Word of Salvation – Vol. 30 No. 07 – February 1985
Christ’s Church
Sermon by Rev. S. Voorwinde, M.A., M.Th. on Matthew 16:18
(Belgic Confession Art. 27)
Scriptures: Ephesians 5: 22-33; Matthew 16: 13-20.
Suggested Hymns: 84:1,2,3; 160; 396; 426; 479:2,3
Brothers & Sisters in Christ,
In this sermon we will try and answer what is perhaps the most difficult questions for a Christian living in the 20th Century: “What is the Church?” In the 1st Century the early Christians wouldn’t have had any trouble answering that question. For many centuries Roman Catholics had no trouble answering that question either, but at the Second Vatican Council in 1966 they reluctantly agreed that Protestants too were fellow Christians, and so their definition of the Church couldn’t be as definite anymore. Nor do the cults such as the Mormons and Jehovah’s witnesses have a problem in defining the Church. They identify it with their own particular group. They alone are right and everyone else is wrong. If you think that way, a lot of things become very easy and straightforward.
When you don’t think that way you have a problem, and it becomes vastly more difficult to answer the simple question: “What is the Church?” Yet that’s a good thing because it really makes us examine what the Bible says. It presents us with the challenge of finding the Bible’s teaching and applying it to today. That’s what the Christian life is really all about, anyway.
So let’s look at our text with the aim of answering that basic question: “What is the Church?” and we’ll look at Jesus’ statement to Peter in three parts:
1. “I tell you that you are Peter.”
2. “On this rock I will build my church.”
3. “The gates of Hades will not overcome it.”
Jesus began with a solemn declaration to one of his disciples: “I tell you that you are Peter.” By nature he was Simon, the son of Jonah; by grace he is Peter the Rock-man; and it was by grace that Peter had been able to say: “you are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” No one can say that Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit. Therefore Jesus answered Peter that this was not revealed to him by man but by His Father in heaven.
Peter is quite well aware of what the opinion polls were saying about Jesus: “Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets (vs.14). Yet in spite of all this he is able to say with a note of ringing conviction: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” And with that affirmation Simon the son of Jonah has become Peter the Rock-man. He is a new man and he has a new name. God has done something in his life and it shows in the beautiful confession he has just made.
And Peter wasn’t the only one who was given a new name. Remember Abraham. His first name was “Abram” meaning “exalted father”, but even before he becomes a father, God gives him a new name, a name of faith, “Abraham”, which means “father of a multitude”. He is to become the father of all those who believe, who share his faith. And people like you and me today are evidence of the truth of that new name.
But not only Peter and Abraham received new names. To every true believer there is this promise at the end of Scripture in the Book of Revelation where Jesus says: “To him who overcomes… I will give a white stone, and a new name written on the stone which no one knows but he who receives it.” (2:17). Jesus has a new name for everyone who confesses that He is the Christ the Son of the living God.
And so on the last day it will appear that we all have new names, that we have natures that were transformed by grace. By nature Peter was no rock. Far from it. He was as impulsive a man as you would ever hope to find; and he was more like shifting sand than like solid rock. When he was up he was really up and when he was down he was really down. With a lot of bravado he boasted that he would never forsake Christ; yet that very night he denied him three times! He walked on water for a moment, lost his grip on his faith and down he went! And at the last supper he didn’t want to have his feet washed, but then suddenly he wanted his whole body washed. A wavering man, this Peter – impulsive, spontaneous. Not much like a rock. But Jesus said it emphatically and so it was: “And I tell you that you are Peter; you are like a rock.” In the eyes of men he shifted and he wavered, but by grace he was transformed into a rock.
Well, you may not know what your new name is. That’s God’s secret until the day Jesus returns. But I can tell you one thing for sure, He can take your natural weaknesses and transform them into supernatural strengths. If he can take a man like Peter and make him a rock, he can also work with you and transform you by His grace. I should even say more: If you are a Peter, if you confess with him that “Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God”, then it will happen. You will be renewed, you will be changed, like Peter, into the kind of person that God wants you to be.
So that’s Jesus’ first pronouncement: “I tell you that you are Peter”.
