Calvary Baptist Church, Grenada, MS, USA
Holding to the truths embraced by Baptist for centuries.
As Jesus reached this crucial, central point in His public ministry, He took a sort of “Gallup Poll” through His disciples, not to find out what the public thought of Him (that He had always known) but to bring out in the minds of the twelve the full impact of commitment to His cause and person. He was at the point of beginning to fully reveal the cross (v. 21), and before He did so He wanted again to solemnly impress on His closest followers the seriousness of confessing Him in all His fullness, including His sufferings as well as the glory which was to come.
The results were mixed, as popular opinion polls always are. One cannot judge religious truth by statistics. Forty percent said He was John reincarnated; thirty-two per cent considered Him to be Elijah; twenty percent voted for Jeremiah; and the balance were undecided. If we were to take such a poll on almost any biblical issue today, we could take the majority opinion, believe the exact opposite, and usually be correct in the light of eternity. Even the "God" professed by the vast majority is far from the God of the Bible.
The next question Jesus asked is that which every person must face, individually: "But Whom say ye that I am?" (Note, as so often, the "I am," with its implicit reference to Exodus 3.)
Peter, as he so often did, spoke for the group when he said, "You are the Christ, the Anointed Messiah, the Son of the living God.'' His answer was a masterpiece; as well it might be, since it came directly from the Master! And Jesus' answer, as recorded in verses 17 and 18, is worthy of the most careful study. The author's free translation may be helpful.
" Blessed, overflowing with happy joy, are you now, Simon, son of Jonas, for flesh and blood did not uncover this to you, but My Father Who is in Heaven.
"And I tell you too, that you are Petros, a piece of the rock, a building block, a living stone, but upon this Petra, the huge, underlying, massive foundation-stone, I will continue to build up, edify, and strengthen My kind of congregation, and the gates of hell's eternal darkness shall not prevail nor hold out against it.''
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Among the most crucial issues facing the religious world in this ecumenical age are: "What is a church?" "What kind of church did Jesus build?" "Where is the church today?"
Three facts stand out at once concerning this church of which Jesus spoke: it had a sure foundation, a divine institution, and a triumphant expectation. These same facts should be true of the church whenever and wherever found, even in the darkest day of despair from the human standpoint, for it is not a flesh-and-blood matter, but a spiritual affair.
May we suggest, first, that the Church on the Rock is A Confessing Church, verses 13-16
As Peter confessed that Jesus was, is, and always will be the Messiah sought by Israel, in Whom the Gentiles would trust, Jesus honored that confession with a beatitude like those He used in the Message on the Mount (Matthew 5:2-12). It is a word of supreme joy, of overflowing happiness, of an abundant arterial well springing up within, needing no outside pressure but flowing under its own inherent power, the "peace like a river'' of Isaiah 66:12. His confession with reference to salvation (not in order to receive it, but because of its present reality) is that to which we are urged and invited in Romans 10:10, after believing with the heart. It is the means by which the lost world knows, and by which we ourselves are assured, that we have really been with Jesus. While it is not this writer's conviction that the church was built on the confession of Peter, it is clearly true that such a confession is the public means of requesting a part in the fellowship of the redeemed. Thus, in a real sense, the ideas of confession and covenant are the bases for congregational life among the Lord's free people. Those who refuse to confess Christ have no basis for joining themselves to a gathered church, no matter what their relationship to the Lord Himself may be. Those whose confession is inadequate are to be rejected, according to II John 10-11.
This Church on the Rock is also A Converted Church, v. 17.
While it may seem that these two concepts, confession and conversion, go together like a horse and carriage, or love and marriage, yet we must concede that far too many unconverted church members exist, even in the ranks of congregations which claim to be only for the "born again." Easy evangelism, mass in gatherings with too little content and too hasty consent, the desire to build a name for ourselves and to be like all the other nations of the world, are all justified by the recognized reality of lost and perishing souls. But as Jesus said of the proselytes made by the Pharisees, when one joins himself hypocritically to a fellowship without its common faith, he is twofold more a child of hell than before. When one confesses without conversion, he is doubly difficult to reach in the future. Let our evangelism keep conversion and confession in the proper perspective; let our warm hearts be balanced with cool heads, and our hasty feet with a careful hand. Win all we can, but win them to the Christ, the Son of the Living God, not merely to the church, to the pastor, or the evangelist. We need not forget Acts 5:13 and 14.
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Again, and centrally, the Church on the Rcok is A Congregational Church, v. 18.
This word is not used denominationally, but descriptively. The Greek word ecclesia is properly rendered in English "assembly'' or "congregation." It was common and well-known, especially in political usage, in the land where Jesus lived and taught. His expression did not mystify His disciples, as did the parables of the kingdom in chapter 13; they did not here ask for an explanation, as they had of those mysteries. Instead, they accepted this church truth much more readily than they did either the teaching of the kingdom or the cross!
