I say also unto thee, that thou art PETER, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.
The way of giving a new name to an eminent person, more immediately concerned in any great transaction; a name, expressive of that transaction, and therefore proper to fix and perpetuate the memory of it; this custom, I say, was of known use in the ancient world. Thus, when God renewed his covenant with Abram, and engaged to multiply him exceedingly, the name of this patriarch was changed to Abraham; which name, in the Hebrew language, signifies the father of a great multitude[287]: and, for a like reason, the patriarch Jacob took the name of Israel[288]; to omit many other instances of this usage, which occur in the sacred scriptures.
Just so, when one of the Apostles, known before by the name of Simon, had made a memorable confession of his Master’s being the Christ, the son of the living God, i. e. the redeemer, the prince of Israel, the Messiah foretold, our blessed Lord, to give weight and emphasis to this confession, confers a new name upon him. For he answered and said unto him, Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-Jona; for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven: That is, no man hath revealed this great truth to thee, nor has any interest of man, any thing, indeed, but the spirit of God, influencing thy impartial and well-disposed mind, prompted thee to entertain and avow it thus heartily and publicly (the proofs of it not being, at present, so strong, as they hereafter shall be): Therefore, to express my approbation of this great testimony to a truth, which is the fundamental article of my religion, and, at the same time, to signify to thee the honour, with which I mean to reward thee for it, I further say unto thee, Thou art Peter, and upon this rock will I build my Church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.
The name, Peter, signifying a rock in the Greek language, implies, we see, the immoveable truth of the confession, here made, on which the Christian religion was to be built; and the immoveable firmness, too, of the Confessor, who should have a share, with the other Apostles, in supporting the whole fabric, and be himself, in point of time, the first stone, on which the glorious superstructure was to be made.
It follows—and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it—that is, Death, or Destruction (for that, only, the oriental phrase—the gates of hell—here signifies[289]) shall never prevail against this church, being founded on thee, and the testimony, made by thee, as on a rock of ages, which shall never give way, or be removed.
We see, then, the full meaning of this famous text, which contains, in effect, TWO prophecies: ONE, respecting the foundation of the Christian church, and (so far as the Apostle Peter was personally concerned in the prediction) then verified, when Peter laid the first stone of this august building in the converts made by him both among the Jews[290] and Gentiles[291]: the OTHER prophecy, respecting the perpetuity of this church; which the divine Providence would, in no future age of the world, permit to be destroyed.
So that, not the supremacy of Peter over the rest of the Apostles (as the church of Rome vainly pretends), but the priority of his claim, in point of time, to signal services in the conversion of mankind, is expressed in this memorable promise made to Peter—on this rock will I build my church: and, for the second assurance, here given, and which, to so zealous a master-builder, as our Apostle, must have been singularly welcome—that the gates of hell shall never prevail against it—we may, now, by the experience of more than seventeen hundred years, understand, how far it has been, and how likely it is, in the full extent of the words, to be fulfilled.
But, to see little more distinctly what this experience is, and what presumption arises out of it for the truth of our holy religion, let us call to mind, if you please, the more remarkable of those attacks, which have been made, at different times, on the church of Christ, and yet how constantly and successfully they have been repelled.
I. No sooner had the foundations of the church been laid on the rock of this testimony—that Jesus was the Christ, the Son of God—than the storms of persecution arose, and beat violently upon it. Nor was it, indeed, strange, that this new doctrine, published every where, with great boldness, by men who had been eye-witnesses of what they affirmed, and calculated to overturn all the favourite maxims and usages of the world, should meet with the fiercest opposition. And how easy did it seem for that world to crush the infant society, now struggling for life in the hands of twelve poor, illiterate, and friendless men, if the decree of Heaven had not gone forth—that the gates of hell should not prevail against it!
I know, indeed, that this violence of persecution was, in the end, of advantage to the Christian cause; and, from the nature of the human mind, when once persuaded of any thing, true or false, might be expected to be so. For cruelty, in such cases, only excites an unconquerable firmness and perseverance. But what was persuasion in succeeding converts to the gospel of Christ, was knowledge, or rather the infallible evidence of sense, in the first publishers of it. The Apostles witnessed a matter of fact, when they made known the resurrection of Christ, on which their whole doctrine rested. And it is not in nature for any single man, much less for twelve men, to suffer, and to die, for a false fact, not taken upon trust from others, but asserted on their own proper and personal experience. If Jesus did not rise from the dead, they neither saw, nor felt, nor conversed with him after his resurrection, that is, they had no persuasion for force to harden into obstinacy, but a consciousness of falshood in their attestation, which could not have held out against the rage of their persecutors[292].