And now an even more remarkable statement is to follow: “And on this rock I will build my church.” The question is: On which rock? The choice seems to be between two possibilities. The Lord may have meant to say:
(i) that the man Peter was the rock. In other words Peter was the chief of the apostles; the foundation of the church. This is what the Roman Catholic Church believes. Therefore Peter was the first Pope, the first bishop of Rome and that was in fulfilment of what Jesus said here.
(ii) The second possibility is that Peter’s confession was the rock. When he said: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God”, that was the foundation doctrine on which the church would be built. So the rock was not Peter, but the confession he made.
Who is right? What is the rock? Is it Peter or is it his confession? But does the choice really need to be so clear-cut? Surely there must be an element of both. On the one hand it must be Peter because Jesus says: “You are Peter and on this rock I will build my church.” Yet there must be something more than Peter, because in vs.23 Jesus calls Peter something quite different: “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling-block to me.” So if you’re not careful in the way you interpret our text, you could be making Satan the foundation of the church.
So we shouldn’t really force the issue as to whether Peter is the rock or whether his confession is the rock. I would like to quote a Presbyterian scholar who comes to a very clear answer:
“Not Peter as the man, but Peter as the spokesman, the confessing apostle, is the rock of foundation. In this situation and at this moment he utters the revelation which is the distinctive confession of the true Israel. Peter is Satan as he speaks for Satan; Peter is the rock as he speaks for God.” (Clowney, pp.108-9).
It is the confessing Peter who is the rock. And it is not Peter above the others, but Peter among the others who confess Christ. He confesses as their spokesman and representative.
Later it was Peter who took his stand with the eleven at Pentecost and preached the Gospel to the Jews. Again it was Peter who first preached to the Gentiles in the house of Cornelius. It was also Peter who was the first to administer church discipline, in the case of Ananias and Sapphira.
So Peter was not a dictator nor even the greatest among the apostles. He was simply “the first among equals”, the first to preach the Gospel to the Jews, the first to preach the Gospel to the Gentiles, the first to administer church discipline. And as he does so, Christ builds the church.
Notice that Christ uses the singular: “And upon this rock I will build my church.” He doesn’t say: “I will build my churches.” He says: “I will build my church.” There is only one. It’s the one that we’ve already referred to in the Apostles’ Creed: “I believe in one holy catholic (or universal) church.” That’s an article of faith. It’s something you accept by faith and not by sight, because that’s not what you see at all. For what do we see as we look around us? In the ten minutes it may take you to drive to church you may go past a Salvation Army Hall, a Church of England, a big Roman Catholic Church, and a sign to the Uniting Church.
By the time you arrive at our church you may have passed five or six other churches. Then you have the Baptists, and if you drive a little further you’ll find the S.D.A.’s and the Gospel Hall. And so it goes. Yet in the face of these obvious facts we stand up in our service every Sunday and as one man declare: “I believe one holy catholic church.”
You see, in the final analysis, from God’s point of view, among our many churches there is really just One Church. The universal church embraces the whole body of true Christ-believers all around the world. This is the biblical view that often escapes our attention. This was what Jesus meant when he said: “I will build my church.” We tend to look at the parts, rather than the whole. Only by faith do we catch a glimpse of the full picture.
So when we say we believe in one holy catholic church we are not reporting on what we see through our human eyes. By faith we are looking at things from God’s point of view. We are seeing by the eyes of faith. And then what we see is not a human organization but a divine organism, the living body of Christ throughout the world and down the ages. As the Belgic Confession says: “This holy church is not confined, bound or limited to a certain place or to certain persons, but is spread and dispersed over the whole world; and yet is joined and united with heart and will, by the power of faith, in one and the same spirit.”
That The
And so the ultimate question is never what human organization you belong to, whether you’re Reformed or Anglican, Presbyterian or Baptist. There’s a place for that question too, but it’s not the foremost question. That will always be whether you are a living member of that living organism which is the holy catholic church. And how do you know whether you belong to that? How can you be sure? It’s when you can in sincerity of heart echo the words of Peter: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” If you can look at the dying and risen Jesus as Peter did, and say: “Yes, this is the Son of God.” That’s what is basic and fundamental. That universal church has Peter’s confession as its basic creed and every member has made that creed his own.
