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Apostle Don Meares
“And I also say to you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build My Church, and the gates of Hades 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, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.”
“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.”
Kingdom authority is the divinely delegated right and responsibility that has been given to believers to act on God’s behalf to rule over His creation under the Lordship of Jesus Christ. With God’s Kingdom comes authority and power. One of the ways we can understand this authority given to us is through Kingdom prayer. This kind of prayer divinely authorizes heaven to invade earth for heavenly intervention into historical circumstances.
One of the expressions involved in Kingdom authority is binding and loosing.
The words “binding” and “loosing” is not a magic formula that will allow you to get God to do whatever you want. However, we must understand that it is very powerful. In Matthew 18:18-19, Jesus makes it clear that you are the one doing the loosing, the one doing the binding.
What does it mean to “bind”? It means to restrict, lock, or tie up. It means to hold something so that it cannot do what it wants to do. You are limiting its ability to function because you have tied it up. You are holding it back, preventing it from moving. Conversely, loosing is to unlock or release. It is to permit, to free something up.
In Matthew 16:18-19, Jesus says that He will build His Church first. Binding and loosing is a specific authority given to the Church by Jesus Christ Himself.
The role of the Church is to legislate from the spiritual realm, which involves enacting laws. The Church must come together to legislate from heaven to earth, bringing heavenly intervention into history.
The Key to Binding and Loosing
When we bind something, we try to keep the enemy off of us from moving toward us. This is prevention and protection from sin or other works of the enemy. On the other hand, when we loosen something, we are already being held hostage by the enemy. It could be an addiction, relationship discord, defeat, or other attacks that have a hold on us. To prevent the enemy’s attacks, you have to use the keys of the Kingdom that belong to Jesus. You have to do it in accordance with the Church or it will not work.
In Matthew 18:19 it says, “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.” So when it comes to enacting heaven’s legislation, it’s important to have witnesses. And this is the Church’s role.
Hebrews 10:25 reminds us not to forsake the assembling of ourselves together. The Church is more than just a place for preaching, teaching, singing, and fellowship. All these reasons are essential, but we also gather to exercise spiritual authority in the spiritual realms. We cannot exercise this spiritual authority if there is disunity in us, the witnesses. When we pray, we must be in agreement. We must be on the same page. Jesus makes it clear that when two or more of us agree, it shall be done for us.
Jesus at the Center
To know how to use the keys, we must come to Jesus in prayer. We must be in agreement with Jesus and our witnesses, then we must be linked to the legal entity, which is the local Church. Jesus commands us to do all of this in His Name. If we don’t do this, we will never be authorized to bind and loose.
In Matthew 28:18, Jesus says that all authority in heaven and earth belong to Him. The Bible backs it up by saying that there’s one mediator between God and man (1 Timothy 2:5). The mediator in this passage is Christ Jesus and He will give us the authority based on His keys connected with the local Church and done by the power of agreement of witnesses, in His Name. Then He adds another condition–He tells us that He must be in the midst of us (Matthew 18:20).
How do we know that He is in the midst of us? Many Christians pray in Jesus’ Name but leave Him in the periphery. Jesus must be the centerpiece of the decision. He must be the centerpiece of the consideration. You cannot throw Him in or tag Him on. So many Christians pray what they want, and then, they try to add in the name of Jesus, and Jesus is nowhere in their midst.
Sometimes, it’s not that we’re not trying or doing our best here in this battle we call life. In spiritual warfare, the problem is that something has to be solved up there to give us the victory down here. The power and authority for victory for this battle doesn’t rely on the ground where people are fighting. The victory should come from what’s happening in the invisible realm, determining whether we won or lost.
As we learn to use the key of binding and loosing, let us remember that while we are the ones enacting this, all our movement should be according to the Word of God. Only then will this key yield powerful results that will bring God’s will into fruition here on earth. We already have access to victory using this key, so we must always use this well.
