Bible Study series: Matthew 16:13-20. What does it mean that Jesus will build his church on “this rock”? What are the keys of the kingdom of heaven?
A warm welcome to this Bible study! I write to learn, so let’s learn together. I also translate to learn. The translations are mine, unless otherwise noted. If you would like to see many others, please click on this link:
In the next link to the original chapter, I comment more and offer the Greek text. At the bottom you will find a “Summary and Conclusion” section geared toward discipleship. Check it out!
In this post, links are provided for further study.
Let’s begin.
Scripture: Matthew 16:13-20
13 As Jesus was going into the region of Caesarea Philippi, he was asking his disciples, saying, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” 14 They said, “Some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, others say Jeremiah or one of the prophets. 15 He said to them, “But you, who do you say that I am?” 16 In reply, Simon Peter said, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” 17 In reply, Jesus said to him, “Blessed are you, Simon, son of Jonah, because flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven has.” 18 And I also say to you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overpower it. 19 I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven. And whatever you have bound on earth will have been bound in heaven, and whatever you have loosed on earth will have been loosed in heaven.” 20 Then he strictly ordered the disciples that they should tell no one that he is the Christ. (Matt. 16:13-20)
Comments:
13:
Caesarea Philippi is way up north, near Mt. Hermon. It was earlier named Paneas, after the god Pan, but was renamed after Caesar and Herod Philip early in the first century. In ancient times, Baal worship was practiced there. When Peter confessed that Jesus is the Messiah, the Anointed One, the Son of the living God, he was declaring that the gods of the past and present (and future) are defeated through Christ (BTSB).
See my posts about the title Messiah and the Son of God:
4. Titles of Jesus: The Son of Man
6. Titles of Jesus: The Son of God
No, Jesus is not asking this question because he is insecure and he wants to find out how popular he is. He’s asking this question to draw out of his disciples their knowledge of him.
“Son of Man”: it both means the powerful, divine Son of man (Dan. 7:13-14) and the human son of man—Ezekiel himself—in the book of Ezekiel (numerous references). Jesus was and still is in heaven both divine and human. It can rightly be translated as “Son of Humanity.”
Once again, see 4. Titles of Jesus: The Son of Man
14:
John the Baptist and Elijah. Jesus quotes this verse from Malachi in Matt. 11:10: “This is the one of whom it has been written: ‘Look! I send my messenger before you, who prepares your road before you’” (Mal. 3:1). The common rumors speak of Messianic expectation, and the people believed in the resurrection from the dead and were expecting Elijah to return, as Malachi predicted (Mal. 4:5-6). Judaism at this time commonly believed that a former prophet would reappear, like Moses, Jeremiah, or Isaiah.
Why Jeremiah in the list? He was known as the weeping prophet, and Jesus proclaimed similar judgment over the nation.
“One of the prophets”: this means Jesus was closely linked to the age of the prophets in the OT.
15-16:
Here is the real test, and Peter’s answer surpasses those of the crowds. Jesus was identified correctly. I get the impression that Peter spoke for all of the eleven. I can easily imagine that the others verbally expressed or nodded their agreement. As we just saw, Matthew’s version says that Peter added, “the Son of the living God.” This is the fullest statement in their cultural context at this time.
By this proclamation of Jesus’s Sonship and Messiahship, Peter has become the example for others to follow. He is now the prototypical leaders for all leaders of all generations. They must depend on wisdom and insight from their heavenly Father. Some commentators call him a “prime minister” of the kingdom or “the representative eschatological missionary, a ‘fisher of men’ par excellence” (Keener, p. 428).
Let’s get into some systematic theology:
“Son of the living God”: Jesus was the Son of the Father eternally, before creation. The Son has no beginning. He and the Father always were, together. The relationship is portrayed in this Father-Son way so we can understand who God is more clearly. Now he relates to us as his sons and daughters. On our repentance and salvation and union with Christ, we are brought into his eternal family.
When Did Jesus “Become” the Son of God?
17:
Jesus proclaims that Peter received this knowledge from the Father in heaven (Matt. 16:13-20), so the Father was breaking though in the disciples’ minds, or at least Peter’s mind.
“blessed”: it is the adjective makarios (pronounced mah-kah-ree-oss) and is used 50 times. It has an extensive meaning: “happy” or “fortunate” or “privileged” (Mounce, pp. 67-71).
“flesh and blood”: this is a circumlocution (roundabout way of speaking) for human ingenuity.
