In Matthew 16:18 Jesus says “I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it.” This is based on Peter’s God inspired understanding of Jesus as the Christ – God’s Anointed and His Son. On the basis of this foundation Jesus promised to build His Church in the face of opposition from the ‘gates of Hades’.

We can deduce two things from this:

1. The enemy (the gates of Hades) will oppose the building of Christ’s Church.

2. Jesus Christ will build His Church despite the opposition!

Jesus went on to state:

“I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.”
Matthew 16:19

In saying this Jesus was indicating the nature of Church authority, that it would be delegated on the basis of His Headship to the Church leaders in this world. This means that those who acknowledge Him as Saviour, Lord and Head are given the responsibility to engage in the heavenly activity of building the Church.

This is in keeping with God’s stated intent for His Church in Ephesians 3:10 that it be through the Church that His wisdom be made known to the principalities and powers in the heavenlies.

This gives us a great burden of responsibility, but also a great encouragement! We are doing heavenly work, eternal work with the authority of our Head – Jesus Christ!

This entry was posted on Monday, December 2nd, 2002 at 12:00 am and is filed under Devotional. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.