The following is an excerpt from chapter 1 of Dr. Barry York’s newly released book Hitting the Marks (2018, Crown & Covenant Publications).

The Identification Placed upon the Church

The Lord not only renamed Simon Bar-Jonah “Peter” in Matthew 16:13-23, He also gave him something. What Jesus gave him helps distinguish the true church from the false one. The Lord told Peter he will be given “the keys to the kingdom” (v. 19). This raises two questions: What are these keys? And why did Jesus give them to Peter?

First, what are the keys? Jesus did not hand Peter a physical set of keys to the First Community Church of Jerusalem so he could be the custodian of the building. No, Jesus’s kingdom is a spiritual one, and so are these keys. The meaning of the keys of the kingdom is clear in what Jesus told Peter he would be able to do with them: “I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; and whatever you bind on earth shall have been bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall have been loosed in heaven” (NASB).

These keys possess an incredible power. They have the power to bind or close here on earth what the Lord has already decided in heaven should be bound or closed. They also have the power to grant entrance (or open a door) on earth, as it has been already granted by heaven. What door do these keys have the power to lock or unlock? The answer comes from the rest of Scripture.

The imagery used here is from the Old Testament. In the temple, priests were stationed at the gates of the courtyard. Day and night they guarded the entrances from those who attempted to steal the temple treasures or enter the temple unclean. They had the keys to open the door for true worshipers to enjoy freedom within the court of the temple and to close its doors to those unsuited to enter.¹ Now to the church, which is the New Testament temple (1 Cor. 2:12; 1 Peter 2:4–5), Christ grants spiritual keys, so that those possessing them can either allow those clean from their sins to enter the door of the kingdom or to close the door to those who remain impenitent. In other words, God has given the church power to recognize proper professions of faith in Christ (through visible fruits of holiness), grant visible privileges of membership in Christ’s body, or deny them to those whose faith and lifestyle do not warrant them.

With such a powerful endowment, the church must remember one more thing about these keys. Jesus entrusts them as a stewardship. He alone, by virtue of His shed blood, purchased the church and is its rightful owner (Acts 20:28; 1 Cor. 6:13; Rev. 5:9). That is why He told the churches of Asia, “I am the first and the last, and the living one; I died, and behold I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of Death and of Hades” (Rev. 1:17–18). Only Jesus, as the head of the church, ultimately has the power to grant repentance and forgive sins (Mark 2:3–7; Acts 5:31) or to withhold His mercy from those who refuse to believe (John 3:36; Rev. 3:7). As His body, the church may only do so representatively.

Now we must ask, why do the keys appear to have been given only to Peter? The language in the original Greek does indicate that what Jesus says here is personally directed to Peter. We must acknowledge that Jesus does not say here that the church has been given the keys, but rather Peter. The “you” in “I will give you the keys,” is singular, meaning that Jesus was talking to Peter. The Roman Catholic Church uses this passage to support their teaching that Peter was the first pope; they believe that Christ gave Peter supreme authority over the church and that he passed it down to his successors. However, this interpretation does not stand up under closer examination.

When Jesus asked, “But who do you say that I am?” (Matt. 16:15), He addressed this question to all of the disciples—the “you” here is plural. Peter answered as a spokesman for them. This was natural, for in the lists of apostles, Peter’s name always appears first as a leader among them.² Yet he was a leader among equals, for the same authority to bind and loose, which is associated with the keys, was clearly given to all of the apostles. In Matthew 18:18, Jesus says to the disciples, “Truly I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall have been bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall have been loosed in heaven” (NASB). The “you” used here several times is plural in the original language. Jesus gave Peter, along with the other apostles, the authority to lay down the conditions for entrance into the kingdom of heaven.³

After His resurrection, Jesus met the eleven apostles behind a locked door and, after pronouncing peace on them, He “breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you withhold forgiveness from any, it is withheld’” (John 20:22–23). God gave the Spirit to the apostles so that they could write down these conditions, which are what we have in the New Testament Scriptures (John 14:26; 16:13–15). The risen Lord entrusted the keys to the apostles by delegating His power to them to delineate the gospel and shepherd those who respond to it. R.B. Kuiper says, “The writings of the apostles shed fuller light than was previously given on the precise nature of repentance unto salvation, the precise meaning of faith in Christ, and the precise requirement for a life into his glory.”⁴ The church of each generation, as “the pillar and buttress of the truth” (1 Tim. 3:15), has then been entrusted with these keys.