“Son of Jonah”: Peter’s full name was Simon bar-Yoḥanan (Jonathan), which can come into Greek abridged as John (John 1:42) or Jonah (here). it could read “son of John,” but Jesus may be deploying another play on words. Peter is like the prophet Jonah who preached repentance to Gentile Ninevites. Peter is about to welcome Gentiles into the redeemed kingdom community (Acts 10).
18:
Now we come to a tricky verse because churches have fought over it. They have made it overly complicated, in my ever-learning opinion.
The Aramaic word for “Peter” and “rock” was kêphā (pronounced keh-fah), and this comes into Greek as Kephas and then into English as Cephas (John 1:42; 1 Cor. 15:5; Gal. 1:18 and so on), and it can mean “(massive) rock.”
So here is the verse with the Aramaic inserted:
And I also say to you that you are Peter [kêphā], and on this rock [kêphā] I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overpower it. (v. 18).
I used Carson’s commentary for this information about Aramaic, because I don’t know that language.
Blomberg on the meaning of the keys:
[M]ore immediate parallels suggest that one should pursue the imagery of keys that close and open, lock and unlock (based on Isa 22:22) and take the binding and loosing as referring to Christians’ making entrance to God’s kingdom available or unavailable to people through their witness, preaching, and ministry. This entrance to the kingdom will include the forgiveness of sins, tying this text in closely with John 20:23, which displays a very similar structure, and also with Jesus’ use of the phrase “keys of knowledge” in Luke 11:52. (comment on 16:19-20)
That explanation seems balanced to me.
The Reformers of five hundred years ago reacted strongly against Peter being the first pope. So they and many others argued that Jesus meant that the rock is the confession of Peter that Jesus is the Son of the living God. Or the church shall be built on the Son of the living God, himself.
That may be, but the plain meaning says that it is on Peter that Jesus would build his church. Peter would not build it, nor would anyone else. Only Jesus would. There is no successor to Peter spelled out in this verse.
There is no way that Jesus had in mind a mimicking of this (skeletal) Roman class structure:
Emperor = Peter and later popes
Senators = Cardinals
Equites or knights = archbishops
Governors = bishops
Administrators = priests
Or some such hierarchy
Nor did Jesus intend by this one verse this (skeletal) hierarchy in the Medieval Age:
Kings and Emperors = Popes
Dukes = Cardinals
Earls and counts = archbishops
Viscounts and barons = bishops
Administrators = priests
And so on
And now the Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church have carried forward to this day the overly complicated interpretation of this one verse.
Instead, Jesus meant the revelation which the Father gave to Peter and which he spoke for every one of the other apostles. Jesus is simply saying that Peter will take the lead, and the others will have their prominent part. Jesus is about to rebuke Peter (v. 23). Paul rebuked Peter when Peter had unjustly withdrawn from table fellowship with the Gentiles (Gal. 2:11-14). Peter was imperfect. So we shouldn’t build a massive hierarchy on this one verse. Keep things simple and streamlined, which is the direction Jesus took.
“church”: it is the Greek noun ekklēsia (pronounced ehk-klay-see-ah). It comes from the Greek verb ekkaleō or “to call out.” It can be used of an assembly in a non-Christian context (Acts 19:39). It is the assembly or “church” in the wilderness (Acts 7:38; cf. Heb. 2:12). In Acts and the Epistles, it refers to the gathering of the people of God. It translates the Hebrew qāhāl (meeting, assembly, gathering). The Septuagint (pronounced sep-TOO-ah-gent) is a third-to-second-century translation of the Hebrew Bible into Greek. It often (but not always) translates qāhāl as ekklēsia. Therefore, Matthew’s use of ekklēsia is appropriate at this early time in Jesus’s ministry. The noun is not anachronistic because he meant the gathering of his people, not gigantic buildings and cathedrals, overseen by the hierarchy listed above. “A Messiah without a Messianic Community would have been unthinkable to any Jew” (Albright and Mann, quoted in Carson).
“gates of Hades”: It is a metaphor for death or the threshold of death, right before one enters it by dying. Even pagan Greek writers like Homer and the tragedians and conceptual writers and novelists used the imagery of the Gates of Hades (Keener). Here are the OT sources with the same imagery (ESV, and emphasis added):
God is speaking and rebuking Job, before he restores double portion to the suffering man:
Have the gates of death been revealed to you,
or have you seen the gates of deep darkness? (Job. 38:17)
David is praying hard for victory in his personal life:
Be gracious to me, O Lord!
