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There are only two passages in the Gospels where Jesus talks about his “Church,” but a surprising amount can be learned from them!
In this episode, Jimmy Akin looks at the two passages, reveals how Jesus understood his own Church, and compares this with the popular ideas about the Church in non-Catholic communities.
TRANSCRIPT:
Coming Up
The concept of the Christian Church is one of the most prominent concepts in the New Testament.
Church and churches are mentioned more than 100 times.
But there are only 2 passages where Jesus speaks about his Church.
And from these 2 passages, we can learn a surprising amount about Jesus’ Church and how he intended it to be.
Including some things that would surprise many Christians today.
Let’s get into it!
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Howdy, folks!
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Introduction
Today, there are countless churches in the world. Some of them are huge—with thousands of members—while others are tiny—with less than a dozen members.
There are also numerous kinds of Churches. Some are
- Catholic churches
- Eastern Orthodox churches
- Oriental Orthodox churches
- And the many different kinds of Protestant churches
The most historic Christian churches—those that arose before Protestantism did—hold that Christ founded what is sometimes called a Visible Church.
That is, an institution that has clearly defined borders, whose members have been baptized into it or received into it after baptism.
They may be good or bad members—faithful or faithless members—but they’re still members.
It’s also understood that this visible Church has clearly defined leaders who—since the apostles—have been the bishops.
And that these leaders have the authority to make binding laws for those subject to them.
On the other hand, a popular theory in the Protestant community is that Christ did not found a visible Church.
Instead, he founded what is sometimes called an Invisible Church.
Such a Church would not have clearly defined boundaries. Instead, it would be an invisible, spiritual union of all true believers in Christ—whether or not they had been baptized.
And these members would be spread throughout all the different churches and denominations that exist in the world today.
This complicates issues like the Church’s leadership and laws.
I mean, if Christ’s Church is merely the invisible spiritual union of believers across denominational lines, then a believer who is disciplined by one set of leaders for misconduct in breaking the group’s laws could simply pull up stakes and join another, more congenial denomination where he won’t be subject to discipline because the laws are different.
But we’ll set that aside and ask a different question: Which of the two positions—the visible Church idea or the invisible Church idea—is what Christ actually intended?
And can we learn anything else about what Jesus intended his Church to be?
Matthew 16
As surprising as it may be, there are only two passages in the Gospels where Jesus refers to his Church using the term Church, or Ekklesia in Greek.
He refers to his Church in other ways in other passages, but here we’re going to be focusing on when Jesus uses the actual term Church.
The first of these passages is in Matthew 16, where Jesus tells Peter:
Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven.
And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hades shall not prevail against it.
I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven (Matthew 16:17-19).
We’ve talked about this passage in previous episodes. For example, in Episode 36 we saw that there are structural features in the text that demand the Peter be the rock about which Jesus is speaking.
I won’t go through all those again today, but you can check out Episode 36 to see the proof for yourself.
We also talked about the passage in Episode 37, where we showed that when the New Testament speaks of the foundation of the Church in 5 different passages that it uses 5 different metaphors.
So you can’t take the metaphor that is used in one passage and stuff it into another. You must allow the metaphor used here to say that Peter really is the rock in the sense this passage is talking about.
Once again, you can check out Episode 37 to hear the case for yourself.
Finally, we also discussed the passage in Episode 41, where we saw that 3 of the 4 Gospels contain passages in which Jesus gives Peter a unique leadership role among the Twelve apostles. And there’s even a reason why the remaining Gospel doesn’t contain such a passage.
The upshot of all this is that when Jesus says, “You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my Church,” he really is giving Peter a unique and foundational role as the leader of his Church.
Once Jesus goes back to heaven, Peter is in charge of the earthly Church. So that’s the first thing we learn from the passages where Jesus discusses his Church:
- Christ’s Church is Founded on Peter
And since Peter is being appointed leader, we also learn that
- Christ’s Church Has Leaders
There’s also something else that we learn from this statement, since Christ says that the gates of hades will not prevail against his Church.
