Binding of Sins (Matthew 18:15-20)

Note:  This post comes out of my 2023 sermon on Matthew 18:15-20.  I will focus on the word "bind."  However, you can access my post on Matthew 18:15-20 or John 20:19-31.

I want to reflect a bit more on what Jesus means when he says "Truly I tell you, whatever you BIND on earth will be BOUND in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven."  I offer that this word "bind" (δεω) might have three meanings.

• Classic medieval: The binding, along with the loosing, refers to the keys of heaven which are given to the church (see Matthew 16:19).  These keys of loosing and binding will open and close the door.  As the church chooses to absolve or not absolve sins, people are moved in or blocked from heaven.
• Rabbinic:  A movement has picked up in recent scholarship to view the "binding" and "loosing" referring to the Rabbinic practice of determining, within a community, what was "bound", that is "sinful" and what was "loose", that is ''permitted." 
• Pastoral:  The binding refers here to the act of restoring a lost sheep by binding sins to Christ.

I want to unpack each of these, describe the Scriptural argument for each, its implications and its shortcomings.

Classic Medieval

In a nutshell:  The classic understanding of the office of the keys is nicely summarized by Martin Luther in his small catechism:

What is the Office of the Keys?  The Office of the Keys is the special authority which Christ has given to His Church on earth: to forgive the sins of the penitent sinners, but to retain the sins of the impenitent as long as they do not repent.

(See footnote for a longer passage of Luther) 

It is worth noting that the medieval Roman Catholic church and Luther were in agreement about what the keys did (see Aquinas on the office of the keys belonging to the church).  Luther disagreed about whether the keys belonged to the "holy Roman Catholic church" or the "holy catholic church, the communion of saints" and how the keys were dealt with through the sacramental system.

Biblical support:  All of this understanding arises from Matthew 16, Matthew 18 and John 20, in which Jesus gives the apostles authority to forgive sins and retain them.  It is worth noting that the wording is different in Matthew and John, with Matthew using the words "bind" and "loosen" and John using the words "forgive" and "hold/retain/grasp."

Implications and Shortcomings:  The mission of the church becomes clear:  act as a gate keeper for who is in and who is out of the Kingdom of God.  This clarifies and perhaps simplifies the task of the church in an age when the objectives often seem political and social.  

However, the church doors, physically and spiritually, become hard boundaries of God's mercy on earth.  As discipleship in Jesus moves from a Jewish renewal movement to an inter-continental institution, this boundary becomes a wall and the institution abuses its power, time and time again.

It also makes the point of life "getting into heaven" rather than experiencing eternal life, which begins here and now, as Jesus comes to us.

Rabbinic

In a nutshell:  This way of thinking might be new to some.  The binding and loosing, in this view, refer to the process by which community leaders, Rabbis, would determine what was morally permissible (or not) for a community.  A good article I found online by the author Kindalee Pfremmer De Long outlines it.  As she writes

In this practice of [rabbinic] binding and loosing, rabbis uphold the law as eternal and universal but recognize that new contexts require new decisions about how to bind or loose particular behaviors. 

Biblical support:  In the article by De Long, she delves more deeply into historical and linguistic support of this interpretation, which she acknowledges is solid but not exhaustively conclusive.  It is not a strictly biblical argument, per se, but one in which extra-Biblical sources allow us to better understand what the original authors (or in this case, the original speaker, Jesus) likely meant.

De Long also does not dismiss the classic way of understanding this passage.  She offers that both people may be bound or loosed (classic) and that laws or ethical standards may be bound or loosed (rabbinic).  I resonated with De Long's article, not simply in substance, but also tone.  She wrote in a generous spirit - rather than a "everyone got it wrong because we/I've discovered this social science data from the 1st century that upends everything you knew", she approached it with a "there is likely another layer to this that has impact for ministry" attitude.

Implications and Shortcomings:  In this way of thinking, Christian communities become loci of ethical and moral discernment.  For a community to exist, there must be agreed upon standards of behavior, processes for determining these standards and then means by which people are restored to the community. 

The Rabbinic perspective returns to the Achilles' heal for Protestants - once you've left the institution AND acknowledged that differences are inevitable, on what basis can you find unity and on what basis will your ethical teachings stand?  And furthermore, why attend a church that doesn't suit your moral proclivities, which increasingly means your political stances?  Like, if you disagree with your church's moral conclusion about some issue, why not leave?  In short, if your church is going to stake its hat on getting it right morally and you don't agree, why stay?

Pastoral

As a western and American, living in the 21st century, I live in just about the most autonomous and individualized culture in the earth's history.  Never before have people been less grounded in their past, including both family of origin and even biological gender.   In short, we tend to trust our feelings and are motivated to create a life, a story, an identity for ourselves, often over and against the entities that brought us to bear.  Our participation in society often amounts to signaling our virtue more than bearing one another's burdens and we move to "cancel" rather than listen.  

This all makes me acutely hungry for Matthew 18 and Jesus words about community.  More and more, in fact, I sense that God's Kingdom is a place where this individualism dissolves in Christ's grace.  I can stop having to create myself and simply let Christ define me.  While I retain a sense of distinction from others -- we do not become a blob -- I am finally able to get over myself in a way that I can be for others.  God's Kingdom allows for real community, truly communion, with God of course, but also with others.  In that light, I very much appreciated Rolf Jacobson's article about the community dynamics within Matthew 18.  Jacobson helps these words of the binding and loosing be heard in their context, namely, that of a good shepherd finding lost sheep.

If Jesus is indeed speaking about bringing people into "Life Together" as Bonhoeffer called it, what might binding look like?  Fascinatingly, Bonhoeffer ends his book with a chapter on Confession and Communion.  He extols the virtues of confession and bases participation in Holy Communion on confession.  Yet he does not mention binding of sins, but rather the proclamation of forgiveness. 

In short, a community needs to bind and loosen laws in terms of structuring life together, but given the reality of sin (see again Jacobson's article), inevitably we fill mess up before God and each other.  The only way forward is forgiveness and reconciliation.  Does this mean, then, that we have left the binding of sins behind or simply see binding as the way to remove people from the community?

μη γενιοτο (heck no!)  The community needs something bound in order for the key of loosing to work.  Sin must be dealt with.  The only binding that can actually hold a community together, then is confession and absolution, which is a binding of the sin to the cross and the freeing of the new creation for life together.

In reality, this binding will likely take weeks and be on-going given the capacity for humans to hurt ourselves and each other.  We will again and again need to bind the old sinner to the cross - our shame, our guilt, our pride, our fears, everything.  While I cannot prove it, I sense that a congregation that truly experiences this kind of forgiveness, not simply from the pulpit, but from each other (as Bonhoeffer envisions) is the kind of church that will cohere even when people disagree.  

***

PS  Longer Luther passage on the keys:

"We possess these two keys through Christ's command.  The key which binds it the power or office to punish the sinner who refuses to repent by means of a public condemnation to eternal death and separation from the rest of Christendom... The key which binds carries forward the work of the law.  It is profitable to the sinner in as much as it reveals to him his sins, admonishes him to fear God, causes him to tremble and moves him to repentance and not to destruction." ("The Keys", pg 372, LW 40)