See my affliction from those who hate me,
O you who lift me up from the gates of death (Ps. 9:13)
This psalm is for everyone to take to heart. Let the redeemed of the Lord say so.
17 Some were fools through their sinful ways,
and because of their iniquities suffered affliction;
18 they loathed any kind of food,
and they drew near to the gates of death. (Ps. 107:17-18)
King Hezekiah is in despair because his death seems imminent, but then he was healed. Before then, however, he wrote of his hopelessness:
9 A writing of Hezekiah king of Judah, after he had been sick and had recovered from his sickness:
10 I said, In the middle of my days
I must depart;
I am consigned to the gates of Sheol
for the rest of my years.
11 I said, I shall not see the Lord,
the Lord in the land of the living;
I shall look on man no more
among the inhabitants of the world. (Is. 38:9-11)
Therefore, Jesus, borrowing from this OT imagery, is saying that death will not conquer the kingdom of God. The kingdom is endless and undefeatable. He is about to predict his own death (vv. 21-22), and it cannot defeat him. 1 Cor. 15:26 says the last enemy to be defeated is death. “Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?” (1 Cor. 15:54-55). Jesus and his kingdom shall conquer death; it will not conquer him or his kingdom.
So should preachers continue with the image that Jesus followers must plunder the gates of Hades and rescue people out of it? If these preachers mean that we must rescue people from death, and the sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law (1 Cor. 15:56), then go for it! Unredeemed people are trapped in a “living death.” Carry on the imagery in your preaching. Rescue them from it!
But if preachers mean that we go into Hades by vision or by faith and defeat Satan and his hordes of demons, then this odd interpretation takes things too far. Keep the plain thing the main thing. Don’t “out-insight” the inspired and infallible biblical authors.
Now let’s explore the term hades more generally.
“Hades”: The term is not as clear in the details as we have been taught. It is mentioned 10 times in the NT: Matt. 11:23; 16:18; Luke 10:15; 16:23; Acts 2:27, 31; Rev. 1:18; 6:8; 20:13, 14. And Matt. 11:23 // Luke 10:15 are parallels, so the number of distinct times is actually eight. And hades is not elaborated on in detail, and not even in Revelation, except for some symbolic usage. Hades will even be thrown in the lake of fire (Rev. 20:14).
19:
Jesus is still speaking to Peter, and the pronouns (e.g. “you”) are in the singular, so he is bequeathing authority to him. He is the first among equals.
The imagery of keys in this verse is taken from Is. 22:20-22, where Eliakim is appointed to be the steward or household manager of the house (dynasty or kingdom) of David:
20 In that day I will call my servant Eliakim the son of Hilkiah, 21 and I will clothe him with your robe, and will bind your sash on him, and will commit your authority to his hand. And he shall be a father to the inhabitants of Jerusalem and to the house of Judah. 22 And I will place on his shoulder the key of the house of David. He shall open, and none shall shut; and he shall shut, and none shall open. (Is. 22:20-22, ESV, emphasis added)
Jesus adds an element that is not found in Isaiah. The Messiah gives Peter keys (plural). Multiple keys show that Peter had access to all areas of the king’s household. A porter has just one key to open the main door, as Eliakim had.
So Peter is called to watch over and guide the Christian community of his generation. He is not the king, but a steward or household manager. He has access to the cupboards and larder to feed the community of God. Binding (tying up) and loosing means permitting things and not permitting things. He fulfilled this role admirably, when he was the one who opened the door of the gospel to Jews in Acts 2, when endorsed the mission to Samaritans (Acts 8), and when he obeyed God and proclaimed that Gentiles could be saved and welcomed into the people of God (Acts 10-11). Paul argued for this throughout his epistles, but Peter launched it first, and no one else had his authority to initiate the new global plan (after Jesus in Matt. 28:18-20).
The “keys” may also refer to teaching authority, and the apostolic community, who were inspired to write the New Testament, had special permission and authority that we don’t have today, though I believe those with an apostolic ministry are present among us.
However, as noted, Jesus is not saying that he intends an endless line of successors to Peter, as if the apostle launched religious papal emperors and kings. This political hierarchy takes the original meaning of the verse too far, as we saw with the hierarchy in v. 18. As again noted, Peter was an imperfect household manager, because he was rebuked both before Pentecost and after the outpouring of the Spirit (v. 23) and after the birth of the church during that festival (Gal. 2:11-14).
In fact, Matt. 18:18 expands this authority to the entire church, as it watches over the king’s household to reprove sin in a brother or sister in Christ and perhaps even to excommunicate him or her, as Paul did to the man who had been sinning with his mother-in-law (1 Cor. 5:1-5), and mostly importantly to restore him.