Modern people aren’t that familiar with the idea of hades, but in Greek thought Hades was The Place of the Dead.
The phrase “gates of hades” appears in the Septuagint version of Isaiah 38, where the prophet records a prayer given by King Hezekiah after he nearly died from an illness. King Hezekiah prayed:
I said, “At the top of my days, at the gates of hades I will leave my remaining years.”
I said, “I will certainly not see the salvation of God any longer in the land of the living (Isaiah 38:10-11, LXX).
Here King Hezekiah speaks about how—in the middle of his days—his illness nearly brought him to the gates of hades—or death. He thought that he would no longer see the salvation of God in the land of the living but—passing through the gates of death—he would drop all of his remaining years at the gates—all of the extra years he should have lived—and enter the realm of the dead.
The gates of hades thus represent passing from life to death, and so by saying the gates of hades will not prevail against his Church, Jesus indicates that his Church will never die, so we can add that to our list:
- Christ’s Church Will Never Die
And that means that:
- Christ’s Church has been Around Since the 1st Century
We can now turn to the next line of what Jesus says to Peter, which begins I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven.
Both Protestant and Catholic Bible scholars recognize this as an allusion to a passage in Isaiah 22, which is the only place in the Old Testament where a key is used as a symbol.
In Isaiah’s day, the royal house of David was overseen by one of the servants of the king named Shebna. But God was displeased with Shebna, and so he sent Isaiah to prophesy:
Thus says the Lord GOD of hosts, “Come, go to this steward, to Shebna, who is over the household, and say to him: . . . Behold, the LORD will hurl you away violently, O you strong man. He will seize firm hold on you and whirl you around and around, and throw you like a ball into a wide land. There you shall die, and there shall be your glorious chariots, you shame of your master’s house. I will thrust you from your office, and you will be pulled down from your station” (Isaiah 22:15-19).
This sets us up for the passage involving the symbol of the key. Isaiah then prophesies what will happen after Shebna is removed from office.
In that day I will call my servant Eliakim the son of Hilkiah, 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. 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 (Isaiah 22:20-22).
Here the key of the house of David symbolizes the authority that Shebna and Eliakim had over the royal house, as illustrated by the statement that He shall open, and none shall shut; and he shall shut, and none shall open.
Jesus updates both of these statements from Isaiah 22 to reflect the new context in which he is using them.
First, Jesus is not just giving Peter the key of the house of David—though, as the messianic successor of David, Jesus could have done exactly that.
But no, Jesus is not interested in running a political kingdom. As Jesus said in John 18:36, “My kingdom is not of this world.”
What Jesus is interested in is in the kingdom of God, which Matthew regularly refers to by substituting the word “Heaven” for God, and so in Matthew 16, Jesus gives Peter the keys of the kingdom of heaven. That is, the kingdom of God or the Church.
Peter was thus being given more expansive authority than Shebna and Eliakim. Instead of ruling over a small Middle Eastern kingdom, Peter was being made the chief steward of the house of great David’s greater Son and his universal kingdom.
And this is not something just recognized by Catholics. In the book Hard Sayings of the Bible, Baptist scholar F. F. Bruce wrote:
The keys of a royal or noble establishment were entrusted to the chief steward or major domo; he carried them on his shoulder in earlier times, and there they served as a badge of the authority entrusted to him. About 700 B.C. an oracle from God announced that this authority in the royal palace in Jerusalem was to be conferred on a man called Eliakim: “I will place on his shoulder the key to the house of David; what he opens no one can shut, and what he shuts no one can open” (Is. 22:22). So in the new community that Jesus was about to build, Peter would be, so to speak, chief steward. In the early chapters of Acts Peter is seen exercising this responsibility in the primitive church (Hard Sayings of the Bible, p. 385).