Among the Greco-Roman ideas, that of local self-government for those who could keep the peace was one of the most common. While the troublesome Jews had no such ecclesiae, or local governing assemblies, they knew of them, and doubtless envied those who (like Ephesus, according to Acts 19) were so favored. The popular assembly (Acts 19:39) could degenerate into a mob, as it had in verse 32, but it could also become an orderly business, capable of assembling and of being dismissed (v. 41). Those who participated were the adult, male, tax-paying property holders, in short, those whom the Romans considered accountable. They could not legislate, but could only decide local matters, and that in keeping with a written constitution handed down from above which could not be changed locally. The parallels to a New Testament church are obvious: the Bible is our constitution, which we cannot change; we are not legislative bodies, but executive and, to a limited degree, judicial.
Jesus took this popular concept and qualified it by the carefully chosen word "My,'' indicating quality-- "My kind of assembly,'' as distinct from those known in the world. Whenever He began this church, it was no surprise to this group.
It was built of living stones, I Peter 2:5. Peter's comment helps us understand the passage, since he was there and heard Jesus speak. The members of a New Testament church are quickened, spiritually alive.
It was built on the solid rock I Peter 2:6. While some feel that the Rock was Peter, note that within a short time Jesus turned to this intimate disciple and called him Satan (Matthew 16:23). Such a foundation would make for a church without stability. Shortly before, in Matthew 14:22-33, this same disciple had briefly walked on the water, but began to sink when he took his eyes off Jesus. Surely we ought not to desire such a sinking foundation for a church? Peter's own explanation is surely best: "In Sion a chief corner stone, elect, precious: and he who believes on Him [Jesus, not Peter] shall never be put to shame," a free quotation from Isaiah 28:16.
To this Paul agrees when he said to the Corinthians (I Cor. 3:11), "For other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ," and again (10:4), "That Rock was Christ." (Ten-four on that?)
It was, and those like it would be today, a body of which Christ is the Head, a building of which Christ is the Founder and Foundation, a bride for which
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Christ is the Bridegroom. If someone asks, how can Christ have many bodies, we answer, it is easier for the universal Christ to be at the same time Head of each local body than for unassembled and unassembling people, who neither see nor know one another, to be joined as one universal body. The very concept of a body demands both organization and organism, and though one may have a dead body without organism, one may not have any sort of body without organization.
Again, the Church on the Rock is A Continuing Church, v. 18.
Jesus said of His kind of congregation. "The gates of the unseen world (Hades) shall not prevail (Amplified Bible, hold out) against it." What a promise! The entire subject of perpetuity, succession, or continuity is dealt with in a separate booklet, Our Baptist Heritage, by this writer, in addition to the many books taking various views on church history. Without attempting to trace any chain-link or papal succession, we can safely affirm that some churches, however few, however scattered, like that one of which Jesus spoke, are on the earth today, have been since He spoke, and will be when He returns. From this promise, taken with His assurance in Matthew 28:20 and Paul's comment in Ephesians 3:21, along with the analogy of physical Israel, which exists even today in spite of the world, the flesh, and the devil, and because of the yet-to-be-fulfilled promises of God, we may be certain that at no time in the darkest of the Dark Ages was Christ without a witness, and that New Testament churches shall not perish from the face of the earth so long as their Lord reigns in Heaven.
Last, and most important, the Church on the Rock is A Commissioned Church, v. 19.
Again, a literal reading combined with a free commentary may prove helpful to our understanding.
"I will give to you the keys of the kingdom of Heaven, and that which you bind on the earth shall be that which shall already have been bound in the heavens, and that which you loose on the earth shall be that which shall already have been loosed in the heavens."
Here is a commission (reemphasized in 18:18, not just to Peter but to the church), which stresses evangelism and missions as much as Matthew 28:18-20 or Acts 1:8. It is a bit more controversial, less used, but no less valuable to our congregational activities today. We do not change the constitution: that is established already in God's order of things (Greek perfect tense). We act upon it! Our world evangelization, our Bold Mission, must always be on the principles of the gospel, not in words which man's wisdom would teach, but in words which the Holy Spirit teaches. We are to free men from the chains of sin it the keys of the gospel of the kingdom, the message of the blue of the covenant (Zachariah 9:11-13).
Let it always be our marching orders to remember, as these churches of the Lord cooperate in world mission strategy, that we must do so on the basis of truth. That which we decide must not be our democratic majority opinion, but
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a Theocratic Majority. We have heard it said, “One man and God make a majority.” May we revise that statement? “God is a Majority by Himself! '' That which we bind must be only that which has already been settled in the heavenly counsel, and our decisions in the light will free men from the fetters of sin as no other approach will ever do.
The Church on the Rock, then, is the central agency in the extension of the Kingd`om of Christ in this world. It is no afterthought, made necessary by a divine failure; it is no accident, into which God stumbled over the cross. It is His deliberate, definite, designed purpose from eternity. We have no right to twist it to carnal aims, to make it a society of human ambition, to turn it over to flesh and blood It is revealed from the Father in Heaven, and we are blessed when we receive Christ in conversion, confess Him publicly, and covenant together with other like-minded believers in the fellowship of the saints founded by and on Jesus Himself.