GOSPELS 15 UPON THIS ROCK I WILL BUILD MY CHURCHIn the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, after the feeding of the five thousand and Jesus declaring Himself the Bread from heaven, Jesus and the disciples travelled to Caesarea Philippi, a Roman colony near Syria and Lebanon. This affluent, idolatrous area, devoid of Jewish crowds and synagogues, was an unusual place for Jesus to visit, but he had a purpose. It was here where Jesus asked His disciples, "Who do the crowds say that I am?"
GOSPELS 15 UPON THIS ROCK I WILL BUILD MY CHURCH
In the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, after the feeding of the five thousand and Jesus declaring Himself the Bread from heaven, Jesus and the disciples travelled to Caesarea Philippi, a Roman colony near Syria and Lebanon. This affluent, idolatrous area, devoid of Jewish crowds and synagogues, was an unusual place for Jesus to visit, but he had a purpose. It was here where Jesus asked His disciples, "Who do the crowds say that I am?"
The disciples said that people thought Jesus might be John the Baptist, Elijah, Jeremiah, or another resurrected prophet, indicating that the people held Jesus in high regard as sent by God, and they believed in resurrection, but they did not fully recognize him as the Messiah.
Jesus then asks His disciples, "But what about you? Who do you say I am?" Peter answers, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God." This contrasts with a previous moment when the other disciples also said that, when the disciples were rowing in the boat across the sea of Galilee, and Jesus walked on water towards them and entered their boat and they exclaimed in excitement and awe "Truly you are the Son of God." However, excitement and awe is not revelation from God, and here in Caesarea Philippi, Jesus tells Peter, "Flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven." He then says, "You are Peter (Petros, a piece of a rock), and upon this rock (petra, a mass of rock) I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven." (Matthew 16:16-19).
Jesus is saying that He Himself is the Rock (petra) on which He will build His Church. Peter's revelation from God about Jesus being the Christ made Peter (Petros – a piece of rock) the first of many who would receive this revelation and become stones built together as the Church upon the Rock, which is Jesus, not Peter. Later, Peter writes in his epistles that all who have the revelation that Jesus is the Christ are also living stones, (and pieces of the Rock like himself) that are being built into a spiritual house (1 Peter 2:5).
Throughout the Bible, Jesus the Christ is portrayed as the eternal Rock of God.
"Trust in the LORD forever, for the Lord God is the Rock of Ages." (Isaiah 26:4), and one story illustrating this truth is Jacob's vision at Bethel(The house of God), where after deviously obtaining the inheritance of Abraham, and after resting his head up on a stone and falling asleep he sees a vision of the gates of Heaven. In the morning he awakes and he anoints a stone which symbolizes Christ the anointed Rock, (Genesis 28:12). In the New Testament, Paul describes Christ as the Spiritual Rock that provided water for Israel in the wilderness when Moses struck the rock which poured forth the water of life (1 Corinthians 10:4). Paul also affirms that "no other foundation can any man lay other than that which is Christ" (1 Corinthians 3:11).
When Jesus said to His disciples, that he was the Rock on which he would build his Church and give them the keys of the Kingdom he was addressing all twelve disciples, not just Peter, and he was charging them with a future spiritual authority to be delegated to the entire Church community. The initial leadership of the apostles and prophets and other teaching and equipping ministries were to share the responsibility and the power to overcome spiritual darkness with all believers. Paul, Peter, James, John, and other writers teach that principle of growing in faith and grace, and that as living stones of a spiritual temple we can live in the power of the Holy Spirit. We can understand the Holy Spirit’s work, pray for God’s guidance, exercise spiritual authority, and live in unity and peace. And we learn to use spiritual gifts to serve each other and to be transformed into the likeness of Jesus through God's word and the Holy Spirit’s discipleship of our lives.
I mentioned earlier that Caesarea Philippi, which was a place of idolatry and avoided by law-abiding Jews, was where Jesus declared, "I will build my Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. This location housed a shrine to the pagan god Pan in a vast cave of a hillside, and it was believed to be a " gate to Hades " (a gate of hell). It was here where shameful fertility rituals were performed (1 Chronicles 5:25), and the declaration of Jesus at this "gate of hell" that the gates of hell would not prevail against his Church, signified that through his power and guided by his Spirit we would overcome the powers of darkness.
From the beginning, the gates of hell have not had to attack the Church (gates don’t attack anything) but to do nothing other than simply keep people imprisoned in darkness and in unnecessary inner suffering. Human protests or moral judgments can't unlock these gates—only Divine power can. And Christians can use the keys of the Kingdom to free captives from that imprisonment. Today, many in this world live in despair, loneliness, broken relationships, resentment, and fear, needing hope and love and faith. They need God. Paul in Ephesians reminds us that we too once lived behind these gates and were influenced by the world and its ways and separated from God (Ephesians 2:2).
After telling the disciples that he would give them the keys of the Kingdom Jesus also says, ‘and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.’
Jesus had come to the earth to loose the binding of Israel to the law and it was to be loosed in Heaven. He had come to the earth to bind humanity to his grace and truth and it would be bound by grace and truth in Heaven.
There are many opinions and interpretations of what is meant by binding and loosing (people bind all sorts of things), but we see in the Book of Acts and in the epistles about the early days of the Church community where these binding and loosing principles were effectively put into operation. The new freedom of being bonded to the Kingdom order of love and faith and grace brought new responsibilities for the care of the poor and weak and vulnerable in the community of faith. Being previously bound by the Jewish law for many of these people meant that they would have been shunned from the temple and all forms of worship and blessing because of being diseased or disfigured or disabled. But now this new and true freedom of grace also called for more sacrificial love from the privileged and influential believers to release the abundant spiritual blessing for everyone in that redeemed community. God’s vision for his new community of faith was for humanity to be his family in the earth being nurtured and provided for by a loving Father in Heaven.
And Jesus, who sees us as his brothers and sisters in his Father’s family says those same words about binding and loosing in only one other place in the Bible, in Matthew 18:15-18. Here he appeals to us to resolve offences and conflicts with each another in a Godly way and become reconciled. He warns that unless someone is willing to listen to what the other party has to say and be willing to forgive if they have been offended, or to ask for forgiveness if they have caused an offence, they will be considered as an outsider to the whole community. As brothers and sisters together in his family we are bound to live in this way, but nobody can be forced to. He is teaching us here that if we live in unforgiveness we create a prison of unhappiness and isolation for ourselves.
However, through that isolation and through the prayer of others and as God acts upon that person’s spirit, they may have a change of heart and be loosed from that miserable prison. So Jesus concludes by saying ‘whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.’ In other words, if we do things his way on earth he backs what we do from heaven.
Jesus has set forth a vision for his Church in the things that he said to his disciples on that day in Caesarea Philippi. He envisioned multitudes of robust and diverse local communities of people receiving revelation from God and living in the unity of the Spirit, touching the hearts and minds of those who are still living behind the gates of spiritual darkness and being influenced by the world and its ways and separated from God (Ephesians 2:2).
Wherever there are people whose lives live out of the Kingdom keys of love and faith and truth and who are willing to prayerfully go in where the pain and suffering is, the gates of hell will fly open and people will be set free to hear words of life and not of death. As the apostle Peter wrote, they will become partakers of the divine nature having escaped the corruption that is in the world through wrong desires. (2Peter 1:4). Rock of Ages cleft for me let me hide myself in Thee. Amen.