Now, there’s also something interesting about Jesus’ citation of Isaiah 22, because the office of chief steward was an ongoing one in the house of David. In fact, Isaiah, Shebna, and Eliakim all lived centuries after the time of King David. So the office of chief steward spanned centuries, with different individuals occupying the office.
Isaiah 22 itself is a passage dealing with the succession from one chief steward to another.
Back when I was becoming Catholic, I realized that this itself gives us reason to think that the office Jesus is appointing Peter to is also one that will involve succession. At least, if Jesus’ Church lasts more than one generation, somebody would need to succeed Peter in his office now that Jesus has created the position in his Church.
We may thus tentatively add to the list the fact that
- Christ’s Church has a Succession of Petrine Leaders
Jesus also updates Isaiah’s statement about Eliakim that He shall open, and none shall shut; and he shall shut, and none shall open.
In its original context, in Isaiah’s day in the 8th century B.C., this clearly referred to the chief steward having the highest authority in the house of David. He could do things that no other servant of the king could undo.
But by the first century, when Jesus was speaking, a new idiom had come into usage, and so Jesus said: whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.
To modern readers, this is perplexing. What does “binding and loosing” mean?
Though unclear to us, the answer would have been clear to Jesus’ audience, for binding and loosing was an established mode of Jewish speech, and the 1906 Jewish Encyclopedia explains what is meant:
BINDING AND LOOSING: Rabbinical term for “forbidding and permitting.” . . .
The power of binding and loosing was always claimed by the Pharisees. Under Queen Alexandra, the Pharisees, says Josephus, “became the administrators of all public affairs so as to be empowered to banish and readmit whom they pleased, as well as to loose and to bind.” This does not mean that, as the learned men, they merely decided what, according to the Law, was forbidden or allowed, but that they possessed and exercised the power of tying or untying a thing by the spell of their divine authority, just as they could, by the power vested in them, pronounce and revoke an anathema upon a person. The various schools had the power “to bind and to loose”; that is, to forbid and to permit; and they could bind any day by declaring it a fast-day. This power and authority, vested in the rabbinical body of each age or in the Sanhedrin, received its ratification and final sanction from the celestial court of justice.
In the New Testament
In this sense Jesus, when appointing his disciples to be his successors, used the familiar formula. By these words he virtually invested them with the same authority as that which he found belonging to the scribes and Pharisees who “bind heavy burdens and lay them on men’s shoulders but will not move them with one of their fingers”; that is, “loose them,” as they have the power to do (Matt. 23:2–4). (1906 Jewish Encyclopedia, s.v. “Binding and Loosing”).
So binding and loosing was a Jewish idiom referring to the power to forbid things and permit things. In other words, to make authoritative rules of conduct—or laws—for the community of faith.
In Matthew 18, Jesus gave the power to bind and loose to Peter, and so he gave Peter the authority to make laws for the Christian community.
From this we can conclude that:
- The Church of Christ Has Laws
Matthew 18
We’ve already got a good start on how Jesus understood his Church, but now let’s turn to the other passage where Jesus uses the term, and that is in Matthew 18.
This is part of Matthew’s discourse that encapsulates Jesus’ teaching on internal Church discipline, and here we find Jesus saying:
If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother.
But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses.
If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. And if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.
Truly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven (Matthew 18:15-18).
Here there are several things we can learn. The first is that we are dealing with sin and discipline within the Church, for Jesus says if your brother sins against you—that is, a brother Christian.
Jesus wants Christians who have been wronged to try to solve problems on the lowest level possible.
Thus he wants us to first go to the person that wronged us and try to work things out.
Then, if that doesn’t work, take a couple of other people along.
Finally, if that doesn’t work, present the case to the Church.
What we see is the principle that interpersonal conflict should be dealt with at the lowest level possible, and there is wisdom in doing it this way.
In the first place, if you initially approach someone directly and privately, you likely have a better chance of success. If you’re talking to someone privately, you’re showing him the courtesy of not airing his dirty laundry in public. He will be less defensive and more likely to reach an agreement than if you started by making his misdeeds public.
