The Most Misunderstood Sayings of Jesus
Part 3
Forgive Others or God Won’t Forgive You

“For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.”—Matt 6:14-15

Some pastors and Bible teachers use Matthew 6:15 to say “you’d better forgive that person, or else God will retract his forgiveness of you and you will be lost.”

But does this verse really mean if we accept Christ as our Savior, then refuse to forgive someone, we lose our salvation?

This is against the salvation Scripture teaches. Salvation is not based anything we have done. We did not earn it so we cannot do anything to un-earn it. Like Jesus says in John 10:28-29, no one can snatch his sheep out of his hands. That includes ourselves. We cannot snatch ourselves out of Christ’s hand.
A righteous life begins by trusting Christ as your Savior since you cannot achieve righteousness from your own good works. So forgiveness cannot be earned, even by forgiving others.

The Bible Knowledge Commentary says that God’s forgiveness is not based on one’s forgiveness of others. It is something freely given by God’s grace.

We are saved when we trust or believe in Jesus Christ’s death and resurrection. Therefore, the condition of forgiveness in Matthew 6:15 is more a matter of fellowship with God, not justification.
If we refuse to forgive another we are breaking fellowship with God. This is true of any unconfessed sin.
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Endure to the end to be saved

Another message Jesus brought has caused the same kind of consternation about possible losing your salvation. That is, “Those that endure to the end will be saved.” Let’s read the context:

Matt. 24:4-13 “Jesus told them, “Don’t let anyone mislead you, 5 for many will come in my name, claiming, ‘I am the Messiah.’ They will deceive many. 6 And you will hear of wars and threats of wars, but don’t panic. Yes, these things must take place, but the end won’t follow immediately. 7 Nation will go to war against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in many parts of the world. 8 But all this is only the first of the birth pains, with more to come.”
9 “Then you will be arrested, persecuted, and killed. You will be hated all over the world because you are my followers. 10 And many will turn away from me and betray and hate each other. 11 And many false prophets will appear and will deceive many people.
12 Sin will be rampant everywhere, and the love of many will grow cold. 13 But the one who endures to the end will be saved.”—Matt 24:13
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So is this saying that, if you somehow don’t pass the endurance test, you will lose your salvation?
Ok, let’s look at the context of these passages. In response to His disciples questions about when the Temple would be torn down, Jesus launches into the longest prophecy of His ministry.

He warns of all kinds of troubles coming to the earth just prior to His return that would be topped off with intense persecution.

When that begins to happen, many who considered themselves His followers will reveal their true spiritual condition when they turn away from the faith. This had already happened during His ministry (John 6:66) and would escalate until the end.

Not only will there be some who turn away, but Jesus foretold that “the love of many will grow cold.” The implication is that those who “stand firm to the end” will be the minority (see Matthew 7:14).

Those who endure to the end are the opposite of those in the previous verse whose love grows cold.

Jesus’ statement that he who endures to the end will be saved cannot be taken to mean that our salvation is somehow dependent on our personal ability to remain saved. Rather, it is a promise of the keeping power of God for those that are truly His!

Those who have the grace to endure to the end are the ones who are genuinely saved by grace. The various trials that Jesus mentions will reveal our true colors. “Most will grow cold” and fall away from Christ, showing that they are professors only and not possessors of genuine salvation. (Matthew 24:12).

Those who endure and stand firm in the faith, despite incitements to do otherwise, are showing that they are genuine children of God “who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time” (1 Peter 1:5, ESV).

Binding and loosing

Many misunderstandings have swirled around the concept of binding and loosing. Let’s clear out some of the cobwebs and see what the phrase really means:

Matt. 16:13-20 “When Jesus came to the region of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?”
14 “Well,” they replied, “some say John the Baptist, some say Elijah, and others say Jeremiah or one of the other prophets.”
15 Then he asked them, “But who do you say I am?”
16 Simon Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”
17 Jesus replied, “You are blessed, Simon son of John, because my Father in heaven has revealed this to you. You did not learn this from any human being.
18 Now I say to you that you are Peter (Petros—which means rock or stone that you might throw), and upon this rock (Petra—a solid rock, like bedrock) I will build my church, and all the powers of hell will not conquer it.”

