2013년 9월 15일 주일 영어예배 설교
마태복음 16:18

The Church on the Right Confession
(Matthew 16:18)

‘Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God’. We confirmed that only this confession is the right confession among a lot of misconceptions of Jesus. The reason why we firmly grasp this confession to be true is that Jesus acknowledged this confession about himself to be true. And the reason why we have to confirm the right confession is that Jesus Christ declared that he would establish His own church on the confession, ‘Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God’, and has performed His own plan through the churches which are on this right confession. Today, we are going to be appreciating which churches are right churches among so-called churches on the earth and what the churches are.

Only the churches based on this right confession are God’s churches and they play their own particular role on the earth. In verse 18, ^‘And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church.’ Jesus said that he would build his church on this rock. Here, ‘this rock’ means the confession Peter told: ‘Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God.’ This verse doesn’t mean that Jesus would build his church on Peter himself, but means the confession of Peter. Meanwhile, Roman Catholicism regards the term ‘Peter’ and the term ‘this rock’ as identical, so they consider that the church was built on the Peter’s personality or faith. Therefore, Roman Catholicism has insisted that the pope is the one who is a legal successor of Peter, and the pope has control over churches. But this interpretation of the Bible verse is erroneous, which doesn’t correspond with the grammatical rules and the contextual flow of the text of the Bible. When Jesus used these words, ‘Peter’ and ‘this rock’, he meant different things respectively even though he emphasized relations with ‘Peter’ because ‘this rock’, the right confession, is from Peter’s mouth. So the church that Jesus would build must be on this confession, ‘Jesus is the Christ, the Son of living God’, as Jesus stated.

In verse 18, Jesus continually describes the church: ‘and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.’ In here, Jesus declares that the church will be victorious and will last forever. Here, ‘the gate of hell’ has a comprehensive meaning, but this phrase, in short, means ‘death power’, the greatest and only enemy that humans can’t subdue, humans are doomed to die. But the death can’t prevail against only the church. The only church that the power of death is not able to beat is the church based on the right confession.

There have been countless churches on the earth in history. But only the churches on the confession, ‘Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God’, are God’s churches, namely the right churches. Now we need to confirm a couple of concepts to understand the meaning of the right church. First, we need to briefly review the meaning of ‘Jesus is the Christ’. The Christ means ‘the anointed one’. There are three offices to be anointed: king, prophet, and priest. They are in charge of ruling, declaring the truth, and forgiving people’s sins, respectively. The very one who performs all the office’s duties at the same time and has been prophesied for the offices in the Old Testament is Jesus, the only Christ. So churches should be on this confession: ‘Jesus is the Christ’. But there have been a lot of churches without this confession in history. Of course, most of them have said “Yes, Jesus is our king, yeah, his words are truths, and our sins are forgiven through Jesus’ name.” However, when these crucial modifiers are added, like ‘only’ and ‘absolute’, they react like this: “well…”, “um… may be…”, “I’m not sure”, “I don’t think so”, and “It is a bit too awful… I think…” And they say “we believe in Jesus, but they also have their own god and the way to be saved.”, “we have to admit the variety of religions, and respect others’ religion with spirit of generosity and love.” So they have always tried to exist in concord with other religions as if they practice the benevolent spirit of Christianity. In these cases, the churches are not on the right confession. This means that God doesn’t acknowledge them as His own churches. They are not the churches of God at all even though they call themselves churches or they and other religions acknowledge them as churches.

The teaching of the Bible is that God of Christianity is the one and only God in the universe. Other gods are the productions of humans. Only God’s Words are the absolute truth. To believe in Jesus is the one and only way to be saved. It is the Bible that teaches us: “Do you really want to love your neighbors? Then say to them that God in the Bible is the one and only God for their soul and do your best to lead them to this truth, not just concede their fake religions laughing indulgently.” “Do you really want this world to be peaceful and harmonious world? Then say politely to them this teaching of the Bible that says there is no possibility of a perfect world until the second coming of Jesus Christ, and we have to do our best to make this world peaceful and harmonious as Christians, not just join hands with other religions with vague hope.”, “Do you really want to live a humble life and respect others? Then first be humble before God’s absolute truths and respect them with all your heart, not just be humble before other religions’ fake way and respect their own way.” God says “you shall have no other gods before me” (Exodus 20:3), “to you it was shown, that you might know that the LORD is God; there is no other besides him.” (Deuteronomy 4:35). God is not the best god or the greatest god, but the unique one God. Jesus says “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” (John 14:6). The Apostle Paul says “And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.” (Acts 4:12). Therefore, when it comes to the church of God, we should clarify whether the churches are only on the confession, ‘Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God,’ or on other confession(s) or take other confessions at the same time.

Second, we have to examine what a church is. Maybe to explain what a church is will take all day. However, we have to know about this even briefly because confirming this concept is very important to understand today’s subject. Above all, let’s define history. What is history? Why does history exist? There have been many suggested definitions of history, “Human history is a history of war.”, “The repeat of a struggle for power is a history”, “A history is a conversation between the past and the present”, “A history is a history of economy.”, and “A history is a collection of an individual history.” and so on. Then, what does the Bible say of history? The Bible says that ‘a history is the redemptive history’ by God. This means that the history exists for redemption of His chosen people. The stage is the earth. Of course, the process of the redemptive history itself is declaring the glory of God. For this, all tangible and intangible things in the spaces and time are used. And the Bible says that there is the end of the history. That is to say, when this work of God ends, Jesus Christ will come again as promised in the Bible. And the day is the end of the earth, Judgment Day. The center of this work of God is “the church on the earth.” God has developed this redemptive history of His own through the churches on the earth. So the Bible describes the churches on the earth as the main organization in history. This is one of the important concepts of the church.

The second main concept of the church is that the word ‘church’ used in today’s text in Greek is ‘ekklesia’ which means ‘call together out of’. That is, the church means a group of people and an individual at the same time who are called out of, and in some cases, the term was used to indicate the church building itself in the New Testament. Out of where have the people been called together? Yes, out of sins, the realm of the fall. And according to the Bible, there are two kinds of churches. The visible church and the invisible church. The invisible church is the pure group consisted of only God’s chosen people as an intangible group. The visible church is the group which the chosen people get mixed up with unchosen people as a tangible group like this world, we can think of typical churches around us. As we know, we can’t just recognize some people as chosen on the ground that they enroll in a local church in their village or they have attended Sunday worship in a church for 30years. Therefore, the churches on the earth are bound to be imperfect. Of course, we can’t tell certainly who the unchosen is, the weeds. So we call the former, ‘perfect church’ and the latter, ‘imperfect church’. So, in the strict sense, the real church is the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, what we should do is not to be interested in whether who is a real church member or not, but to recognize the identity of the church and fulfill each role during his or her life as a Christian, one of the church members.

I introduced a couple of conceptions of what the church is very briefly. At least according to only what we have seen today, God’s church is the central organization on the earth in history in God’s redemptive history, and the church is the group consisted of the chosen people. Jesus declared to build this church on the very confession, ‘Jesus is the Christ and the son of the living God’. Therefore, God’s church must be on the confession, and if some church is on this confession the church should recognize this identity of God’s church.

Everyone, we should live as church members. We should know what is going on in history. We should believe the end of the world as God promised in the Bible. Moreover, regardless of the end of the world, our lives’ end is quickly coming. We must not live fixing our eyes only on the things on the earth forgetting who we are and what is going on in history, the wonderful secret of the Bible that has been only revealed to the chosen people, the reborn. I hope you will be able to confess ‘Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God’, and to live as the members of the churches on this confession.