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The Church on the Rock

The story of Peter’s identification of Jesus as the Messiah is recorded in Matthew, Mark and Luke. However the account in Matthew 16 is quite different from both Mark (8) and Luke (9). For a start it is much longer. More intriguingly it contains a response from Jesus to Peter that has suggested to many readers that the Christian church is to be founded on Peter.

^{MT 16:13} Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, He began asking His disciples, saying, "Who do people say that the Son of Man is?" ¹⁴ And they said, "Some say John the Baptist; and others, Elijah; but still others, Jeremiah, or one of the prophets." ¹⁵ He said to them, "But who do you say that I am?" ¹⁶ And Simon Peter answered and said, "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God." ¹⁷ And Jesus answered and said to him, "Blessed are you, Simon Barjona, because flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but My Father who is in heaven. ¹⁸ "And I also say to you that you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build My church; and the gates of Hades shall not overpower it. ¹⁹ "I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; and whatever you shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven." ²⁰ Then He warned the disciples that they should tell no one that He was the Christ.

Several questions arise in Matthew’s account. What was it in Peter’s confession that so impressed Jesus and what is ‘the rock’? What has the rock to do with Peter? Our interest is also aroused by the promise that the church would triumph against the gates of Hell (Hades). What are the gates of Hades, and is the promise in v18 related to the keys of heaven in verse 19?

When we contrast this account in Matthew with the parallel passages in Mark and Luke we find that not only is there no reference to the rock in Mark and Luke, but compared to Matthew’s account there is only half of Peter’s confession. In Matthew Peter declares ‘You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God’. In Mark it is simply ‘You are the Christ’ while Luke records only ‘The Christ of God’. Mark and Luke also omit the Lord’s exclamation that Peter had received divine revelation. We might suggest therefore that the ‘rock’ comments in Matthew are linked to the fuller confession by Peter of who Jesus was, specifically to the second statement that is omitted in Mark and Luke – ‘(You are …) the Son of the Living God.’

Judaism’s great hope was for a special man from God - the Messiah, the Christ. Many prophets, priests, and kings had come, but none of them was the Messiah, and so the nation had waited, and waited, as Judaism still does today. But the Messiah that Judaism expected was a totally human person, a great man, but only a man. So to identify Jesus as ‘the Messiah’ was for Peter a bold step, but it was not an enormous conceptual leap. Similarly to call Jesus ‘the son of God’ as the disciples did in chapter 14:33 was not necessarily a mark of true appreciation of who this person called Jesus of Nazareth was. Disciples were frequently called ‘sons’ of the leader they followed – as in the Old Testament phrase - ‘sons of the prophets’ (see for example 2 Kings 2:15 or Amos 7:14). In Matthew 14 the disciples recognised that Jesus was someone special, closely linked to God, but they had not recognised the intrinsic deity of Jesus.

Now we come to Peter. He declares that Jesus is the Messiah, and that the Messiah is ‘the Son of the Living God’; the Messiah is of the same essence as the God of the burning bush. It wasn’t so much that Jesus is recognised as the Messiah, but that it had dawned on Peter just what the Messiah is. Not ‘who’ but ‘what’. No wonder that Jesus responds that this is a revelation from the Father Himself.

In this declaration ‘You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God’ is the essence of the exposition of Paul to the Colossians – ‘For in Him all the fulness of Deity dwells in bodily form’ (2:9), although it must be very doubtful if Peter was ready to explain the theology. That task was reserved for Paul. Yet Peter had stumbled upon the truth of the twin nature of Jesus, - the man, the Messiah, but also God in flesh.