To explain the nature of these keys, the Westminster Confession of Faith says, “To the officers [of the church], the keys of the kingdom of heaven are committed…they have the power…to shut that kingdom against the impenitent [unrepentant], both by the Word and censures [official church actions], and to open into penitent sinners, by the ministry of the Gospel, and by absolution [removal] from censures, as occasion shall require” (section 30.2). The church has been given the keys (Christ’s Word and authority) to render judgments regarding the spiritual state of people. The church is to be the place where true followers of Jesus—set free from their sins by faith in His blood and walking in the holiness that He alone can give—gather together. Those who remain bound to their sins should not be granted the privileges of the church. These can be discerned by a visible lack of fruit in their lives. That is the church’s job—its unique identity. So how is the church to use these keys?

The Salvation Declared by the Church

The church declares salvation to this world, offering a visible manifestation of Christ’s kingdom by using the keys. We can think of the church’s responsibility with the keys in these three ways:

The church must grant entrance to those who are seriously knocking. As the church declares the gospel, it must grant access to the privileges of the church to those who respond in repentance and faith. When God opened Lydia’s heart to the gospel, the church opened to her as she was baptized (Acts 16:14–15). The church is not called to baptize, offer communion to, or shepherd people who do not profess Christ. Yet, just as Christ opens the door to those who knock (Matt. 7:7), so the church is to welcome those asking, seeking, and knocking for Him. The glorified church is pictured with her gates opened wide in all directions to those who walk by the light of the gospel, even as those who refuse the gospel are barred entry (Rev. 21:10–27).

The church must rattle the keys at those seriously misbehaving. When the church has a member who is involved in sin, the world often seeks to put the church in a false dilemma. Tolerate the misbehavior, and the world accuses the church of hypocrisy. Deal with the sin, and the world accuses the church of intolerance. Obedience to Jesus is more important than the world’s approval, and so the church must practice loving discipline in its midst.

If the Great Commission of the church is to make disciples (Matt. 28:18–20), then she must enact discipline in making them. The church is a place of holiness, where people practice the disciplines of putting off sin, learning of God from the Scriptures, exercising devotion through prayer and worship, and loving and serving one another (1 Cor. 3:16; 1 Peter 2:9). When a fellow believer departs from the faith, love compels others to get involved in restoration. The Lord clearly outlined for us the process we are to pursue, as we will see later in this book.

The church must tell those who are seriously looking for the keys where to find them. One of life’s frustrations is losing your keys. Suddenly, you are powerless to enter your own home or start your car. If you came across a set of keys that were obviously lost, your responsibility would be to return them to their rightful owner.

As you grow in awareness about the keys of the kingdom that Christ has given the church, one of the responsibilities you have is not only to be salt and light to the world, but also to the church. A church that does not use the keys has lost them. R.C. Sproul states that a “widespread peril to the church today is the loss of any sense of discipline. When the church fails to discipline its members for gross and heinous sins, particularly sins of a public nature, that community [of faith] becomes infected with the immor­ality of the secular culture.”⁵ If you know where the lost keys are, you have a duty to point out to others, even ministers, where they can be found.

Why? Because, as we have established, a church missing the keys, the notae ecclesiae, is also missing Christ.

Barry York | Dr. York is president of the RP Seminary and is a contributing editor to GentleReformation.com.