But having said that, we can bring all this teaching down to earth as it were. The church universal is the body of Christ, the Bride of Christ, the temple of God. But in the New Testament this is said also of the church in Ephesus and of the church at Corinth and of the church in Jerusalem. This is where the invisible church becomes visible. This is where the catholic church becomes localised and its holiness can be seen by the world. The church of which Jesus speaks is not some vague airy-fairy sort of concept with no basis in reality; it becomes localised in an actual group of believers such as ourselves. And so I dare say that the Reformed Church of (Kingston) is also the Body of Christ and the Bride of Christ and the Temple of God. And how do I know that? Because Jesus is building also this church on Peter’s confession: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” This is the basic truth that binds us together as a church. This is our common confession; this is where our stand is taken.
And wherever this is so, you have a manifestation of Christ’s Church. Wherever this is not so, you do not have a manifestation of Christ’s Church. You may have what looks like a church; you may have a building and a minister and a congregation. You may even have beautiful hymns and inspiring services, and its members may be the friendliest people you have ever met. But if it is not based on Peter’s confession, then what you have is not a church. It may look like a church, but it isn’t a church. As the Westminster Confession says: “The purest churches under heaven are subject both to mixture and error; and some have so degenerated as to become not churches of Christ, but synagogues of Satan” (25,5).
Perhaps that will go down as Satan’s master-stroke in our own day and age. To all appearances they are churches, they have respectable denominational labels, but…
– they didn’t believe that Jesus is the Son of God;
– they believe that he died, but not to pay for our sins;
– they don’t believe in a bodily resurrection, nor even in life after death.
I’m sad to say that there are churches in America, in Australia, in Holland and around the world that really aren’t churches at all. For the simple reason that they cannot echo Peter’s confession: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” Whatever men may call it, it is not the church of Christ but a synagogue of Satan. How careful we must be!
Yet of the true church Jesus continues by saying: “And the gates of Hades will not overpower it.” In other words, if all Hell were to break loose it could not possibly destroy the true church of Christ. We have to admit that at times the going has been pretty rough. Stephen was stoned, James beheaded, Peter imprisoned, Paul executed. But the word of Christ stands: the powers of hell shall never overthrow the church.” In every century the blood of the martyrs became the seed of the church.
Even so, I can say on good authority that the worst is still to come. All Hell will yet break loose. Towards the end of time Satan will be released and there will be what is known as the great tribulation. Satan will deceive the nations and gather his forces from the four corners of the earth. Their number will be like the sand of the seashore and they will prepare to make war on the church.
But then we also read how Christ will intervene to save His church; in Revelation 20:9 “And they came up on the broad plain of the earth and surrounded the camp of the saints and the beloved city, and fire came down from heaven and devoured them.” Satan’s last desperate attempt to destroy the church will have been in vain. “You are Peter and on this rock I will build my church and the gates of Hades will not over-power it.” There is also another interpretation that commends itself and it’s probably complementary to this one; that “the gates of Hades will not withstand it.” Gates are stationary, they don’t move, so how could they ever overpower the church? So the picture is of the church crashing into the strongholds of hell itself. Even the gates of Hell will not withstand the church.
Isn’t that what we see happening again and again? Isn’t that what happens when a head-hunting tribe of cannibals in New Guinea turns to the Lord?
Isn’t that what men like David Wilkerson saw when they evangelized the gang-infested slums of New York? And isn’t that the story of the church in China during the Cultural Revolution when it not only survived but grew?
You see, Satan may split the church and divide it into a thousand fragments. He may make it look ridiculous, but ultimately he can never destroy it or overpower it or even withstand it.
“Crowns and thrones may perish,
Kingdoms rise and wane,
But the Church of Jesus
Constant will remain;
Gates of hell can never
‘Gainst that Church prevail;
We have Christ’s own promise,
And that cannot fail.” (466:3)
In closing allow me to quote what the Heidelberg Catechism says in Lord’s Day 21:
“What do you believe concerning the holy, catholic church?”
“That the Son of God, out of the whole human race, from the beginning to the end of the world, gathers, defends and preserves for Himself a Church chosen to everlasting life; and that I am, and forever shall remain, a living member thereof.”
Amen.