The most obvious response to this question is, “The keys to what?”
Immediately after Peter stated that he believed Jesus was “the Christ [=Messiah], the Son of the living God,” Jesus promised him the “keys to the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 16:16, 19). The textual context is clear that it is upon the faith confession of Peter, the foundational Rock of 1 Corinthians 3:10-11, that Jesus would build His Church (Matthew 16:18).
The night before His crucifixion, in the Upper Room, Jesus told the apostles, and by extension everyone who believes through their message (see John 17:20), that He was sending them into the world in the same way that the Father had sent Him (v. 18). The entire New Testament reveals Jesus’ purpose in coming – the redemption of mankind from sin and death (1 Timothy 1:15). Thus, calling for a faith confession in Jesus is the key to “binding” and “loosing,” both in heaven and on earth. This is what was extended to Peter.
It was not limited to Peter, however. In Matthew 18:18, while instructing
all His disciples, the singular “you” addressed to Peter in John 16:19, is rather a plural “you” to all of them:
Truly I say to you [all], whatever you shall bind on earth shall have been bound in heaven; and whatever you loose on earth shall have been loosed in heaven.
Every individual – and every church – teaching and preaching that “there is salvation in no one else; for there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men, by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12), has the keys to the kingdom of heaven. As a result of their proclamation, millions of people over the centuries since Jesus have been set free (loosed) from sin and death, and will populate heaven forever!
