The keys of the kingdom of heaven open blessings, benefits and opportunities. Who would not like to be given the keys to a new Lexus or Cadillac? Notice that every car key is formed with a series of notches. The purpose of those notches is that when the key is inserted into the lock, it turns tumblers which match a similar code. A key that doesn’t have the right notches that correspond to the tumblers won’t open the lock. That is why a key will generally open only one door.
Many things in God's mind are mysteries to us, locked up until opened by the right key. If we were given keys of the Kingdom of Heaven, like Peter or King David, to lock up or set loose like a dictating power, what would we do with it? Hopefully we would be filled with more understanding of the Kingdom of Heaven than any past generation. We can bring the Kingdom of Heaven right into our NOW, into our present inner reality because His Word has entered and found an abiding place within our trust of New Testament truth.
Keys of the Kingdom work to release us from tormenting hells, fears, and frustrations caused by disease and weakness of the flesh. If you own property, you receive the key to that property. You are given the ability to enter, occupy, and use to the fullest extent all those wonderful facilities. Owners of property are given keys that allow access. Keys grant the right of easy entrance. Heavenly keys open up heavenly realms in our inner spiritual man to see God and form a growth into knowing Him. Jesus said to Peter:
“Now I, also, am saying to you that you are Peter, and on this rock will I be building My ecclesia, and the gates of the unseen shall not be prevailing against it. I will be giving you the keys of the kingdom of the heavens, and whatsoever you should be binding on the earth shall be those things having been bound in the heavens, and whatsoever you should be loosing on the earth shall be those having been loosed in the heavens." Matthew 16:18-19 concordant
Peter was given keys to kingdom strength, spiritual strength to enter the KINGDOM of heaven where gates to hell cannot prevail. God’s love in Jesus has conquered death in man, quieted hell, and emptied the grave. Can we today possess any of the spiritual strength that opens new bright and exalted domains within our inner being? Can we be one with Jesus in loving God?
If we don’t have the right keys, how are we ever going to enter that realm? When will we? With entrance and use of the correct keys, the promises of God are unlocked. Every bit of death is considered an enemy when compared with the glories of the King of Heaven! Jesus reproved the Jewish leaders, saying,
“Woe unto you, lawyers, for ye have taken away the key of knowledge…” Luke 11:52
This they had done by killing the prophets and institutionalizing their teachings, for to the prophets had been revealed the mysteries of God. As it is written:
“Surely Yahweh will do nothing, but He reveals His secrets to His servants the prophets.” Amos 3:7
“To the acknowledgment of the mystery of God, and of the Father, and of Christ; in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.” Colossians 2:1-3
God has mysteries of hidden treasures that are now being made known by the Holy Spirit. By the power of divine inspiration, the understanding of a new day is being revealed. Knowledge of spiritual things opens the door to divine perceptions, revelations by which we are knowing love for truth. Jesus ministers the truth in love, and the knowledge of God is especially revealed through His understanding of the scriptures.
Christians should not limit their understanding of scripture to natural minded revelations taught of men. Literal interpretations and natural minded understandings of the letter of the word will keep you locked up in death, yet blessings come to all who are “pure of heart”. Those who hear His voice and follow Him are taught by His Spirit to see things BY THE SPIRIT and understand what is taught of the Lord. The pure at heart see God. God is spirit and His word has spiritual meaning. The key truths of His Word will open our spirit to His Spirit, CHANGING US.
"Believe Me that I am in the Father and the Father in Me; yet if not, believe Me because of the works themselves. Verily, verily, I am saying to you, he who is believing into Me, the works which I am doing he also will be doing, and greater than these will he be doing, for I am going to the Father.
And whatever you should be requesting in My name, this I will be doing, that the Father should be glorified in the Son. If you should ever be requesting anything of Me in My name, this I will be doing. If you should be loving Me, you will be keeping My precepts. And I shall be asking the Father, and will be giving you another consoler, that it, indeed, may be with you for the eon, the spirit of truth, which the world cannot get, for it is not beholding it, neither is knowing it. Yet you know it, for it is remaining with you and will be in you.
I will not leave you bereaved; I am coming to you. Still a little and the world is beholding Me not longer, yet you are beholding [seeing] Me. Seeing that I am living, you also will be living. In that day you shall know that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you. He who has My precepts and is keeping them, is who is loving Me. Now he who is loving Me will be loved by My Father, and I shall be loving him and shall be disclosing Myself to him." John 14:11-21 concordant
“…beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that when He shall appear we shall be like Him…” I John 3:2
The key to stability — the key to His immutable quality — remains the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow. We can be partakers of the fullness of Christ through union with Christ. Christ within us works to change our being until we become changeless in the absolute likeness of Jesus Christ. We have lasting treasures gathered that cannot be influenced, affected, moved, changed, altered, damaged, destroyed, or improved in any way.
God does not grow tired or old. The character of God is eternal, changeless, unaffected by change of any sort. The nature of God’s love and purpose is steadfast, unmovable, unquenched, undiminished, unaffected, without fluctuation. The eternal existence of God is certainly the source of our inner spiritual life with real love, ability to enjoy peace, to have a grasp of righteousness. God’s Spirit rises us from the fall, rising us above any death trap in which we may fall. Death is man’s enemy and it cannot touch those who are dependent upon the sustaining power of God, the Self-Existent One.
