The following "Question" was asked by a member of the congregation at Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, California, and "Answered" by their pastor, John MacArthur Jr. It was transcribed by Anjela Paje of Spokane, WA, from the tape, GC 1301-T, titled "Bible Questions and Answers Part 22."  A copy of the tape can be obtained by writing, Word of Grace, P.O. Box 4000, Panorama City, CA 91412 or by dialing toll free 1-800-55-GRACE.  ©1982. All Rights Reserved.

Question

I feel this question needs to be asked in the sense of clarification to what you taught two weeks ago on binding and loosing. Whatever is bound in Heaven and loosing? I would like to, in the light of what the Charismatics have done, to have an example, and boundaries of what we can do? Maybe, some examples from scriptures on how we can bind something, and how we can loose something, and bound in heaven and earth and not get way off on a tangent.

Answer

The answer to that question is very simple. The only basis on which we can bind, and that means to forbid, or loose, and that means to permit, is if what is being permitted or what is being forbidden is clearly referred to...where?...in the scriptures. We have no right to go beyond the pages of Holy Scripture and bind things, or that is permit things or forbid things.

The concept of binding and loosing was a rabbinical concept. Binding and loosing is an old, archaic thing. It would be permitting and forbidding in our terms. And, Jesus said to the Apostles, you remember “that whatever you forbid on earth, shall have been forbidden in Heaven, and whatever you permit on earth shall have been permitted in Heaven.” In other words, He is simply saying, when you act in agreement with the revelation of God, Heaven is acting on your behalf.

It becomes difficult, for example, in Matthew 18. Let us say you know somebody is in sin, and so you want to go to that person and you want to confront them, and you say, “You are bound in your sin. You must repent. You must get your life cleansed. This is wrong. And, then, you proceed to discipline the person. You take two or three witnesses. You tell it to the whole church. And, that is difficult to do because, you think, well, boy, I hope I am right about this because I am one that put this guy’s name out through the whole church, right? You want to be sure you are right. You want to be sure you have the permission to do this. Some people say, “Don’t do that. It is not loving to do that. Oh, my, don’t do that. Just accept them.” In fact, somebody said to me a couple of weeks ago, I guess only a week ago at the radio conference, “We have people in our church who have gotten divorced, they've remarried other people and the whole time they have stayed in the church, and the divorce was unbiblical, the remarriages were all unbiblical, but the church feels that the best thing to do is to say nothing because they don’t want to ruin the reputation of the people making things hard for them, etc., etc." And, so there is that natural tension. And, that is why the Bible says that when you pursue the matter of discipline, you should do so, knowing you have the right to permit certain things and the right to forbid certain things because if they have been revealed as such in the Bible, Heaven has already done it, anyway, and you are only acting in accord with heaven. So, that the limit on that is the limit of the authority of the Word of God.

Now, the Charismatic people, many of them, have gone to the point where they talk a lot about binding Satan. Now, that is not in the Bible at all. That is just totally foreign to scripture. There is no such thing as binding Satan in the Bible. You can't frankly, permit Satan to do anything or forbid him to do anything. He is a free individual within his own boundaries to do whatever he chooses to do within the confines of God’s limitations. The only freedom you have is to respond or not respond. But, you can't control Satan. You can't say, “Satan, you can't come here, you can't go there, you can't do this.” You are not God. You do not control Satan. But, you do control your responses to him by the power of the Holy Spirit. So binding and loosing has really been kind of pushed beyond its biblical parameters.

Added to Bible Bulletin Board's "MacArthur’s Questions and Answers" by:

Tony Capoccia
Bible Bulletin Board
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