"Binding and Loosing"
In many areas the church is trying to use biblical teaching about binding and loosing as an instrument to deal with something it was not designed to deal with.
Download or email this sermon Apostolic Authority is Always about Doctrine
It is always used for correcting wrong doctrine. Apostolic authority was always plural and it was always about doctrine.
And if your brother sins, go and reprove him in private; if he listens to you, you have won your brother. But if he does not listen to you, take one or two more with you, so that by the mouth of two or three witnesses every fact may be confirmed. And if he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax-gatherer.
Truly I say unto you, whatever you shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatever you shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. Again I say to you, that if two of you agree on earth about anything that they may ask, it shall be done for them by My Father who is in heaven.
For where two or three have gathered together in My name, there I am in their midst (Matthew 18:15-20).
Look at the context. This is about going to your brother about sin, not doctrine. If someone refuses to repent of his or her sin, you can bind and loose. What does that mean, and how did the apostles apply it? Not the way people are applying it today; that is not how the apostles applied it. We read the teachings of Jesus and the rest of the Bible through the prism of the teachings of the apostles.
Think of the Epistles as inspired commentary, God's commentary. The Epistles are the prisms of the apostles. They tell you in a clear and most practical way what the rest of the Bible means, what the teaching of Jesus means.
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Scripture taken from the New American Standard Bible Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation.