Previous installments: Introduction, Part 1, Part 2, Part 3
When Jesus came to Cesarea Phillipi with His twelve disciples (μαθητaς, mathētas) (which included Judas), whom He named apostles (ἀποστόλου ὠνόμασεν, apostolous ōnomasen (Luke 6:13), He first asked them, “Whom do men say that I the Son of man am? (Matthew 16:13), and they gave various answers.
Then He narrowed His interest: “Whom do you (ὑμεῖς, humeis)[1] say I am?” (Matthew 16:15). In the next verse we have Peter’s answer:
You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.
Peter was an individual. For whom else did he speak? Sellers deduced from other places in Scripture that ten besides himself agreed, but
there was one, Judas Iscariot, who deep within himself did not agree. This was not his confession of faith. And in view of this, the reply of the Lord is made in an especially guarded manner. He speaks directly to Peter, but each man can include himself in or count himself out. He answers Peter by saying: “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-jona: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but My Father which is in heaven.” Matthew 16:17[2]
That is, the truth Peter spoke
did not come to them from any human source, previous learning, aptitude, or personal ability. Neither did it arise out of race or nationality. It had come to them from the Father in heaven, even as John later would say: “He that believeth that Jesus is the Christ is generated (γεγέννηται, gegennētai) of God. 1 John 5:1[3]
If Peter was blessed, i.e., “fortunate in the highest degree” as Sellers puts it, so were ten others: “His expression was also their confession, and they were not one whit behind Peter in this blessing. They can count themselves in.” He has more to say to them, but He addresses Peter so as not to include Judas indiscriminately among the faithful:
And I say also unto you, that you are rock.
That’s right: not, “You are Peter,” but rather, “You are rock.” He’s describing Peter, and to insist that He’s informing Peter something he already knew is to obscure a profound ekklēsia truth.
Why would the Lord tell Peter that he was Peter? Why would He reply to Peter’s glorious confession with a meaningless statement? And, what would Peter know from this that he did not know before? If anyone should say to me in the midst of a serious conversation, “You are Otis!” I would probably reply: “Thanks for a very useless bit of information. But why tell me something I have known since the age of two?”
The Greek word petros (πέτρος) means “rock,” and that is the way it should be translated. . . . In all that God has said about Himself, He probably uses the word “rock” more than any other to set forth His character.
After citing many Scriptural examples,[4] Sellers claims that “these are sufficient to show that the word ‘rock’ is used to present an exceedingly important aspect of the character of our great God. He is the rock on whom alone we can build.”
Therefore, when the Lord said to His apostles, “I say unto you that you are rock,” He was telling these simple men that they had been given a measure of the character inherent in God, yes, even in Himself. Thus, they were made partakers of the divine nature, and that as “rock,” they were a foundation upon which a superstructure would be erected. This fact is enlightened[5] when we realize that petros is the Greek translation of the Chaldee word cephas, and that cephas means “bedrock.”
Then the Lord delivers a prophecy that has rung in believers’ ears through the ages since He uttered it:
And upon this the rock I will build of Me the ekklēsia. (Matthew 16:18)
“Of me,” not “my.” Let’s peek at the Greek:
καί ἐπί ταύτῃ τῇ πέτρα οἰκοδομήσω μου την
kai epi taute tē petra oikodomēsō mou tēn.
In the first half of this passage (Matthew 16:18) petros is masculine, but here it’s feminine and modified by the feminine article τῇ (tē): this makes it impossible to infer that Jesus intended to build the ekklēsia on Peter.
The change to the feminine denotes that it was the company of apostles upon which the Lord is to build. . . . [T]his small body of men, who had been His ekklēsia since they were positioned as apostles in Luke 6:13, are now declared to be a foundation on which He would erect the greater ekklēsia.
The word mou does not mean “my.” The word “my” would be . . . emos [ἐμός]. Mou [μου] is the genitive singular form of ego, and it means “of me.”
Sellers then drew upon his reader’s familiarity with the story of the Three Little Pigs who declared that they’d build their houses of brick, of wood, and of straw:
It would be good if they also knew that the Lord declared He would build the ekklēsia of Himself. He would take of His God-bestowed glories and give these to others so that they might become what He is in such measure as He determined. By so doing He would be building up His body (substance or essence) upon the earth, even as declared in Ephesians 4:12.[6] This is why He constituted some apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherds, and teachers. If we consider each one of the eighteen gifts . . . listed by Paul in his epistles, we will see that every one of these were first inherent in Jesus Christ before He gave of Himself to others.
. . . Paul, speaking to the ekklēsia company in . . . [Corinth], declares of them that they are Christ’s body, His very essence, and members of a part . . . . He then says that God had placed in the ekklēsia, first, apostles, second, prophets, third, teachers, thereupon, works of power, then graces of healing, supports, pilots, species of languages (1 Corinthians 12:27-28). All these positions, functions, abilities, and characteristics were inherent in Christ, and their manifestation in Corinth was the result of Jesus Christ giving to believing men something of His substance, even His body. Thus, in Corinth was seen the fulfillment of His words: “I in them, and Thou in Me” (John 17:24).
But there would be violent opposition:
The Lord well knew that . . . Satan would try to defeat His announced purpose to build of Himself the ekklēsia. The ekklēsia men became marked men so far as evil principalities and powers were concerned…. But it was the promise of the Lord that the gates (powers) of hades (the state of death) would not prevail against His ekklēsia. Their real service was to be in the Kingdom of God.
When God assumes sovereignty, He will speak their names and they will come forth to be living, working, serving ekklēsia once again. They will already have been equipped and trained to take their places in that great ekklēsia that shall be the cohesive element and the chief characteristic of the government of God.
Our Lord would give to this band of ekklēsia men the power and authority of the Kingdom of Heaven; that whatever they might bind on Earth would be bound in heaven, and whatever they might loose on Earth would be loosed in heaven. This power was not limited to Peter. It belongs to the twelve, and they will yet use it to its fullest extent (Matthew 19:27-28).[7]
During His earthly ministry, Christ went about healing every kind of disease (Matthew 4:23), and commissioned them—and gave them the power—to do the same (Matthew 10:8) while heralding to Israelites the imminence of the Kingdom of God, of which those healings were signs—a Kingdom whose purposes were suspended at Acts 28:28.[8]
To Be Continued
Notes
[1] That is, the KJV’s plural “ye” which English lost (except in Newfoundland, Labrador, and parts of Ireland).
[2] Otis Q. Sellers, “I Will Build of Me,” Seed & Bread, No. 116, November 10, 1979. Quotations of Sellers are from this study.
[3] Not “born,” but generated, as in John 3:3: “You must be generated from above (γεννηθῇ ἄνωθεν, gennethē anothen).
[4] Deuteronomy 32:4, 15, 18, 31; 1 Samuel 2:2; 2 Samuel 22:2-3, 32; Psalm 18:46, 40:2, 61:2, 95:1.
[5] Sellers grabbed the wrong word here: he must have intended “lit up” or “illuminated.”
[6] “. . . for the building up (οἰκοδομην, oikodomēn) of the body (σώματος, sōmatos) of Christ.”
[7] “Then answered Peter and said unto him, Behold, we have forsaken all, and followed thee; what shall we have therefore? And Jesus said unto them, Verily I say unto you, That ye which have followed me, in the regeneration (παλινγενεσίᾳ, palingenesia) when the Son of man shall sit in the throne of his glory, ye also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.”
[8] See various posts on this site about Acts 28:28, e.g., “The Silence of God: Anderson’s book, Sellers’s turning point—Part 5,” July 7, 2022.