He said to him, “But who do you say I am?” Simon Peter answered and said: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” Jesus answered and said, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my father who is in heaven. And I also say to you that you are Peter, and on this Rock I will build my Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven. And whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” (Matthew 16: 15–19)

There is probably more teaching on the keys to the kingdom of heaven than I would care to imagine, and needless to say I have only read or heard a tiny fraction of what there is. But within that tiny fraction I have never come across anything that puts these keys into the context of the verses that precede them, or those that follow. Jesus launched a conversation on the subject of His identity by asking the question: “ Who do people say that I am?“ and following that we read: “From that time Jesus began to show to His disciples that He must go to Jerusalem, and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised the third day.” (Matt 16:21) This was also the setting that Jesus chose for His prophetic declaration that He would build His victorious Church, which certainly caused Satan to prick up his ears: this was the first time since the temptation in the wilderness that we see him put in an appearance, as he speaks through Peter to try and dissuade Jesus from His call. It a pivotal moment in the Lord’s ministry on earth; so what exactly does it hinge on?

“Blessed are you, Simon by Joanna, for flesh and blood did not reveal this to you but my father who is in heaven.“
We know that the Church on Earth was launched at Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit came and equipped the disciples to carry on the Work of Jesus. But I would say that it launched prophetically in the spirit at the moment when Jesus declared “I will build my Church, and the gates of Hell shall not prevail against it.“, Two things happened at this moment: one was Peter’s full recognition of the person and divinity of Jesus, “ the Christ, the son of the living God,” and the second was that he received this revelation from heaven, by the Spirit and not through his flesh and blood. The foundations of the Church are essentially that we know Jesus for who He is, and that we need to hear from Heaven, by revelation, for His church to be built. This is the rock, the Petrus, on which Jesus builds. The name Simon comes from the Hebrew Shimon, which means “he hears,” or “one who listens.” We need to hear from our Father who is in heaven for His will to be done on earth, and it’s through the church that Jesus is building that His kingdom comes.

Having established the foundation of His Church, Jesus immediately promised “the keys to the kingdom of heaven,“ giving authority to every Peter who has heard from God to “bind” or “loose“ (translated in the NLT as lock or unlock) circumstances on earth according to the Father’s will in heaven. So what are these keys? Could it be that Jesus is carrying the same thought through this passage that He started with? Personally, I think He is, and that our authority on earth to lock or unlock heaven’s purposes is based on the same two things: knowing Jesus for who He is, and operating by revelation and not according to our own abilities and understanding.

Jesus taught us to pray “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.“ If we have had a revelation of the Christ, the Son of the living God, and if we are hearing from heaven by the Spirit, we are standing on earth with the keys to the kingdom of heaven, and what the Father binds or looses in heaven can be done on earth. We lock or unlock (bind or loose) the kingdom here on earth so God’s will is done and His kingdom comes. As well as their concrete meanings, binding and loosing have legal implications of being bound to or released from a contract or an oath. This is the authority that we have been given. Why? Because we stand in the identity of the Son of the Living God, and we have heard the Father’s instructions.