Here we see “binding and loosing” passing from the Scriptural sense of declaring what acts are forbidden and committed (Matt. xvi. 19 and xxiii. 4.  See note of Rev. A. Carr in Cambridge Bible for Schools) into the later ecclesiastical sense of imposing and remitting penalties for sin.  The first regards rather moral obligation, and, as is implied in the force of the tenses alike in the passages of St. Matthew cited and in St. John xx. 23, the recognition and announcement of the divine judgment already passed on sins and sinners; the later regards the imposition of disciplinary penalties.