16:18
In verse 16 Matthew refers to “Simon Peter”, Jesus here says “You are Peter, and on this rock ,,,”. There is much debate about what “on this rock” means, one of the given answers (obviously rejected by all protestants) is that it refers to Peter in person and leads to the whole doctrine of the papacy. Perhaps Matthew’s use of Simon Peter in v16 is an attempt to remind people that Peter was just a man. Other suggestions include the rock being (i) Christ Himself; (ii) faith in Christ; (iii) the apostles; (iv) Peter’s leading role in the very early days of the church, but not getting into the whole papacy thing.
We should notice the next bot, “I will build my church”. It is Jesus who will build His church. He involves us in what He is doing, and in a very deep way, but it is Jesus who is the master builder. We start going wrong when we think we are the lead builders, with God helping us in what we do. “And the gates of death will not overcome it”. Death is hades, and may mean “powers of death”. The church will face much opposition, but the opposition will not succeed.
16:19
And now to another much debated verse, “I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven”, and then there is the binding and loosing part. The binding and loosing terminology comes from rabbinic teaching where it referred to the rabbis interpretation of the Law. Now it would be the apostles who would provide the foundational teaching on which the church was built. Now, note that this most emphatically does not mean that the Old Testament was out of the window! Rather it was the teachings of the Pharisees and Sadducees that was superseded. The “binding and loosing” does not mean the apostles could make arbitrary statements, but when they taught and preached the word of God faithfully they were speaking with authority (1 Peter 4:11). We do have power to expel demons, but these words here don’t have much to do with that.
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