What does “binding and loosing” actually mean?

Question 08077

Binding and loosing has become one of the most quoted and least examined phrases in contemporary Christian speech. It is used to bind demons, bind sickness, bind circumstances and loose blessing, favour and finances, often within a single sentence.

The phrase occurs twice in the New Testament, both times in Matthew, and in both places the context has nothing to do with any of that. Once you read them, the popular usage becomes very difficult to sustain.

The Two Passages

The first is Matthew 16:19, spoken to Peter after his confession at Caesarea Philippi: I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.

The second is Matthew 18:18, spoken to the disciples in the middle of instructions about how to deal with a sinning brother: Truly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.

That is the whole biblical basis. Two verses, one about the keys of the kingdom and one about church discipline. Neither mentions demons, sickness, finances or circumstances.

What Binding and Loosing Meant in Jewish Usage

This is where the background matters enormously. In first-century rabbinic language, binding and loosing were standard terms for the authority to declare something forbidden or permitted. A rabbi who bound an action declared it prohibited under the law. A rabbi who loosed it declared it allowed.

The vocabulary was ordinary and legal rather than mystical. Nobody hearing those words in Galilee would have thought of restraining a spirit. They would have thought of a ruling on conduct, of the kind their teachers issued regularly.

So when Jesus speaks of binding and loosing, He is granting a form of authoritative declaration to His people. The apostolic decision in Acts 15 about what to require of Gentile converts is a good example of that authority in action.

The Grammar That Settles It

There is a further detail that most English translations struggle to convey. The verbs deo and luo in these verses stand in a future perfect passive construction, which reads more precisely as shall have been bound in heaven and shall have been loosed in heaven.

That reverses the popular direction entirely. Heaven is not waiting to ratify our declarations. We are declaring on earth what heaven has already settled. The church acts in accordance with a decision already made rather than making one that heaven then honours.

Some scholars debate how much weight the tense will bear, and I would not want to hang everything on grammar alone. But the reading fits the context of both passages exactly, and the popular usage fits neither.

Matthew 18 and Church Discipline

Look at what surrounds the second occurrence. If your brother sins, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. If he does not listen, take one or two others. If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. If he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.

Then comes binding and loosing, followed immediately by the promise about two or three gathered in His name, which is itself a statement about disciplinary decisions rather than about small prayer meetings, though it is nearly always quoted as the latter.

The subject of the whole passage is the church’s authority to affirm or withhold fellowship, and to declare a person’s standing in the congregation. That is serious business, and it is real authority. It is simply not the authority most people are claiming when they use the phrase.

What Binding and Loosing Is Not

It is not a technique for restraining demonic activity. Nothing in either passage concerns spirits, and no apostle ever uses the phrase that way in any letter.

It is not a means of controlling circumstances. Binding traffic, loosing a parking space, binding an illness, loosing a promotion. I say that with a smile, but I have heard every one of those, and each treats the words as a formula rather than as the legal declaration they were.

And it is not something to be done at the enemy. I have written separately on whether we can bind Satan and on whether we can rebuke Satan or demons, and the same principle applies to both.

The Strong Man in Matthew 12

The one passage that does use binding language of Satan is Matthew 12:29, where Jesus asks how anyone can enter a strong man’s house and plunder his goods unless he first binds the strong man.

But notice who does the binding in that picture. Jesus does. He is describing His own ministry and the reason the demons are subject to Him. The disciples are not the ones binding anything, and the illustration is not offered as a method for them to copy.

The strong man has already been bound by someone considerably stronger. That is the good news in the passage, and it is a better foundation for confidence than any technique we might attempt.

How the Phrase Came to Mean What It Now Means

The shift happened largely in the twentieth century, through the spiritual warfare and word of faith movements, where binding and loosing was reframed as a form of spoken authority over the unseen realm. From there it spread widely, helped along by the fact that the phrase sounds powerful and is easy to use.

Once a usage becomes common enough, it stops being examined. Most believers who use the phrase have never looked at Matthew 16 or 18, not through carelessness but because they assumed the meaning was settled and obvious.

That is worth pausing on more generally. A great deal of what circulates as Christian practice arrived by repetition rather than by exegesis, and the only remedy is to keep going back to the text.

What This Means for Prayer

None of this leaves us weaker. The church genuinely holds the authority Jesus described, and it is exercised in the gospel and in the ordering of congregational life. Declaring that a repentant sinner is forgiven, or that an unrepentant one is outside the fellowship, is an act with weight in heaven.

For prayer itself, the effect is liberating. You do not need to find the right formula. You ask your Father, plainly, for what is needed, and you leave the method to Him. That is what Jesus taught His disciples to do, and it has never been improved on.

Keys, Authority and What Peter Actually Received

The keys given to Peter deserve a word of their own, since binding and loosing is attached to them. Keys open doors, and what Peter opened in Acts was access to the kingdom for successive groups of people. He preached at Pentecost and three thousand Jews entered. He went to the household of Cornelius and the door opened to Gentiles.

That is the authority in operation. It is declarative and evangelistic, exercised through preaching the gospel and announcing on what terms people are received. Nothing in Acts shows Peter using his keys to restrain a spirit or to command a circumstance.

Roman Catholic teaching has built a great deal on these verses, and Protestant reaction has sometimes been to empty them of content altogether. Neither seems right to me. The authority is genuine and it belongs to the church, and it is exercised in the gospel and in the ordering of congregational life. Matthew 16:18-19 is worth reading in full rather than in fragments.

So, now what?

One last observation on how we speak. Language shapes expectation, and a congregation trained to bind and loose will slowly come to think of prayer as an exercise of authority rather than as asking a Father. That is a subtle shift and it costs something, because the second is warmer and considerably more biblical.

Jesus taught us to begin with Our Father. Everything else in the model prayer follows from that relationship, and no formula improves on it.

It is worth noticing what this does to our confidence. If binding and loosing were a technique we performed on the unseen realm, then everything would depend on our getting it right. Because it is a declaration of what heaven has already settled, the weight sits where it belongs.

That is the pattern throughout Scripture. God acts and His people announce it. We are heralds rather than engineers, and heralds sleep better.

If binding and loosing has been part of your vocabulary, read Matthew 16 and 18 slowly this week, whole chapters rather than the single verses. See whether the popular usage survives the reading. In my experience it does not, and the discovery is a relief rather than a loss.

Then pray more simply. Ask God directly for the thing you were trying to bind. He is not requiring a legal formula from you, and He was never going to withhold something because you phrased it wrongly.

What have you been trying to accomplish by formula that you could simply ask your Father for?

“Truly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”

Matthew 18:18, ESV