Matthew 16:13-20

“The Son of the Living God”

Matthew 16:13-20

The shadows of Calvary were beginning to gather and the Lord desired to prepare His friends for all that it stood for. His questions elicited Peter's magnificent confession.

Notice the date of the Church. It was still future when He spoke. I will build. The materials may have been prepared beforehand, but the actual building began at our Lord's resurrection. He is the Architect. Through the centuries He has been building, and if we are in His Church today, we are there because He excavated us out of the first Adam, and placed us in the very position we now occupy.

The foundations of that Church were not in the Apostle (Petros) but in his confession (petra)of the divine sonship of Jesus. See John 5:18. Its impregnability is attested, for the Lord Himself defends it. See Revelation 2:1.

The gates of Hades, that is, the unseen world, include all the principalities and powers that are allied against God's people. They cannot prevail, Ephesians 6:12.