“kingdom of heaven”: Matthew substitutes “heaven” (literally heavens or plural) nearly every time (except for 12:28; 19:24; 21:31, 43, where he uses kingdom of God). Why? Four possible reasons: (1) Maybe some extra-pious Jews preferred the circumlocution or the roundabout way of speaking, but this answer is not always the right one, for Matthew does use the phrase “kingdom of God” four times; (2) the phrase “kingdom of heaven” points to Christ’s post-resurrection authority; God’s sovereignty in heaven and earth (beginning with Jesus’s ministry) is now mediated through Jesus (28:18); (3) “kingdom of God” makes God the king (26:29) and leaves less room to ascribe the kingdom to Jesus (16:28; 25:31, 34, 40; 27:42), but the phrase “the kingdom of heaven” leaves more room to say Jesus is the king Messiah. (4) It may be a stylistic variation that has no deeper reasoning behind it (France). In my view the third option shows the close connection to the doctrine of the Trinity; the Father and Son share authority, after the Father gives it to him during the Son’s incarnation. The kingdom of heaven is both the kingdom of the Father and the kingdom of the Messiah (Carson). And since I like streamlined interpretations, the fourth one also appeals to me.
Now let’s go for a general consideration of the kingdom of heaven / God. As noted in other verses that mention the kingdom in this commentary, the kingdom is God’s power, authority, rule, reign and sovereignty. He exerts all those things over all the universe but more specifically over the lives of people. It is his invisible realm, and throughout the Gospels Jesus is explaining and demonstrating what it looks like before their very eyes and ears. It is gradually being manifested from the realm of faith to the visible realm, but it is not political in the human sense. It is a secret kingdom because it does not enter humanity with trumpets blaring and full power and glory. This grand display will happen when Jesus comes back. In his first coming, it woos people to surrender to it. We can enter God’s kingdom by being born again (John 3:3, 5), by repenting (Matt. 4:17; Mark 1:5), by having the faith of children (Matt. 18:4; Mark 10:14-15), by being transferred from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of the Son whom God loves (Col. 1:13), and by seeing their own poverty and need for the kingdom (Matt. 5:3; Luke 6:20; Jas. 2:5). The kingdom has already come in part at his First Coming, but not yet with full manifestation and glory and power until his Second Coming.
5 The Kingdom of God: Already Here, But Not Yet Fully
Bible Basics about the Kingdom of God
Questions and Answers about Kingdom of God
Basic Definition of Kingdom of God
1 Introducing the Kingdom of God (begin a ten-part series)
Unfortunately (maybe for the readers), we have to discuss some Greek grammar, because Matthew uses a rare construction that goes like this:
The past tense verb + future tense of verb “to be” + perfect participle of a verb.
As I have noted, Matthew’s nickname is the Trimmer. He trims out a lot of small details that Mark and Luke leave in. But not in this case. I also note that Matthew’s Greek itself is very streamlined and gentle. In fact, it is much easier to translate than Luke’s (wordy) Greek. Matthew’s trimming and gentle and sweet and neat Greek must be deliberate, and so is this rare construction. He could have used the past tense and then the future tense, without the complicated syntax (sentence structure). So why would Matthew deploy complicated wording and a rare verb-tense combination?
Most translation go conservative and translate the latter two elements as a simple future:
Whatever you have bound on earth will be loosed in heaven, and whatever you have loosed on earth will be loosed in heaven.
The nuanced meaning of this translation says that Peter initiates, and heaven follows. Is that what Matthew (and even God) intends?
Again, why would Matthew the Trimmer and sweet and neat Greek writer use the more complicated construction? I believe the better translation is how I (and others) render it:
Whatever you have bound on earth will have been bound in heaven, and whatever you have loosed on earth will have been loosed in heaven.
The difference in nuance is clear enough. In this translation, heaven takes the initiative and Peter follows God, not the other way around.
Maybe this expanded version can clarify the difference between the two translations:
Whatever you have bound on earth will have (already) been bound in heaven, and whatever you have loosed on earth will have (already) been loosed in heaven.
I inserted the modifier “already.” Do you now see the difference?