God is able to bring lofty thoughts into our minds. Our hearts respond with a joyful accord when Christ displays wisdom from within about our daily living experience. God intends to bless us with dealings as with sons who become as constant and unchanging as God Himself. To His disciples Christ Jesus spoke these incredible words:
“For as the Father hath life in Himself; so hath He given to the Son to have life in Himself.” John 5:25-26
LIFE IN HIMSELF! The self-existent God life, a life not derived from any fleshly source, not dependent upon any natural substance, inherently spiritual God life. Jesus stood as a son of God and declared:
“I am the way, the truth, and the life.” John 14:6
An exceedingly great wonder of it all is that Jesus became a life-giving Spirit, dispensing the self-existent life of God to other sons to be made like Him.
“And this is the testimony, that God gives us life eonian, and this life is in His Son. He who has the Son has the life; he who has not the Son of God has not the life.” I John 5:11-12 concordant
How plain. If the Spirit of a Son dwells in us, through faith in Christ, He imparts POWER TO COMMENCE OPERATING IN TIME-LASTING, EONIAN, SELF-EXISTENT GOD LIFE WITHIN OUR INNER SPIRITUAL BEING RIGHT NOW!
The key to receiving His lasting Life for many well meaning church folk is overcoming their religious slumber. Church leaders have taught the letter of the word to pews of folk who “think they are rich” and have no need for further spiritual instruction. These Babylonian goods are routinely sold in our American church circles.
The starting point for Kingdom progress for many Christian brothers and sisters today is coming out of those religious orders and having a change of perspective, a “third day” understanding. We who have Kingdom keys are being clothed with God Life from within our inner being. He who has the Son is given another heavenly garment through an inner union, providing a new understanding of God.
Sons can be corrected within their inner being. Our heavenly Father deals with us as His sons. He is exposing the hidden darkness locked up in our old thoughts, changing our inner attitudes, so those little foxes of malice and gossiping division that have spoiled the vine that is to produce kingdom fruit will not be expressed in us.
God’s record of our daily life challenges us to look closely at the little things that He directly makes us understand. He dethrones any little quirk or idiosyncrasy of our personality in order to make us beautiful places of His habitation. The keys of heaven unlock and burn up our inner selfish attitudes. Christ delivers us from any uncertain or unkind gesture. He raises us from any slothfulness or omission. Only Christ within us can reveal the hidden mysteries that hold most everyone in a fallen condition and far short of the mark.
Christ gives us the KEY of understanding the mind of Christ as He intends for us to possess it. His truth is setting us free right now to know our rightful inheritance. All believing Christians who are outside the city of God in this hour must yet use every key given them to press on, enter into, and appropriately walk after the instructions given within our quickened inner spirit.
Trying to become like Jesus in our own strength and Pentecostal religious wrestling with the devil is left behind when knowing Christ. We know Him in our spiritual connection as One Who exposes LOVE. He is divinely exposing a nature that is given power by God to turn us from the old, — putting off the old man, no longer giving place to the devil within us. Christ Himself comes to dwell fully within so nothing untrue would be expressed through us!
HE must increase, WE must decrease — and it will be in that order. We do not die in order to live. Our spirit must be quickened by His Spirit to the Life of God. He who is really joined to the Lord is one spirit with the Lord. You will decrease death by accentuating the positive Judge. God’s Life can eliminate the negative viewpoints within us by turning on the brighter Light that eliminates any lingering darkness. Only by an infusion of Christ Life can dark fears and frustrations of disease and death be abolished within our being.
God's reality negates man’s religious fantasies along with religious error. KEYS OF THE KINGDOM ARE TRUTHS that work on us to conform us into the image of Jesus Christ. Our minds are filled with truths given by the Holy Spirit to the body of Christ to personally know our inner life transformed by God's Word. God’s Spirit has touched us, saturated us with floods of understanding of what is coming from the mouth of our Father. He teaches us many wonderful things that remain unknown to the multitudes. Many of our thoughts are now of most outstanding origin and are important keys that are to be applied. For example:
“Now why are you judging your brother? Or why are you also scorning your brother? For all of us shall be presented at the dais of God, for it is written: Living am I, the Lord is saying, For to Me shall bow every knee, And every tongue shall be acclaiming God!" Roman 14:10-11 concordant
"Consequently, then, each of us shall be giving account concerning himself to God. By no means, then, should we still be judging one another, but rather decide this, not to place a stumbling block in front of a brother, or a snare. I have perceived and am persuaded in the Lord Jesus that nothing is contaminating of itself, except that the one reckoning anything to be contaminating, to that one it is contaminating. For if, because of food your brother is sorrowing, you are not longer walking according to love.
Do not, by your food, destroy that one for whose sake Christ died. Let not, then, your good be calumniated, for the kingdom of God is not food and drink, but righteousness and peace and joy in holy spirit. For he who in this is slaving for Christ, is well pleasing to God and attested by men. Consequently, then, we are pursuing that which makes for peace and that which is for the edification of one another.” Romans 14:12-19 concordant