Jewish Encyclopedia, vol. 3, pg. 215):
“Binding and Loosing: Rabbinical term for ‘forbidding and permitting’. This power and authority vested in the Rabbinical body of each age, received its ratification and final sanction from the celestial court of justice (heaven)”
In other words, it was the understanding of the Rabbis that when they exercised their S’michah, or authority, to forbid or permit, heaven itself participated in the process and gave its approval to their renderings, just as Jesus said, “…whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.”
And believe it or not, the Jewish Encyclopedia goes on to talk about Jesus in light of this term. “In this sense Jesus, when appointing his disciples to be his successors, used the familiar formula (Matthew 18:18). By these words Jesus virtually invested His disciples with the same authority as that which he found belonging to the scribes and Pharisees…”
In other words, from this point on, Andrew, Bartholomew, James the son of Zebedee, James the son of Alpheus John, Judas, Jude, Matthew, Peter, Philip, Simon, and Thomas were Rabbis. With this apostolic authority, the twelve disciples could now teach new interpretations of old texts that Jesus had fulfilled.
Therefore, when Jesus continued in verse 19, “Again I say to you that if two of you agree on earth concerning anything that they ask, it will be done for them by My Father in heaven”, He meant that when the apostles would come together in Jesus’ absence, in order to determine the teaching upon which His work would be built (aka the New Testament), Jesus and His Father would be with them, guiding them every step of the way.
This is actually a foreshadowing of what Jesus would tell them later in the upper room – again, just the twelve of them.
12 “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. 13 However, when He, the Spirit of truth, has come, He will guide you into all truth; for He will not speak on His own authority, but whatever He hears He will speak; and He will tell you things to come. (John 15:12-13)
The truth that Jesus is referring to is the New Testament. The authority He is speaking of is Jesus’ own S’michah.
Which brings us, finally, to verse 20 of Matthew 18,
20 For where two or three are gathered together in My name, I am there in the midst of them.”
Why did Jesus specify two or three?
The Mishnah, one of our Jewish friends’ Holy Books, says this:
“If two sit together and the words of Torah pass between them, the Shekhina (Divine Presence, or God) abides between them.”
The Talmud, another Jewish Holy Book, says,
“If three are sitting as a court of judges, the Shekhina is there with them.”
Jesus, in Matthew 18:20 said “two or three” because that is what was woven into their culture in the Mishnah and Talmud. Therefore, the disciples and the Jewish readers of Matthew’s Gospel knew immediately what Jesus meant.
And what He didn’t mean.
One thing Jesus did not mean was anything having to do with a gathering of Christians for a prayer meeting. The truth is that, when you pray, Jesus is there whether you are praying in a group of two, three, twenty, twenty thousand or if you pray alone.
No, this doesn’t have anything to do with prayer gatherings or Church Discipline, or binding Satan. It has everything to do with Jesus passing on His S’michah – the authority to lay the foundation of His work in His absence – within their Jewish context. Paul substantiates this in Ephesians 2:19-20,
19 So now you Gentiles are no longer strangers and foreigners. You are citizens along with all of God’s holy people. You are members of God’s family. 20 Together, we are his house, built on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets.
Two specific things jump off the page in these verses:
- The work of Christ is indeed built upon the foundation of the apostles who received their authority from Jesus, Himself, as told in Matthew 18.
- You and I, today, are included in God’s family, even though we are not Jewish. And this is not to be taken lightly!
But, who had the authority to permit Gentiles to become citizens, along with God’s holy people, and members of God’s family? The apostles were. In Peter’s living room in Capernaum. In Matthew 18.
You see, after Jesus ascended to heaven and the apostles began fulfilling the Great Commission, going out to the ends of the earth making disciples, Gentiles surrendered their lives and chose to become followers of Christ IN DROVES! For the early church, this was completely new and unanticipated.
It actually threatened to split the early church right down the middle – to we let them in or not?
But, as we read in Acts 15:
While Paul and Barnabas were at Antioch of Syria, some men from Judea arrived and began to teach the believers: “Unless you are circumcised as required by the law of Moses, you cannot be saved.”
In other words, you must first convert to Judaism – and keep the whole Jewish Law – before you can be considered a Christian.
2 Paul and Barnabas disagreed with them, arguing vehemently. Finally, the church decided to send Paul and Barnabas to Jerusalem, accompanied by some local believers, to talk to the apostles and elders about this question. 3 The church sent the delegates to Jerusalem, and they stopped along the way in Phoenicia and Samaria to visit the believers. They told them—much to everyone’s joy—that the Gentiles, too, were being converted.
4 When they arrived in Jerusalem, Barnabas and Paul were welcomed by the whole church, including the apostles and elders. They reported everything God had done through them. 5 But then some of the believers who belonged to the sect of the Pharisees stood up and insisted, “The Gentile converts must be circumcised and required to follow the law of Moses.”
6 So the apostles and elders met together to resolve this issue.
What gave the apostles the authority to do make this decision? Jesus did! In Matthew 18 when He said they had the authority to bind or loose in Jesus’ name. They could permit or forbid Gentiles, and when they made the decision, Jesus was there with them.
7 At the meeting, after a long discussion, Peter stood and addressed them as follows: “Brothers, you all know that God chose me from among you some time ago to preach to the Gentiles so that they could hear the Good News and believe. 8 God knows people’s hearts, and he confirmed that he accepts Gentiles by giving them the Holy Spirit, just as he did to us. 9 He made no distinction between us and them, for he cleansed their hearts through faith. 10 So why are you now challenging God by burdening the Gentile believers with a yoke that neither we nor our ancestors were able to bear? 11 We believe that we are all saved the same way, by the undeserved grace of the Lord Jesus.”
12 Everyone listened quietly as Barnabas and Paul told about the miraculous signs and wonders God had done through them among the Gentiles.
13 When they had finished, James stood and said, “Brothers, listen to me.
Catch this – this is talking about James, the brother of Jesus. He wasn’t an apostle. He didn’t have Jesus’ S’michah. And he deferred to Peter.
14 Peter has told you about the time God first visited the Gentiles to take from them a people for himself. 15 And this conversion of Gentiles is exactly what the prophets predicted. As it is written:
16 ‘Afterward I will return
and restore the fallen house of David.
I will rebuild its ruins
and restore it,
17 so that the rest of humanity might seek the Lord,
including the Gentiles—
all those I have called to be mine.
The Lord has spoken—
18 he who made these things known so long ago.’19 “And so my judgment is that we should not make it difficult for the Gentiles who are turning to God. 20 Instead, we should write and tell them to abstain from eating food offered to idols, from sexual immorality, from eating the meat of strangled animals, and from consuming blood. 21 For these laws of Moses have been preached in Jewish synagogues in every city on every Sabbath for many generations.”
So, as a direct result of this meeting, Gentiles all around the world are living their lives as Christ-followers and members of God’s family. All due to the apostle’s authority to bind or loose, to permit or forbid, given to them by Jesus in Matthew 18.
And, thank God they chose to permit!
They did their job well. Here we are 2,000 years later, and the family of God is stronger and continually growing as it ever has!
Kudos to the apostles!