Peter’S Confession
PETER’S CONFESSION
MATTHEW 16:13-20
Suddenly the cumulative effect of recent years came home to Peter: “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God!”
Caesarea Philippi (modern Banyas) was the capital of Philip’s tetrarchy, situated at one of the principal sources of the Jordan; Jesus and the disciples were coming to the end of their visit to the territory bordering Galilee on the north and east.
The question of 16:13 is perennially interesting: by the account people give of Jesus they may not add to our knowledge of him but they throw much light on themselves. For his identification with John the Baptist cf. 14:2; for Elijah cf. 11:14; 17:10ff. As for Jeremiah (in this Gospel only), we may recall his language about the Temple (Jeremiah 7:4,11ff.; 26:2ff.; cf. Matthew 21:12f.; 24:2; 27:40a) and his counsel of submission to the Gentile power (Jeremiah 38:17f.; cf. Matthew 5:41; 22:21). But the personal question of 16:15 was the crucial one. The disciples may have thought of him as the Messiah earlier (cf. John 1:41), but Jesus had shown himself so unlike the Messiah of common expectation that they might well have changed their minds. Peter’s declaration that he was, nevertheless, the Messiah, implied that the Messiah concept was being modified in his thinking into conformity with what Jesus actually was and did and taught. At this stage “the Son of the living God” may have meant little more than that Jesus was the Anointed One to whom, in Psalm 2:7, God says “You are my Son.”
Jesus was filled with joy: that Peter, in spite of all appearances to the contrary, should have reached this conviction was a proof of divine illumination (16:17). Now he could make a beginning and found the new Israel (16:18). The resemblance between “Peter” and “rock” in Greek (Petros and petra) was even closer in the Aramaic in which these words were probably spoken (Kepha … kepha); cf. French: “tu es Pierre et … sur cette pierre je bâtirai mon église”) (Segond).
It is not Peter in his own right, but Peter the confessor, that is the rock. The Church to be built on this rock is the company of those who share Peter’s confession. “The powers of death”—(literally) “the gates of Hades”; the realm of the dead is pictured as a prison-house whose gates will never close on the new community so that it is irretrievably extinguished. The “keys” (16:19) are given to the chief steward as his symbol of authority (cf. Isaiah 22:22). The binding and loosing (forbidding and permitting in rabbinic idiom) may point here to the declaration of forgiveness in the gospel (with the corollary of judgment for the impenitent) and the exercise of Church discipline (with the assurance of ratification in the heavenly court); cf. 18:18. Later we see Peter opening the “door of faith” to Jews in Jerusalem (Acts 2:14ff.,38ff.) and to Gentiles in Caesarea (Acts 10:34ff.). For the preservation of secrecy (16:20) cf. 8:4; 9:30; 12:16.