The authority belongs not only to Peter (v. 19) but to all who share his proclamation of Jesus' identity (18:18). The realm of heaven here contrasts strikingly with the powers of Hades, or "Sheol," the realm of the dead thought to lie beneath the earth (16:18; compare Heb 2:14; Rev 1:18). Keys opened locked doors or gates, but the carrying of keys especially symbolized the authority of the person who bore them. One who carried keys to a royal palace was the majordomo, as in Isaiah 22:22 and Revelation 3:7. Supervisors held the keys to the temple courts among Jesus' contemporaries (as in ARN 7, 21B), and in Jewish lore prominent angels carried certain keys (for example, 3 Baruch 1:2; compare b. Ta`anit 2a).

Whether Peter thus acts as "prime minister" for the kingdom (see Brown, Donfried and Reumann 1973:96-97) or perhaps as a "chief rabbi" making halakhic rulings based on Jesus' teachings (Meier in Brown and Meier 1983:67), he clearly acts with enough delegated authority (compare Acts 10:44; Gal 2:7). Whereas Israel's religious elite was shutting people out of the kingdom (23:13; compare Lk 11:52), those who confessed Jesus' identity along with Peter were authorized to usher people into God's kingdom.

Scholars have proposed many interpretations of "binding and loosing," but in Jewish texts these terms ('asar and hittir or sera') could refer to authority to interpret the law, hence to evaluate individuals' fidelity to the law as in 18:18 (see comment there). In this context, however, the nuance may be somewhat different from 18:18: Peter and those who share his role (others share it in 18:18) evaluate not those who are in the community, but those who would enter it (10:14-15, 40; this is a role assigned to overseers in the Qumran community-compare 1QS 5.20-21; 6:13-14). In both functions-evaluating entrants and evaluating those already within the church-God's people must evaluate on the authority of the heavenly court. The verb tenses allow (and according to some scholars even suggest) that they merely ratify the heavenly decree (see comment on 18:18; compare Mantey 1973 and 1981; Keener 1987).

Peter must thus accept into the church only those who share his confession of Jesus' true identity (16:16). Of course the church should emulate Jesus' practice of welcoming the unconverted (9:10), but this is not the same as acting as if all comers were true disciples of Christ regardless of their commitment. Today some churches both admit into membership the unconverted and fail to take the message of Jesus' identity to the unconverted outside their walls. The danger of building a church on those not committed to Christ's agendas is that in time the church will reflect more of the world's values than Christ's; this was one way some originally abolitionist churches compromised with the slave trade (Usry and Keener 1996:102-5).