"And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it" (Mt 16:18).
Matthew 16:18 is perhaps one of the main passages used by proponents of the "two people" of God view. It was certainly the verse (along with Gen. 12, 15 and 17) that I fell back on when I was a dispensationalist trying to defend my position. I remember teaching on it and thundering, "if the Church and Israel are the same then Jesus wouldn't have used a future tense verb (will build:οἰκοδομήσω) when referring to His church!" Ahh, the arrogance. Silly me. Yet, this is the argument that still is used by many that maintain discontinuity between the O.T. saints and the N.T. saints. Converse with a dispensationalist on this issue and almost guaranteed this passage and argument will pop up. The argument goes goes something like this: "Had the Lord wanted to communicate that the Church existed in the O.T. He would have used an imperfect verb instead of a perfect one when referring to the building of His Church." Admittedly this argument seems persuasive, until you examine all the Scriptural evidence.
It's important to understand that there is a distinction between ethnic Israel and the Church. That's obvious. I'm not walking around claiming to be Jewish. But a nationality wasn't the point. When God called Israel unto Himself, they were to be ultimately a "called out" spiritual people. They were an "ekklesia," an assembly of people. Interestingly the word "ekklesia" is used in the Septuagint (Greek translation of the O.T.) when referring to the gathering of God's people- Israel. This is the same term that is applied to the N.T. saints as well. The obvious understanding would be that all saints of all time constitute the "ekklesia"- the Church of Christ, where there are no national distinctions.
We do not deny that there was a national aspect in the Mosaic economy. We believe that the national aspect was both fulfilled and condtional (see my post on Abraham and God's People). It was also a foreshadowing of the N.T. manifestation of God's "ekklesia." All the promises and covenants are met fully in Christ alone. Anyone that becomes a participant in these blessings must be in union with Christ the "offspring" of Abraham (Gal. 3:16).
So what of this future tense verb "will build" in Matthew 16:8? The answer is that the Church of God was about to under go a reconstitution. No longer were His people to marked out by outward circumcision and nationality but by the circumcision of the heart that is made without hands (Ro. 2:28-29, Col. 2:11-12). The arrival of the New Covenant had come and was about to be inaugurated. Gentiles were to be grafted into God's people (Ro. 11). The "ekklesia" of God was going to look drastically different. No longer was there going to be a Jew/ Gentile distinction and no longer would the Gentile be treated inferior to the Jew. The beauty of the New Covenant! I believe this has much bearing on why Christ used a future tense verb. He started with the "lost sheep of the house of Israel" (Matt. 10:6) and rejected as the Messiah, He then turned to the Gentiles calling them a people who were not His people (Ro. 9:25-26, Hos. 2:23). Again, the future tense, I believe, refers to the change in who constitutes the people of God and this is to be seen with the inclusion of the Gentile believers. We are one flock not two (John 10:16).
R.T. France writes this on Matt. 16:18: "The metaphors of (foundation) rock and of building go together, and the latter will be used frequently in the NT for the development of the church, often linked with the idea of a new temple to replace the old one in Jerusalem (e.g. Mark 14:58; 1 Cor 3:9–17; Eph 2:19–22; 1 Peter 2:5); the metaphor of a new temple has already been introduced by Matthew in the reference to 'something greater than the temple' in 12:6, and will underlie much of the language about the destruction of the temple in ch 24 and the charge that Jesus planned to destroy and rebuild the temple in 26:61; 27:40. But modern English usage, in which 'church' often denotes a physical structure, is liable to obscure the way this metaphor works here. When Jesus speaks of 'building his church,' the foundation rock and the verb 'build' are the solid images on which the metaphor relies, but the word 'church' does not contribute to the physical imagery. The Greek term ekklēsia never denotes a physical structure in the NT, but always a community of people. The new temple is not a building of literal stones, but consists of 'living stones' (1 Peter 2:5).
Ekklēsia was a common Greek term for an 'assembly' of people (political and social as well as religious), but in a Jewish context it would be particularly heard as echoing its frequent LXX use for the 'assembly' of the people of God, which thus denotes the national community of Israel. But now Jesus speaks with extraordinary boldness of 'my ekklesia'—the unusual Greek word-order draws particular attention to the 'my.' The phrase encapsulates that paradoxical combination of continuity and discontinuity which runs through the NT’s understanding of Jesus and his church in relation to Israel. The word is an OT word, one proudly owned by the people of Israel as defining their identity as God’s people. But the coming of Israel’s Messiah will cause that 'assembly' to be reconstituted, and the focus of its identity will not be the nation of Israel, but the Messiah himself: it is his assembly. How much of this theology of fulfillment the disciples could have been expected to grasp there at Caesarea Philippi is debatable, but for Matthew and his readers, as members of the Messiah’s ekklēsia, the phrase would aptly sum up their corporate identity as the new, international people of God" (The Gospel of Matthew. The New International Commentary on the New Testament).
And William Hendriksen this in his Baker New Testament Commentary: "The figure of a building to represent the church is found also in such passages as I Cor. 3:9; Eph. 2:21, 22; I Peter 2:4, 5. Little by little the building goes up. It increases in strength, beauty, and usefulness, its members being considered 'living stones.' In building his church Jesus makes use of Peter and of the other apostles. In fact, he makes use of all the living members of the church to accomplish this purpose.
The expression 'my church' refers, of course, to the church universal, here especially to the entire “body of Christ” or “sum-total of all believers” in its New Testament manifestation, wherever it is truly represented on earth (cf. Acts 9:31; I Cor. 6:4; 12:28; Eph. 1:22, 3:10, 21; 5:22–33; Col. 1:18; Phil. 3:6). It is a great comfort that Jesus considers this church 'his very own.' Did he not come from heaven in order to purchase his church 'with his own blood' (Acts 20:28)?
We are a spiritual people- one Shepherd with one flock, not two. "And I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd"(Jn 10:16). Soli Deo Gloria
For His Glory,
Fernando
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