I recently read a great article by a professor I had in college, Dr. Wave E. Nunnally, concerning the misuse of the practice of ‘binding and loosing’ in the modern church. Here’s a short excerpt:
“…the context of Matthew 16:19 and 18:18 has nothing to do with exorcism. In chapter 16, Jesus was talking about building the church (verse 18). The keys He gave were for unlocking the kingdom of heaven (verse 19), not for the locking (or binding) of the dominion of darkness.
In Matthew 18, binding and loosing does not take place in a context of exorcism, but in administering church discipline. The leaders of the church have the responsibility to determine who is allowed to remain within the new covenant community and under what conditions. If this is the case in Matthew 18 and the language (“binding and loosing”) is identical to the language of Matthew 16, the contexts of these two passages are likely related.”
You can read the rest of the article here.
Nick Poole 
I’d say that this topic is one that many Christians really don’t have a good grasp on. Lester Sumrall wrote briefly about this in one of his books but didn’t expound on it much. I’ve been looking for some clarification so thanks for doing some research!
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No problem Shannon! He touched on this topic briefly in a class I had with him and as good as the article is, he’s even better in person! Anyways, glad I could help!!
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Thanks for the posting this article. It really is superb. I have recently, on my blog, outlined my own brief thoughts on this scripture which are along similar lines as this article but with nowhere near the same scholarly detail.
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