One scholar appeals to Matt. 18:18 to defend the first and typical translation, which uses the same Greek construction of past verb tense + future tense of verb “to be” + perfect participle, in the context of a prayer meeting of the kingdom community. The kingdom people act to bind or loose, and God follows, so humans take the initiative. But the same Greek construction teaches me the opposite. God initiates and guides the church. In a Charismatic, Spirit-filled, and Spirit-guided church, they hear from God and follow him in church discipline and governance. He gives the order. We obey. He leads. We follow.
Is God bound to follow our self-initiated decrees?
Is ‘Decreeing’ Biblical for Christians?
Scroll down to v. 18.
Objection: Matthew’s Greek is Koinē (common), which is substandard and degraded. So there is no way this verbiage can mean anything but a simple future.
Reply: Greek can be as sophisticated as an author intends. Again, why would Matthew the Trimmer and writer of sweet and neat Greek use the more complicated construction? It is obvious that he intends us to read the verse and a future perfect periphrastic.
Once again, before leaving this verse, in the terms binding and loosing, Jesus is simply following the Jewish belief of permitting (loosing) and not permitting (binding). Keener expands on this idea, writing of the Jewish context both here in v. 19 and in 18:18:
In both functions—evaluating entrants and those already within the church—God’s people must evaluate on the authority of the heavenly court; the verb tenses allow the interpretation that they merely ratify the heavenly decree … Jesus’s agents were already exercising this authority in their earlier mission (10:14-15, 40) … Peter must thus accept into the church only those who share Peter’s confession of Jesus’s true identity (cf. John 20:22-23). (p. 430).
Recall what Matt. 10:14-15 and 40 say:
14 And whoever does not welcome you nor listens to your words, as you go outside the house or that town, shake the dust from off your feet. 15 I tell you the truth that it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of judgment than for that town. … 40 Anyone who welcomes you welcomes me, and anyone who welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me. (Matt. 10:14-15, emphasis added)
Blomberg writes:
[O]ne should pursue the imagery of keys that close and open, lock and unlock (based on Isa 22:22) and take the binding and loosing as referring to Christians’ making entrance to God’s kingdom available or unavailable to people through their witness, preaching, and ministry. This entrance to the kingdom will include the forgiveness of sins, tying this text in closely with John 20:23, which displays a very similar structure, and also with Jesus’ use of the phrase “keys of knowledge” in Luke 11:52. Illustrations of Peter’s privilege may then be found throughout Acts 1–12, in which Peter remains at the forefront of leadership in the early Christian proclamation of the gospel. It is also possible that Jesus envisions the unlocking of the powers of heaven to combat the attacking powers of the underworld (comment on 16:19).
So Christian proclamation of the gospel is the ground on which we may bind or loose. But Blomberg adds in the last sentence that we can unlock the powers of heaven to counterattack the powers of hell.
Renewalists will love that idea. They like to loose the powers of heaven and bind the powers of hell.
However, I don’t wish to be the killjoy and “wet blanket thrower” by taking away the command to bind Satan and loose the kingdom of God in Charismatic prayer meetings (which I gladly attend), but we need to follow Scripture. There are other Scriptures to bind Satan, mainly by getting people saved and away from the devil’s authority, and you can certainly pray that the Lord of the harvest would send out workers to expand the kingdom (9:38). And you can certainly pray that God would give wisdom to the church to lead people to come into the kingdom with repentance and the confession of faith that Peter uttered by the revelation from the Father: “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God!” New entrants should believe and confess this from the heart (Rom. 10:9). And you can certainly instruct people to stop and desist, when they are not living the life that the Spirit has for them, like fornication or drugs or homosexual behavior.
Though this verse is talking about the church taking authority over people, it can be expanded to Satanic interference (Keener, p. 430, note 91), particularly if demonized people, like witches, intend to barge into the meeting and create a ruckus. But should these leaders loose angels? Caution! God commands angels. “For he will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways” (Ps. 91:11). Humans don’t command them. They are probably already in your gathering to begin with.
The leaders of these meetings should decide how to fight demons interfering in a Christian meeting.
Then Blomberg says of the translation:
A long and somewhat stalemated debate has centered around the future perfect passive verbs in v. 19. In Classical Greek a reasonable translation of these two verbs (“will be bound” and “will be loosed”) would be “will have been bound” or “will have been loosed” (NIV marg.). Jesus would then be stressing how God’s sovereign initiative is worked out in the church. But in Hellenistic Greek this construction was often roughly equivalent to a simple future passive (as in the main text of the NIV), in which case Jesus teaches that God has delegated his authority to the church, which he leaves to act on its own initiative to bring people into the kingdom, which entrance he then ratifies. A mediating solution, supported by recent linguistic research, may be best with the translation will be in a state of boundedness / loosedness. Jesus’ point, then, will simply be that God promises that all who enter the kingdom do so in accordance with God’s sovereign will, without specifying one way or the other whose action caused whose response. (ibid.)
