THE ROCK

The passage in Matthew 16 about Peter as the rock has stirred several interpretations, all of which have some value but don't seem to finish our questions.

  When we look at it in Greek, several doors open.  The Sadducees and Pharisees have been challenging Jesus, so He warns His disciples about them. Jesus leaves the region of Magadan, to go to Caesarea Philippi.  Caesarea Philippi is north, near the Mediterranean where cool breezes blow.  It is comfortable, a port of many ships and travelers bringing different philosophies from different lands.

  So Jesus will now ask His own disciples if they know who He is out of all the contending, entangling opinions about God.  Do they know who He is and who God is?  This is the question He will ask them.

  First, the disciples say what other people have said.  Some say He is John the Baptist; some say He is Elijah or one of the prophets.  So Jesus then points His words at His own disciples, But who do you say that I am? Matt. 16.15.

  Peter blurts out, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the Living God.
  Jesus, ecstatic, then says, ..flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but My Father who is in heaven.

  Then Jesus continues with the statement which has so many responses.  He says to Peter, You are Peter and upon this rock I will build My church, Matt. 16.18.

  The Greek that Matthew uses opens up several interpretations.  The word for rock is petra.  This word is in the neuter gender.  The Greeks did not like to leave a word in the neuter by itself, they liked to connect the neuter with a masculine or feminine word.  So Matthew has given petra a feminine article, ten, to go with the feminine word, tauten, or 'this' as in 'this rock.'

  So is there a feminine word to which 'this rock' can be attached?  The only feminine word is ten ekklesia, the church.  Tauten is not a personal pronoun, so 'this rock' cannot refer to Peter, or petros. What Peter says is being said to the church.

  What is in the verse just before v.18 is, flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but My Father who is in heaven.  This leads us to Matthew 14 where Jesus is walking on water.   Peter comes out, falls into the water due to a lapse of faith, and Jesus saves him.  When Jesus and Peter get in the boat, the disciples say, You are certainly God's Son, Matt. 14.33.  Now this was not revealed to the disciples by God the Father, they saw what they saw, concluding that only God could do that.  Nicodemus says something similar when he says, ..No one can do the signs You do unless God is with him, John 3.2.

  But Peter did not say what he said because it was evident, rather he blurted out without reservation as the Father burst it into him.  Jesus will say later in John 17 that, The words which Thou gave Me I have given to them and they received them and truly understand that I came forth from Thee and they believed that Thou did send Me.  In John 8.18 Jesus says, I am He who bears witness of Myself and the Father who sent Me bears witness of Me.  In 8.29 Jesus says, He who sent Me is with Me..  And yet when Jesus said the Father sent Him, the Jews pick up stones to throw at him, John 8.59.

  We can now say the Father gave Peter what he was to say, Peter said it without hesitation.  Peter said that Jesus came from the Father.  This the Jewish religious leaders could not accept, but Peter has.  Consequently Peter becomes the apostle to the Jews, first in Antioch and then later on to Rome.  However, Peter does not take an spiritual authority away from the men and women in the local church.  In 1 Peter 5.1 he calls himself a sumpresbuteros, a fellow elder with the other elders. Not chief elder or bishop but one of several.

  This could only be done through the power of the Holy Spirit.  What this means to us is that the church is built on the gifts of the Spirit to Christians, not on the authority of the leaders.  Peter seems to be saying this when he says, 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, 1 Peter 2.5.