In His response however Jesus declared that (a) God in heaven had revealed it to Peter, (b) that Simon is ‘Peter’ and (c) upon this ‘rock’ He (Jesus) would build His church. Most attempts to explain the remark about building the church upon the rock pick up a similarity between the name of Peter and the Greek word for rock. But should this be the starting point for the search for Jesus’ meaning? I suspect that for the disciples and the audience around them the identification of the ‘rock’ in Jesus’ declaration was not as difficult to comprehend as it is for us today. If we had been brought up as the Jews of the day were, saturated with the Old Testament, we would not find the concept of the ‘rock’ as elusive as twenty-first century non-Jews experience. When Jesus promised to build ‘on this rock’, He used a term which a Jewish audience would recognise as a reference to ‘the Living God’. In the Old Testament we find God as the Rock, especially in the sense of His enduring eternality. For example in Deut 32 we read in verses 3-4 words that we sometimes sing, but which sums up the Old Testament’s sense of ‘the Rock’

^{DT 32:1} "Give ear, O heavens, and let me speak; And let the earth hear the words of my mouth. ² "Let my teaching drop as the rain, my speech distill as the dew, as the droplets on the fresh grass and as the showers on the herb. ³ "For I proclaim the name of the LORD; Ascribe greatness to our God! ⁴ "The Rock! His work is perfect, for all His ways are just; a God of faithfulness and without injustice, righteous and upright is He.

We might also have noted in (for example) Psalm 18

^{PS 18:1} "I LOVE Thee, O LORD, my strength." ² The LORD is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer, My God, my rock, in whom I take refuge;

See again Isaiah 26

^{ISA 26:4} "Trust in the LORD forever, for in GOD the LORD, we have an everlasting Rock.

Even today in the Jewish order of service for Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement) there occurs several times the prayer opening ‘Blessed are You, Hashem,(the ‘I AM’ the Living God) King of the Universe, Rock of all eternities ……’

Thus the sequence of the comments by Jesus makes sense. It was the Living God (the Father in heaven) who revealed this appreciation to Peter, and it is upon the Living God that the church will be founded. There are two ways in which the church can be so founded. The first is that it would be established upon the death and resurrection of Jesus (and from Matthew 16:21 it is clear that this was very much to the fore in Jesus’ thinking). There is another sense however in which the church is built upon the ‘rock’ of the Living God. The life of the Living God will be the substance from which the church will be built. This is the point of Jesus’ reference to the name Peter (a name that Jesus Himself bestowed upon Simon (see John 1:35-42). ‘You are ‘kefa’ (Peter), meaning that you are/have within you the same substance as this rock. It is fitting that Peter himself described the church in 2P1:3 as those who are becoming ‘partakers of the divine nature’.

What a fantastic promise, that the church will be energised by the life of the Living God. God is the Living One. He is eternal. Any excitement that we might initially arouse on reading that the church is to have within it the life of the God who lives eternally is immediately doused by the experience of real life that we can see and know around us. Christians die. Members of the church die. Peter is dead; the writer of Matthew’s gospel is dead. All of the audience who listened to Jesus making this declaration are dead. So does the promise to found the church on the life of the Living God really mean anything? Can it be true then that the church is founded upon the life of the Living God, and will live for as long as God will live - for ever? That is where the next promise of Jesus becomes relevant - I will build My church; and the gates of Hades shall not overpower it.

Again to a Jew of the time (or to someone saturated with the writings in the Old Testament) the expression ‘the gates of hell’ would have been easily understood. The phrase is almost resonant throughout the Old Testament and can be summed up in God’s challenge to Job.

^{JOB 38:17} "Have the gates of death been revealed to you? Or have you seen the gates of deep darkness?

The gates of hell are the gates of the grave (see also Jonah 2:6). Christians may die. But that is not the defeat of the church founded upon the life of the Living God. The fear of death is extinguished for the church founded on the life of the Living God and built by Jesus (Hebrews 2:14-15) because death itself has only a temporary hold on Christians (John 11:1-44, 1 Corinthians 15:12-57, 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18). The gates of death will not overpower, prevail over, succeed in holding those who are members of the church that Jesus promises. Members of the church will die, and have died, but the promise of Jesus here is that death will not have the final say, because as Simon represents in the name given to him by Jesus – Peter (Petros/Cephas), the members of the church have become part of the life of the Living God, and that life cannot yield to death.

Thus Peter himself could write much later with confidence looking beyond his own death –

^{1PE 1:3} Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His great mercy has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, ⁴ to obtain an inheritance which is imperishable and undefiled and will not fade away, reserved in heaven for you, ⁵ who are protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.

