Matthew 16:18-19: A Common Sense Approach

Matthew 16:18-19 is a controversial passage. It states:

"And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven" (NRSV).

This passage has always given me problems, and it's not because I care whether or not Peter was the first pope. Rather, whenever I read the passage, it seems to me as if God is handing a loaded gun to a child. Should a human being have the authority to decide who goes to heaven and who goes to hell, assuming that's what the keys of the kingdom are? Should the decisions of a church body receive an automatic stamp of approval from heaven, as if humans don't make mistakes? People are power hungry, especially when they are in positions of church leadership. For God to give keys to any human being astounds me.

When I read some of my trusty E-Sword commentaries, however, I thought of ways that the passage could make sense. I didn't really agree with those who try to deny that Peter was the rock. Some Protestants claim that the rock is Jesus or Peter's confession of faith, but I don't think that's what the passage is saying. It's obviously giving Peter some measure of authority, for it says, "I will give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven."

And there were some Protestant commentators on E-Sword who recognized Peter's importance in the early church. The Book of Acts presents him as the first apostle to reach out to the Gentiles. Peter truly had the keys to the kingdom when he did that, for he was showing the Gentiles the path to eternal life. And he was the rock on whom Christ built his church, since the inclusion of the Gentiles was a huge step in the church's construction.

Moreover, Jesus gave the disciples the authority to make decisions for the church body, to determine where it was going and what it should do. And Jesus assured Peter that God would back up whatever they decided. Why? Because someone has to be in charge and make decisions. Otherwise, there'd be chaos.

In Old Testament Israel, there were judges, elders, priests, and Levites who made authoritative decisions about how to apply the law to certain cases (Deuteronomy 17, 19). Whatever they said went, and it had to be that way. If a judge ordered someone to pay the guy he defrauded, and the defrauder refused, what would that do to the social order? There'd be more fraud! The Jews maintained that God had entrusted his community with the right to uphold and clarify his Torah. Even a voice from heaven could not undermine the authority of the community (B.T. Bava Metzia 59b).

In the case of the early church, someone had to make a decision about what the body would do: Will it accept the Gentiles as they are, or will it require them to become circumcised Torah observers before they can join the church? The church leadership had the authority to make this decision, and yet it did not use its power in an arbitrary fashion. The disciples did not say, "Okay, this is our decision, and it stands because we say so. And, while we're at it, give us your attractive women and your money! God's backing us up here!" Rather, in Acts 15, we see that the disciples looked to reason, experience, and Scripture in an attempt to discover God's will.

In the process, James, the leader of the Jerusalem church, came up with a set of requirements for the new Gentile Christians--that they avoid fornication, meat offered to idols, and strangled animals. Fornication was a moral issue, but eating meat offered to idols was not necessarily. Paul saw nothing wrong with it on a moral level, since the idol is nothing. But he believed that there was a pragmatic reason not to eat such meat, since doing so could offend certain Christians (I Corinthians 8:4). And so the leaders of the church could uphold morality as well as make pragmatic determinations on church policy.

But what if the church leadership became power-hungry? What if favoritism emerged in its judgments and decisions? Well, we can rest assured that God doesn't turn a blind eye to that. In the Hebrew Bible, his prophets excoriate the judges and priests of Israel because they oppress the poor, show favoritism in their rulings, and uphold false religion. God expects his leaders to uphold righteousness, and we follow them insofar as they do so.

And so God allows church leaders to make decisions that he will back up, but his support is not unconditional. The decisions must have a righteous effect, and they should rest on a sincere attempt to discover his will.