God authorizes the Christian judicial assembly that follows these procedures to act on the authority of heaven. The unrepentant person has already left God's way and cannot be restored without repentance. The verb tenses allow (though do not demand) the meaning the context suggests: the earthly action follows the heavenly decree (compare Mantey 1973). By removing an unrepentant sinner from the Christian community, believers merely ratify the heavenly court's decree (see Keener 1991a:141-43; in Jewish courts, compare t. Rossashana 1:18), removing branches already dead on the vine (compare Jn 15:2, 6).

Bind and loose refer to the judicial authority of gathered Christians to decide cases on the basis of God's law. Most scholars thus recognize that this passage applies to church discipline (Cullmann 1953:204-5; R. Fuller 1971:141). The more popular use of "binding" today in many circles (exercising authority over the devil) resembles instead an ancient practice in the magical papyri-also called "binding" (see note on 12:29)-of manipulating demons to carry out a magician's will. (The Bible does support Christians' authority to cast out real demons-compare comment on 17:17-but the only "devils" in this passage are fully human ones, and they are being cast out of the church!)