Notice, Jesus didn’t say “upon this Petros” meaning Peter himself, I will build my church. But on this Petra, the word for bedrock, I will build my church. The bedrock was the revelation Peter had been given—that Jesus was the Christ, the Son of the living God!
19 “And I will give you the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven. Whatever you bind (forbid) on earth will be bound (forbidden) in heaven, and whatever you loose (permit) on earth will be loosed (permitted) in heaven.”
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Now, these verses have nothing at all to do with binding and loosing in the way we’ve seen it taught and practiced so often.

It has nothing to do with binding demons or evil.

It has nothing to do with binding circumstances or the actions of people. Context is everything here.

First, Jesus talks about giving to Peter a set of keys—the keys to what? The keys to the kingdom of heaven. So the keys Peter was given are the keys that provide access to heaven—which would be the gospel!
And this is exactly what we see played out as Peter’s ministry unfolded following the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. It was Simon Peter that God used to unlock the door to heaven with three different key groups.
First, on the Day of Pentecost it was Peter who preached the first gospel message after the Spirit of God was poured out, and He preached it primarily to the tens of thousands of Jews that were gathered for the Pentecost celebration.

So Peter was the vessel God used to usher 3,000 primarily Jewish people into the kingdom of heaven by preaching the gospel!

Then later, in Acts 8, we see the Samaritans (a mix of Jew and Gentile) believing the gospel and receiving the Holy Spirit. Again, Peter was present for this event, laying hands on the Samaritans. Peter had “unlocked the door” for the Samaritans.

Then two chapters later, we read in Acts 10 how Peter was staying at the home of one Simon the tanner.

He goes onto the rooftop to pray before lunch and has a thrice repeated vision of unclean animals lowered down in a sheet.
A voice tells him to “kill and eat” whereupon Peter says he has never eaten anything unclean.
The voice then tells him, “What God has cleansed you must not call unclean.”—10:15

Right then a group of Gentile men knock on the door that have been sent by a man named Cornelius who has had a vision of Peter coming to his house to tell them “the way” to salvation.

Peter immediately connects the dots between his vision and what is now before him—Gentile men that Jews would have considered unclean.

Peter follows the men to Cornelius’s house, preaches the gospel, and before he can even finish his message, “the Holy Spirit fell upon all those who heard the word” and they were saved.

So Peter is used for a third time to unlock the door of salvation to the Gentile world!

These three times that the keys to the kingdom were used by Peter were not just isolated events, but opened the door to the kingdom for the major people groups of the world!
Now, what about the “binding and loosing” part?
To better understand this concept, we need to look at Matt. 18:15-20 where Jesus gives the guidelines for church discipline, using the same “binding and loosing” language we find in Matthew 16.

“If your brother or sister sins, go and point out their fault, just between the two of you. If they listen to you, you have won them over.”
16 “But if they will not listen, take one or two others along, so that ‘every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.’17 If they still refuse to listen, tell it to the church; and if they refuse to listen even to the church, treat them as you would a pagan or a tax collector. 18 “Truly I tell you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.”

The original Greek lets us in on something very important in understanding this. It says, “Whatever you bind on earth will already have been bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will already have been loosed in heaven.”

So with binding and loosing, all the church is doing is pronouncing what heaven has already decreed!

The Lord clarifies here that the binding and loosing had to do with the Apostles exercising authority to discipline erring believers and, if necessary, excommunicate disobedient church members.

Paul did this in 1 Corinthians with an incestuous man that wouldn’t repent.

1 Cor. 5:3-5 “I cannot be there with you in person, but I am with you in spirit. And I have already judged the man who did this. I judged him the same as I would if I were really there. 4 Come together in the name of our Lord Jesus. I will be with you in spirit, and you will have the power of our Lord Jesus with you. 5 Then turn this man over to Satan. His sinful self has to be destroyed so that his spirit will be saved on the day when the Lord comes again.”

So in harmony with what heaven had already decided, Paul, in conjunction with the entire Corinthian church,, removed this man from the church.
Another example is when Judaizers were going to the churches insisting that they combine OT law with NT grace in order to be saved. So a counsel was called in Jerusalem where many of the Apostles were gathered. They discussed what their official response would be to all the churches and this is what they decided:

Acts 15:28-29 “For it seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to lay no greater burden on you than these few requirements: 29 You must abstain from eating food offered to idols, from consuming blood or the meat of strangled animals, and from sexual immorality. If you do this, you will do well. Farewell.”

They bound the false teaching being spread, and loosed God’s requirements for the church in total keeping with what the Holy Spirit amen’d!

Let’s pray!