Do Not Make Proud Claims

Our young pastor told us a few months ago that he had created the true translation of a passage and every Bible translation has had it wrong for the last 700 years. 

On Sunday September 7th 2025 Pastor told us that every minister and every translator of the Greek New Testament got it wrong for the last 2000 years when translating or interpreting Matthew 16. He then stated that he had consulted the Greek New Testament and he alone now has translated it correctly. Here is the passage: ἀποκριθεὶς δὲ ὁ Ἰησοῦς εἶπεν αὐτῷ· Μακάριος εἶ, Σίμων Βαριωνᾶ, ὅτι σὰρξ καὶ αἷμα οὐκ ἀπεκάλυψέν σοι ἀλλ’ ὁ πατήρ μου ὁ ἐν τοῖς οὐρανοῖς· κἀγὼ δέ σοι λέγω ὅτι σὺ εἶ Πέτρος, καὶ ἐπὶ ταύτῃ τῇ πέτρᾳ οἰκοδομήσω μου τὴν ἐκκλησίαν, καὶ πύλαι ᾅδου οὐ κατισχύσουσιν αὐτῆς· δώσω σοι τὰς κλεῖδας τῆς βασιλείας τῶν οὐρανῶν, καὶ ὃ ἐὰν δήσῃς ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς ἔσται δεδεμένον ἐν τοῖς οὐρανοῖς, καὶ ὃ ἐὰν λύσῃς ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς ἔσται λελυμένον ἐν τοῖς οὐρανοῖς. τότε διεστείλατο τοῖς μαθηταῖς ἵνα μηδενὶ εἴπωσιν ὅτι αὐτός ἐστιν ὁ χριστός. Here is the ESV translation he has decided is wrong and false. Matthew 16:17-20 ESV And Jesus answered him, "Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. [18] And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. [19] I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven." [20] Then he strictly charged the disciples to tell no one that he was the Christ. This agrees with other translations

Matthew 16

ἀποκριθεὶς δὲ ὁ Ἰησοῦς εἶπεν αὐτῷ· Μακάριος εἶ, Σίμων Βαριωνᾶ, ὅτι σὰρξ καὶ αἷμα οὐκ ἀπεκάλυψέν σοι ἀλλ’ ὁ πατήρ μου ὁ ἐν τοῖς οὐρανοῖς· κἀγὼ δέ σοι λέγω ὅτι σὺ εἶ Πέτρος, καὶ ἐπὶ ταύτῃ τῇ πέτρᾳ οἰκοδομήσω μου τὴν ἐκκλησίαν, καὶ πύλαι ᾅδου οὐ κατισχύσουσιν αὐτῆς· δώσω σοι τὰς κλεῖδας τῆς βασιλείας τῶν οὐρανῶν, καὶ ὃ ἐὰν δήσῃς ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς ἔσται δεδεμένον ἐν τοῖς οὐρανοῖς, καὶ ὃ ἐὰν λύσῃς ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς ἔσται λελυμένον ἐν τοῖς οὐρανοῖς. τότε διεστείλατο τοῖς μαθηταῖς ἵνα μηδενὶ εἴπωσιν ὅτι αὐτός ἐστιν ὁ χριστός.

“And answering, Jesus said to him, ‘Blessed are you, Simon, son of John/Jonah, because flesh and blood did not reveal [this] to you, but my Heavenly Father. And I also say to you that you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it. I will give to you the keys of the Kingdom of the Heavens, and whatever you might ask upon the earth will be bound (or “will be having been bound”) in the heavens, and whatever you might loose upon the earth will be loosed (or “will be having been loosed”) in the heavens.’ Then he commanded the disciples so that they might not say to anyone ‘He is the Christ.’”

There are lots of valid ways to translate it, but I’m suspicious of anyone who says that they’ve found the “true” translation. I’ve heard this argument before where they try to force some extra meaning out of the future tense plus the perfect participle, but it just doesn’t really work that way because of how tense and aspect interact. Usually, people who make this mistake assume that aspect plays a minimal role (or are not even aware of it at all) and assume that the tenses directly correspond temporally to English. These assumptions are fraught with difficulty. I’ve tried to give a fairly wooden translation, but there are many assumptions even in my own translation (e.g., εκκλησια refers to the ‘church,’ because what else could it possibly refer to?). Every translation builds in interpretation based on various assumptions. What makes one translation more valid than another is whether those underlying assumptions have probable validity. In this case, it seems much more likely that the perfective aspect of the participle is more important than trying to to say something like “having already been bound/loosed.” 

Amazingly enough, we have lots of translations and commentaries that are older than 700 years. We have some old enough that they were translated/written by native speakers of the Greek of this period. I know of none that contain the proposed meaning.