Also, what Jesus is advising is in line with the golden rule of
Whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them (Matthew 7:12).
Well, if someone believes that you have wronged them, what would you want? Would you want them to approach you about it privately or would you want them to go behind your back or make your alleged fault public?
Almost everybody would want to be approached directly and privately, so we have an obligation to approach then directly and privately.
And I really wish people would follow this principle. Over my life I’ve seen so many situations made worse by people failing to honor the golden rule and starting by going behind someone’s back.
People are excellent at self-justification, and so they’re excellent at making excuses to justify this. They’ll say that, well, this person might strike back if I confront them privately. I need to start by getting bigger guns on my side, so I’ll be safe.
But Jesus didn’t urge us to deal with perceived wrongs in the safest way possible. Safety is not his highest priority. Love is. And he wants us to deal with problems in the most loving way possible.
Also, if you don’t do that—if you deal with it in a less loving way and begin by going behind someone’s back or shouting their perceived wrongs from the housetops—it will generate an unloving response in return. You might or might not win a momentary battle, but you’re likely setting yourself up for retaliation down the line.
I’m not saying that there are no situations in which deviating from the principle that Jesus lays down in Matthew 18 is warranted, but such situations are rare. We are not to leap to that solution, much less make a habit of it.
I know it’s hard, but in the large majority of situations, we really need to follow the principle that Jesus lays down in Matthew 18 and start with direct, private conversations when we think someone has wronged us.
But suppose that—in a particular case—this doesn’t work. Neither does bringing along others. And so we ultimately have to take the matter to the Church.
What happens if the person won’t listen even to the judgment of the Church? In that case, Jesus says to let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.
In this context, Gentiles and tax collectors were outsiders—people who were not accepted as members of the Jewish community.
Gentiles were not members of the Jewish community at all, and tax collectors were people who were despised as sell-outs to the Romans who were oppressing their fellow Jews by engaging in Roman tax farming—and, usually, collecting excessive amounts.
So what Jesus is sayings is that if your brother Christian wrongs you, and if he won’t listen even to the Church, then treat this person who was formerly an insider as if he were an outsider.
What this shows us is that the Church—as Jesus conceives it—has a clear membership. There are insiders, people who are members and known to be members.
And there are outsiders, people who are non-members—either because they never joined or because they have been expelled.
In other words, the Church is a visible one. It’s not an invisible spiritual union of all true believers. There would be no way to know who is or isn’t a member in an invisible union.
So we can add to our list:
- Christ’s Church Has a Visible Membership
And that’s not all, because—later on in history—we developed a term for treating former insiders as a Gentile or a tax collector—as an outsider. By expelling that person from communion with the Church, the Church has Excommunicated that person.
So we can also add that:
- Christ’s Church Has Excommunication
And in order to impose such a sentence, the Church must have judicial proceedings, so we can add that:
- Christ’s Church Has Judicial Proceedings
Judicial proceedings—of course—involve the application of laws, and so it’s no surprise that the next thing Jesus said was Truly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.
So this underscores—once again—the fact that:
- Christ’s Church Has Laws
Here in Matthew 18, we see Jesus sharing the power of binding and loosing—or the ability to make laws—more broadly than just with Peter.
Only Peter received the keys of the kingdom, but the power to bind and loose is shared with Church leadership more broadly.
Conclusion
We’ve thus been able to determine rather a lot from the two passages where Jesus refers to his Church using that term.
We’ve seen that:
- Christ’s Church is Founded on Peter—since Jesus said he would build his Church on him
- This means that Christ’s Church Has Leaders
- And—since Christ is basing the keys he gives to Peter off the successive office of the chief steward of the house of David, that suggests that Christ’s Church has a Succession of Petrine Leaders
- Since he gave Peter and others the power to bind and loose, that means Christ’s Church Has Laws
- Christ’s Church thus Has a Visible Membership that is subject to those laws
- But if someone disobeys the laws, Christ’s Church Has Judicial Proceedings
- And one of the penalties that can result is expulsion since Christ’s Church Has Excommunication
- Since the gates of hades will not prevail against it, this means that Christ’s Church Will Never Die
- And that means that Christ’s Church has been Around Since the 1st Century
So, how well do contemporary groups fit Jesus’ understanding of his Church?
