THE KEYS OF THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN (PART 1)
“But what about you?” he asked. “Who do you say I am?”
Simon Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”
Jesus replied, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by flesh and blood, but by my Father in heaven. And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” Then he ordered his disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Messiah.
(Matthew 16:15-20)
In the above passage, Jesus tells Peter that He will build the church and that the gates of Hades (Hell) will not overcome it. Furthermore, Jesus said that He gave the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven to the Church. As a consequence, the Church has the capacity to bind things and to loosen things.
The story of the transfer of power started with the fact that Peter acknowledged Jesus as the Son of the Living God. God is not dead and the Church needs to know and acknowledge that Our God is alive, even when negative circumstances (e.g: wars, rumours of wars, famine, diseases, political and economic turmoils,ect…) seem to be louder. Furthermore, we ought to know that Jesus is the Son of the Living God.
It ‘s important that we acknowledge those two points since it will differentiate us from the world. The world does not know God nor Jesus. Therefore, the world does not have the keys that were given to Peter. By acknowledging the existence of the Living God, the Sonship and Lordship of Jesus, a person becomes an insider of the Kingdom. Notice that in the above passage, Peter could only acknowledge the identity of Jesus through a revelation and Jesus later forbade his disciples from sharing information regarding His identity to outsiders. This means that the revelation granted to Peter is for insiders of the Kingdom. Consequently, the keys were handed to Peter who was an insider.
The keys of the Kingdom of Heaven are only handed to the insiders of the Kingdom or the people who are part of Jesus’close circle.
Notice as well that the Bible does not describe them as the ‘keys to the Kingdom of Heaven’ as it has been wrongly preached by many in the past. Jesus said: ‘ I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven.’ Those keys originate from Heaven and they assist in opening and closing doors.
Notice as well that Jesus did not give three keys like many theologians of the past have wrongly taught. For a long time, while I was growing up in the Catholic Church, I was often exposed to drawings describing the number of keys given to Peter as only three keys. Jesus did not say the number keys given and therefore we should not subconsciously fixate our mind on three keys. There are many keys.
The original purpose of a key is to open a door(or a lock) and close a door(or a lock). Since Jesus gave us (us the insiders of the Kingdom of Heaven) keys, it means that they must be used on doors. The existence of keys also implies and confirms the existence of doors on Earth.
In Genesis 4:1-7, the Bible recounts an incident that occurred between the two first brothers of history: Cain and Abel. In the incident, Cain is about to murder his brother out of jealousy and just he commits the murder, God said to him:
‘ If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must rule over it.”
(Genesis 4:7)
Notice that the sin of murder entered through a door. Notice as well, that God said to Cain: ‘...crouching at your door’. It was Cain’s door and nobody else’s door.
The keys that Jesus gave to the Church are designed to open and close the multiple doors and locks on Earth.
As much as it is more popular to discuss the opening of doors, we also have to remember that there are some doors that need to remain closed.
The story of Cain in Genesis 4:7 shows that everything that comes on Earth, enters through a door. As Christians, the responsibility was bestowed on us to block certain things from entering and to open the doors for certain things to enter. We don’t have to beg good things to come and bad things to go away, we just have to command the binding and the loosening.
In the next post, I will discuss some of the keys and how to use them.