MATHEW 18:18 EXPLAINED: WHAT YOU BIND ON EARTH (PART 2)

In the first episode, I shared my experience of how a wrong application of this verse by my former religion hurt me and my son. And am sure many still suffer the same due to these abused verses of the Holy Book.

Many use scripture to take other people’s money, spouses and property. Others use the Bible to turn themselves into absolute authorities that actually determine the fate of others and unfortunately as my Pastor Friend and young brother Bonifresh Muhollo said: “The Bible is a very generous book, it has a verse for anything” all the false teachers quote the Bible regardless of whether they really understand what it says or not.

I always tell people that COMMUNICATION is the right choice of words and a proper arrangement of those words, but what you MEAN by what you are communicating can only be understood by the CONTEXT. Context is not everything, but it is the main entrance to meaning and understanding. Context is the potter’s house that moulds and shapes meaning in all communication. Without context, you can communicate but continue in meaninglessness or at best contradict existing perceptions and contexts.

In Biblical exegesis, context is two things:

1. The passage within which the text under scrutiny is situated and,
2. The background (culture, tradition, event etc.) behind the text.

For now, I will address the literary context of Mathew 18:18 and in the next episode, I will look at the verse independently to help both the willing uncouth reader and the insidious preacher.

Mathew 18:18 can only be understood within its literary Matthean Context (Mathew 18:1-20). Vss.1-4 is a question and its answer. Vss. 5-14 deals with the little ones who believe in Jesus Christ and how to deal with tempting authoritative body characters. Vvs. 15-17; 19-20 Conflict Resolution and Church redefined.

Since chapter 15 of Mathew, Jesus has been dealing with the great authority of the Pharisees, Scribes and other Jerusalem authorities and when we get to chapter 18:1, the disciples ask him a question about Greatness. This was a Protest Question, the disciples wanted to know whether really the institution in Jerusalem with its authority mattered (as it claimed) in the kingdom of God or not.

Jesus gave a revolutionary answer by exposing the Jerusalem authorities when he said that the greatest in the kingdom of God is as humble as a child. While in the sermon on the Mount (Mathew 5:29-30), Jesus had hyperbolically used the cutting of the hand and plucking out the eye that tempts, he used the same in Matthew 18:5-14 allegorically and as an exemplum of the Jerusalem Christ antagonistic-authorities that defined what one’s hand religiously did, displayed what one’s spiritual eye saw and determined where one’s religious walk headed.

While in Mathew 5:29-30 Jesus was talking about the individual and himself, in Mathew 18:5-14 Jesus is talking about the individual and the religious authorities.

The little ones who believe in ME (Jesus); that Jesus talks about in Mathew 18:6 are not little by age but instead little in number and authority compared to the institution in Jerusalem. Vss. 15-17; 19-20 when three to four individuals fail to resolve a conflict, they must bring the case to the assembly, not to the committee (Vss. 15-17).

However, that assembly if it is under the authority of Jesus Christ, it is not in Jerusalem but wherever 2 or 3 are gathered in the name (authority) of Jesus (Vss. 19-18), there he is with them.

For Jesus to insist that he is there with only two people, is to subject the Shekinah (glorious presence of the Almighty Yahweh) to as few people as two. The authority of the Pharisees had dictated that the least number of people that can attract the Shekinah could only be the Messianic Minyan. This was a quorum of ten established religiously righteous men who had perfected the Halakhah (613 commandments).

What Jesus has just done is to disqualify not only the known authoritative Jewish council of ten individuals known as the Minyan in rabbinical writings but also dismissed the authority of the institution of the Jerusalem Temple and its structures.

Here we have the infallibility of your local and international church board dismantled and the infallibility of the Pope and your religious leader’s authority exposed.

While Judaism in the days of Jesus often referenced Psalms 82:1 that says: God has taken his place in the divine council, Jesus reviewed the divine council and said two sinners who believe in me fellowship for my business am there with them.

So if your church has that council that judges and puts others on church discipline based on religious righteousness, be aware of these religious dogs.

That is the literary context of verse 18, next, I will now address the text itself.

God bless you and: THINK about what I am saying. The LORD will help you UNDERSTAND all these things. (2Tim 2:7 NLT)

Pr WHITE
The Gospel Hawker
iTiS Well of Worship Ministries (John 4:24)