It looks like he says that we should take the phrases as simple futures, but I’m not so sure. It should be translated with a little more nuance. But I really like the last sentence. Please read it again for clarity.
As I already noted, Peter fulfilled this role wonderfully, when he got the vision from heaven that Gentiles were no longer unclean in themselves, by virtue of being Gentiles, but are now welcome in the ekklēsia or assembly or gathering of God (Acts 10).
Next, some super-extra-confident Word of Faith teachers say that God is bound to his Word. What they don’t realize is that he is not bound to follow their interpretation of Scripture. Yes, we know how things end up in Rev. 21-22 because he told us, so he will follow his plan, not ours. However, in the interim time, he is not bound to heal us or make us wealthy just because we decree it. He may have other plans. Yes, I believe healing is in the atonement, like all other blessings, but God is still sovereign, and we have to ask him for healing.
Why Doesn’t Divine Healing Happen One Hundred Percent of the Time?
We ask, but leave the results in his hands.
20:
“strictly ordered”: “strictly” was inserted because it is implied in the verb. You can leave it out, if you wish.
Once again, why would Jesus not want it bandied around that he was the Messiah? People have to discover things little by little. Also, he did not intend for them to impose their version of the Messiah on himself. Even the twelve disciples, despite Peter’s accurate confession, did not fully grasp at this point who the Messiah really was. Why allow them to spread it around prematurely and not fully and accurately? He was in charge of his identity; they were not. They expected a conquering Messiah who would wipe out the Romans and ride into Jerusalem and keep it by God’s mighty power. Instead, by coming into Jerusalem riding on a colt-donkey (Matt. 21:1-11), he would perplex the high and mighty, like Herod and the Jerusalem establishment, but the little people, like Peter the fisherman, would understand the Messiah’s mission more clearly, though not perfectly clearly, yet. It takes more than just educated, popular guesses, so the crowds could not figure it out. So what was important was to spend time with Jesus to the very end.
Turner writes:
The problem Protestants have with the Roman Catholic teaching concerning Peter is the notion of sole apostolic succession emanating from Peter as the first bishop of Rome … This dogma is anachronistic for Matthew, who knows nothing about Peter being the first pope or of the primacy of Rome over other Christian churches. Matthew would not have endorsed the idea of Peter’s infallibility or sole authority in the church, since Peter speaks as a representative of the other apostles and often makes mistake (15:15; 16:16; 17:4, 25; 19:27; 26:33-35; cf. Acts 11:1-18; Gal. 2:11-14). In 18:18, binding and loosing is a function of the church, not Peter. Peter is later sent by the church and is accountable to the church (Acts 8:14; 11:1-18). James presides over Peter, and Paul rebukes Peter (Acts 15; Gal. 2:11-14). Peter himself speaks of Jesus as the chief shepherd, senior pastor, or pontifex maximus [high priest] of the church (1 Pet. 5:4) (Turner on 16:20).
You can take or leave any or all of his assessment. I agree with it.
Here is a multi-part study of angels in the area of systematic theology, but first a list of the basics.
Angels:
(a) Are messengers (in Hebrew mal’ak and in Greek angelos);
(b) Are created spirit beings;
(c) Have a beginning at their creation (not eternal);
(d) Have a beginning, but they are immortal (deathless).
(e) Have moral judgment;
(f) Have a certain measure of free will;
(g) Have high intelligence;
(h) Do not have physical bodies;
(i) But can manifest with immortal bodies before humans;
(j) Can show the emotion of joy.
Angels: Their Duties and Missions
Angels: Their Names and Ranks and Heavenly Existence
Angels: Their Origins, Abilities, and Nature
GrowApp for Matt. 16:13-20
1. Study Rom. 10:9. What is your confession of faith? Did you believe it from the heart? Tell your story.
RELATED
9. Authoritative Testimony in Matthew’s Gospel
1. Church Fathers and Matthew’s Gospel
2. Archaeology and the Synoptic Gospels
14. Similarities among John’s Gospel and the Synoptic Gospels
1. The Historical Reliability of the Gospels: Introduction to Series
SOURCES AND MORE
To see the bibliography, please click on this link and scroll down to the bottom. You will also find a “Summary and Conclusion” for discipleship.
Dr. Jim's Essential Bible Teaching 