We’ll start with the Protestant ones, which typically assume the invisible Church model. How does that compare to what Jesus says?
Not well. There are multiple factors here that indicate Jesus is talking about a visible Church, not an invisible one.
- Jesus gives Peter the “keys” to his kingdom, following the custom of the chief steward of the house of David in the Old Testament. Peter is thus the chief steward of the house of the new David. By instituting Peter as his chief steward, Jesus makes Peter the Church’s earthly leader in his absence. But an invisible, non-institutional set of believers needs no earthly leader.
- Jesus gives Peter the authority to bind and loose, which have reference to the establishment, modification, and repeal of authoritative rules of conduct for the community. But an invisible set of believers needs no such disciplinary rules. Only visible institutions do.
- In Matthew 18, Jesus indicated that the Church has judicial proceedings to deal with erring members, and judicial proceedings are things that a visible church rather than an invisible union of believers has.
- Further, he indicates that his Church has the power of excommunication, so it can expel members. But an invisible body has no need of the power of excommunication. Only visible, institutional bodies need the ability to shear off diseased members who are trying to remain within it.
Since Jesus indicates that his Church will be a visible Church, that disproves the common Protestant idea of the Church as an invisible union.
This also means none of the Protestant churches correspond to the full reality of Jesus’ church, since Jesus founded his Church in the first century, and it has been around since then. However, the Protestant churches only go back to the 1500s, and so none of them have the reality of what Jesus said his Church would.
What about the other more historic branches of Christianity—churches like the Eastern and Oriental Orthodox that were around before Protestantism arose?
These churches do have roots that go back to truly ancient times, and so—like the Catholic Church—they can appeal to that fact. But the divisions that exist between these bodies—not to mention schisms that exist within them—mean that they aren’t all united.
At various points in history, separations occurred, and that leads to the question of who separated from whom. On this, there are different claims.
The first split to occur was between the Oriental Orthodox and other Christians. According to Oriental Orthodox, other Christians separated from them. But according to the other Christians, the reverse was true.
The next major split was between Eastern Orthodox and Catholics. According to Eastern Orthodox, Catholics split from them, but according to Catholics, the reverse is true.
Sorting out who separated from whom is a tricky matter that involves a lot of subjectivity, but from my perspective, one of the best ways to cut through the confusion is to look back at what Jesus intended for his Church based on what he says in Matthew 16 and 18.
We know that he founded his Church on Peter, and so—if you wanted to be part of Jesus’ Church during the apostolic age—you needed to be in union with Peter.
The question for us is: What about later ages? Is Peter meant to have a successor?
As I pointed out in this video, the office that Jesus gives to Peter—being chief steward of the house of the new David—is based on an office that was successive. There were chief stewards of the original house of David for centuries, and the passage that Jesus is citing in giving Peter his commission itself involves the succession from one chief steward to another.
That strongly suggests that—if Jesus did not return in the first century—that Peter’s office would also have successors.
Furthermore, if Jesus determined that his Church needed a leader in the first century—when it was tiny and only had a few thousand members—then it would obviously need one today, when the Christian community is literally billions of people.
I thus think that the idea that Christ’s Church is meant to have a succession of leaders stemming from St. Peter—that is, a succession of popes—is very well grounded.
And that tells us which of the more historic branches of Christianity fully corresponds to Jesus’ intentions for his Church: It’s the Catholic Church.
Now, there’s obviously more that we can say about all this, and we’ll discuss it further in future episodes.
But if we look at what Jesus actually had to say about his Church—even just in the passages where he uses that term—it’s clear that, if you want to honor the will of Christ and be part of the Church he founded, you need to be Catholic.
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