"The Keys of the Kingdom"
By Buell H. Kazee
Morehead, KentuckyI do not desire nor hope to establish myself as a theologian. Moreover, the effort would be hopelessness. But I do here venture upon theological grounds, in order to utter my opinion on interpretation of the much-disputed passage in Matthew 16:19.
Rome is becoming more and more aggressive now and Baptists need to do all they can to inform their people. The "Keys of the Kingdom" is a phrase to which Rome has laid exclusive claim, and anyone with an open Bible and spiritual understanding must admit she has used it to create over her people the dominant fear by which alone she has been able to exist.
Without much dwelling upon the time-worn discussion of "this rock," I wish to proceed to the idea of "binding and losing."
As I see it, Peter is the first of the disciples to catch from the Father the divine understanding that Jesus was God in the flesh - the miracle of the Father which was to become the perpetual base rock of the church. Whether the confession of Christ or Peter was meant by the Lord when He used the word "petra" (I feel sure it was not the last), I would sum it all up in this: The Lord was going to build His church upon Christ as Peter saw Him through the Father's revelation. That differs from the ordinary interpretations.
I IN OTHER words, the belief that God could dwell in mortal flesh was the philosophy of the church and the fact of God dwelling in our flesh was the experience that was to undergird all true members of the church. From the Father Peter saw this miracle-truth, and it can be known from no other than the Father, that is, in no other way than by divine revelation. Thus what Jesus was saying to Nicodemus was the same thing: "Ye must be born again."
Now, this idea and experience was to be, and was, completed when the Holy Spirit came to dwell in our flesh. To people who have seen Jesus as God in the flesh, and have believed on Him as God in the flesh, God gives the experience of God in the flesh. This qualifies them for church membership. They are then ready to proceed to the confession of the death of the old man, and the incoming of the new Man as it is set forth in baptism.
It is those people - qualified as was Peter at Caesarea Philippi to understand that deity in humanity was to be the experience of the saved that Jesus turns over the "keys of the kingdom." They alone know what to do with the keys.
And what are the keys? Here I must tell Rome that the keys are not arbitrary authority to save or damn. I cannot see how they can be other than the Word of God and the Holy Spirit.
If I am not charged with hair-splitting here I would like to say that the Holy Spirit does not save. Jesus saves, and gives to those whom He saves the Holy Spirit to dwell in them and gain the victory over sin for them. The Spirit effectuates holiness in them, and enables them to be witnesses for Christ. "Christ liveth in me" - God in the flesh - is the blessing that comes to all whom Jesus saves. But Jesus saves by the work of the Cross, not by the gift of the Spirit.
If the reader thinks this hair-splitting, I must suggest that we had far better be differentiating the things that God makes to differ than worldly things. I have said this to show that when Jesus said He would "give" the keys of the kingdom, He was making a gift (not saving), and that this gift was made to one who had caught from the Father the divine idea of God indwelling the flesh.
If Peter used the "keys" on the day of Pentecost, as some say, make of it what you will. He did nothing more nor less than others did. He preached the Word of God under the guidance and power of the Spirit of God. Philip did the same thing, so did Paul, and so have the thousands who have followed in their footsteps. Wherever the Gospel has been preached under the guidance and power of the Spirit the matter of binding and loosing has been inevitable.
II MEN are born into the Kingdom of God through the Word preached under the direction and power of the Spirit, and other men are bound by the same Word and Spirit. No man can hear the Gospel preached thus and remain the same as he was before he heard it. The Gospel is a witness against rejecting men just as it brings salvation to a surrendered heart.
Now, the Word of God is the authority of God, so far as divine utterance is concerned. God hath spoken in these last days "through His Son," not by visions, angels, signs, or popes. He has spoken through Jesus and the whole New Testament is the revelation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
That Word tells an authoritative story of God's love for sinners, revealed through the sufferings of Jesus Christ; it gives an authoritative invitation to God's mercy and forgiveness on the basis of the work of Jesus Christ; it makes an authoritative promise of the presence and indwelling of the Holy Spirit on the basis of what Jesus has done; and it makes bare the authoritative promise of God that all who trust Him shall without the loss of one, come at last to Him to be with Him forever. It also bares the authoritative antithesis to each one of these great facts to all who reject, God's mercy. It looses and it binds with complete authority and Jesus has said that in the judgment, that Word would be the unalterable authority of Judgment (John 12:46-48).
Contrary to Rome's opinion that this power is exclusively hers, God bestows it wherever the Spirit of God dwells in any human heart. Without the Spirit making use of the Word, that Word is not effective, no matter what authority of earth claims to be the divinely appointed administrator of its claims here.
The Bible is just another book to the hearer, if the Spirit be not in him who teaches it. The two are inseparable in every case of salvation recorded in the New Testament, as well as in the experiences of all men this side of Pentecost. The Spirit is the authoritative interpreter of the authoritative Word. The Spirit opens the meaning of the Word through the experiential knowledge of him in whom the Spirit dwells and thus the hearer is loosed or bound according as he receives or rejects what he then understands God has done for him.
III I WOULD not be dogmatic, but I do not believe in a general "free moral agency." I believe that man is naturally in bondage to sin, blinded by it, and has within no incentive to free himself at least none which he can intelligently interpret. He is not free.
But when the Spirit of God, through the witness of a Spirit-filled man, presents the Word of God in the lost one, that one is both enlightened and enabled to take his position as a "free moral agent" and decide for himself. But without this enlightened and enabled "conviction," he is neither aware of his lostness nor able to arise out of it. Thus, I believe free moral agency is limited to those in whose cases the "keys" have been applied. If he accepts God's mercy, he walks out of the prison; if he rejects it, the door closes upon him. I would not say that postponing is always rejecting.
If what I have said is true, it ought to shock us into coming face to face with the awful responsibility which is ours. If what I have said is right, then God has wrapped up the salvation of those who are to be saved in us who have received His Spirit and Word. I find no Scriptural authority to believe that anyone will be saved who does not hear the Gospel from Spirit-filled witnesses.
This statement is so stunning that I am reluctant to face it! And yet, it must be true. They are in prison. There is nothing but the Gospel and the Spirit of God to open the doors. If we preach that Gospel out of Spirit-filled hearts, some will come out of prison. Others will sit down behind the bars forever. But let us hasten, brethren, with our message of life to "whosoever will."
It takes God the Spirit dwelling in a man, to preach the Word. Preacher, layman, let that man be you.
=========================== [From the WESTERN RECORDER, April 25, 1940, p. 12; via microfilm copy at the SBTS Archives; provided by Adam Winters, Archivist. Scanned and formatted by Jim Duvall.]
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