To be born again, by faith, is to become alive, energised by nothing less than the life of the Living and eternal God. And it is to be part of the church, to be like Peter – rocks or stones. We can confirm that this is how Peter himself understood the allusion to his name because he used the analogy in 1Peter 2:1-6 combined with an application of the Old Testament prophecy from Isaiah 28.

^{1PE 2:1} Therefore, putting aside all malice and all guile and hypocrisy and envy and all slander, 2 like newborn babes, long for the pure milk of the word, that by it you may grow in respect to salvation, ³ if you have tasted the kindness of the Lord. ⁴ And coming to Him as to a living stone, rejected by men, but choice and precious in the sight of God, ⁵ you also, as living stones, are being built up as a spiritual house for a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. ⁶ For this is contained in Scripture: "BEHOLD I LAY IN ZION A CHOICE STONE, A PRECIOUS CORNER stone, AND HE WHO BELIEVES IN HIM SHALL NOT BE DISAPPOINTED."

Peter was rock, not the Rock. He saw himself as a living stone, energised by the life of the Living God, who is the Rock. And the exchange between Jesus and Peter was not for Peter alone. Peter declares – ‘you also, as living stones’ (v5), making it clear that in Matthew 16 Jesus was setting out a principle that applies to the church that He will build.

I will build.

I am very glad that Jesus did not say - ‘on this rock you will build my church’. If He had said this the burden of responsibility imposed on Peter would have been intolerable. Thankfully Jesus said - ‘I will build’. That He meant what He said is clear if we look at two other references to the work of church-building. In 1 S2:35 God said - I will build Him a house … and in John 16:8-11 Jesus promised that the Holy Spirit will ‘convict the world concerning sin, and righteousness and judgement’, a work essential to the task of church-building.

Please observe - the whole trinity Father, Son and Holy Spirit is involved in, and responsible for the task of building the church. Therefore it can never be a responsibility of Peter or any other member of the Church. The Church members may have a role to play, to share in this work of Jesus the Lord, but the work is His, and the responsibility is His. There is a very sound reason why this is so. Where there is responsibility, there is legitimate glory for any success. Thus to the extent that the responsibility is removed from God, then the glory would not be God’s either. But God has declared –

^{ISA 42:8} "I am the LORD, that is My name; I will not give My glory to another,

All of the responsibility for building the church belongs by right and by choice to God, and all of the glory belongs and will belong to Him as well.

The keys and binding

If we have been correct in identifying the Rock as the Living God and ‘Peter/Cephas’ as being a reference to the Christian as someone who has the life of the Living God within them, and identifying the Church’s foundation and builder as Jesus Himself (through the Holy Spirit) then these last remarks about granting the keys of heaven and that whatever is bound or loosed on earth is also so in heaven, must be related to the individual’s security and significance in this life. The granting of the keys of heaven appears to be similar to the thought in Luke 10:20 where Jesus talks about the fact that the names of the disciples (Christians) are written in heaven giving them a right of entry to heaven (in contrast to Satan who in 10:18 is recorded as being sent packing when (presumably) he went to complain about the behaviour of the disciples (see Luke study 12)).

Thus even living today with an expectation of physical death to experience, Christians can have the confidence that physical death will not matter, the gates of the grave will not overcome those who are in the Church, who have their names written in heaven and who have the keys to heaven. However this wonderful fact is not a licence for careless living. The reference to binding on earth and heaven may be a call to be careful to live now by the standards that we would expect to apply in heaven. If Christians have the life of the Living God within them, they must expect that God will want them to live according to His character and not to regard their expectation of heaven to be a cover for living selfishly. The comment therefore might be an equivalent to the shock that Jacob experienced in Genesis 28:10-17 when he discovered that ‘God was in this place (earth not just Bethel)’. God is not remote; He is very much concerned with the activities of man on earth. If this is true generally then it is doubly so with the members of the Church of Jesus founded upon and energised by the life of The Living God.