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THEMATIC INTRODUCTION
The Church in The Mind of Jesus |
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By Dave DeVoll,
Editor, Truth Matters Garland, Texas |
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Matthew 16:13-19, “When Jesus came into the region of Caesarea Philippi, He asked His disciples, ‘Who do men say that I, the Son of Man, am?’ So they said, ‘Some say John the Baptist, some Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.’ He said to them, ‘But who do you say that I am?’ Simon Peter answered and said, ‘You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.’ Jesus answered and said to him, ‘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 also say to you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build My church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it’” (Matt. 16:13-18 NKJV).
Some religious teachers—both liberal and evangelical—are fond of saying that Jesus didn’t originally plan to start a new religion or church. This, of course, is consistent with the liberal view that Jesus is not God and that the Bible is not the inspired Word of God. They say that He only gradually came to understand His mission, or that the crucifixion was a great disappointment to Jesus because He had expected to be made a king and had therefore made no provision for a church. Some evangelicals also believe that Jesus came to be a political king, and that when His people rejected His kingship, He had to come up with
an emergency plan—so they speak of the “church age” as a “parenthesis,” something added, something not foreseen.
Now, we know that Jesus is God, so He did not gradually come to a realization of His mission. Nor was His crucifixion a great disappointment to Him, for, as He said in John 12:27 as He meditated on His imminent death, “For this purpose I came to this hour.”
The Church in Matthew’s Gospel Far from being an afterthought of Jesus, a Plan B when He was rejected as king by His people, Jesus said plainly in our text, “I will build my church.” Thelo, the word translated will, is not a future tense helping verb. It is a word that indicates “volition and purpose, frequently a determination.” So, Jesus said, “It is My will, My purpose, My determination to build My church.” When He called it “My church,” He implied that would be something new, something exclusively His. I believe there is evidence in the Gospels that indicates Jesus planned to establish a new community of believers, a community that came to be called “the church,” as Jesus twice, and the Book of Acts and the epistles frequently, called this community.
Notice what Jesus’ first challenge to an individual believer was, “Follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men” (Matt. 4:19). Now, when Paul said, “Be ye followers me,” he qualified it with, “as I also am of Christ” (1 Cor. 11:1). Jesus made no such qualifying statements. He did not say, “As I follow Moses, or the prophets, or the scribes and the Pharisees.” He did not even say, “As I follow God,” for He is God. So this challenge, “follow Me,” implies that His purpose was to establish a new community of faith.
Ladd observes, “Discipleship to Jesus was not like discipleship to a Jewish rabbi. The rabbis bound their disciples not to themselves but to the Torah; Jesus bound His disciples to Himself. The rabbis offered something outside of themselves; Jesus offered Himself alone. Jesus required His disciples to surrender without reservation to His authority.”
In chapter 10 He called and commissioned 12 apostles. These were to replace the 12 patriarchs, the heads of the 12 tribes of old Israel. Jesus said as much in Matt. 19:27-28, “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, 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” (KJV).
Commenting on this passage, Ladd writes, “Jesus’ call of the twelve disciples to share His mission has been widely recognized as a symbolic act setting forth the continuity between His disciples and Israel. . . . the twelve are destined to be the head of the eschatological Israel. Recognition that the twelve were meant to constitute the nucleus of the true Israel does not exclude the view that the number 12 also involved a claim upon the entire people as Jesus’ qahal [Hebrew for congregation or church]. The twelve as a symbolical number looks both backward and forward: backward to the old Israel and forward to the eschatological Israel [the church, composed of both Jews and Gentiles]” (251-252).
Peter was speaking in this passage as a representative of the 12 when he said, “We have left all to follow You.” When Jesus answered Him, He spoke both of the past and the future. “You . . . have followed Me.” That is, they had obeyed the call to follow Him. “Shall sit on the throne of his glory” refers something in the future, and Acts 2:30-31 states plainly that Jesus took His throne when He was raised from the dead. “Regeneration” is used twice in the New Testament—here and in Titus 3:5, where it specifically refers to being saved. The word translated “judging,” krino, Vine tells us, means “to administer affairs, to govern” (“New Testament,” 336). Jesus, then, speaks of a new community, to be established after His resurrection, over which the apostles, who had been regenerated, were to govern and whose affairs they were to administer. We read, then, in Acts 2:41-47 that when the church was established, its members continued in the apostles’ doctrine and fellowship. The apostles had been appointed by Jesus to govern and set in order a new religious body, a new community of believers, the new Israel, which is composed of both Jews and Gentiles.
We also see Jesus speaking of the church in Matthew 18:15-20 when He gives us guidelines for church discipline. He anticipated that there would be a new people of God, so He gave His apostles, who would administer the affairs of that new people, specific instructions as to maintaining proper working relationships in that new community.
The Church in John’s Gospel In John 10:14-16 Jesus used a figure familiar to the Jews of His day, that of a shepherd and his flock of sheep, but with a new element. The Jews regarded their religion as the flock of God—God’s sheep. They sang Psalm 79:13, “We are thy people and the sheep of thy pasture.” Zechariah 9:16 calls Old Testament Israel “the flock of his people.”
But Jesus told them in John 10:15-16 that His sheep included more than the Jewish flock: “As the Father knows Me, even so I know the Father: and I lay down My life for the sheep. And other sheep I have which are not of this fold; them also I must bring, and they will hear my voice; and there will be one flock and one shepherd” (NKJV).
“Other sheep” who hear His voice, of course, refers to the Gentiles who would accept Him as their shepherd. Jesus said, “I must bring them” so there may be one flock. Now, the KJV uses the word “fold” twice, but actually the original text uses the word “fold” only once, and that in reference to the Jewish people. The second time the word is not “fold,” but flock, and it refers to the sheep in the fold and the other sheep Jesus said He “must bring.” Together they would compose one flock with one shepherd. They would be united together as one new community of God’s people.
This “one flock and one shepherd” is a strong case for unity. When Jesus said He must bring all His sheep together into one flock, He was saying that unity is a divine necessity. It is not produced by the sheep, but by the divine Shepherd who brings them all together. One scholar has rightly observed, “Man does not create the unity of the church; he only realizes it, or appropriates it” (Clower, 141).
Any church unity man produces is a forced, superficial one. It may be uniformity of practice or uniformity of dogma, but it is fragile, brittle, stiff and unnatural. It will involve a suppression of dissent and the oppression of the saints.
Jesus simply pronounced, “There will be one flock and one shepherd.” This is not a statement of possibility: “There can be one.” It is not a statement of desire: “I hope there may be one flock.” But it was a simple statement of fact: “There will be one flock and one shepherd.” This one flock would be composed of the sheep in the Jewish fold who heard and followed Him and the “other sheep,” the Gentiles who would hear and follow Him. Obviously, Jesus meant to establish a new community of believers, one which ignored all social, racial, ethnic, and gender differences.
John also presents Jesus’ thoughts about the church in John 17, our Lord’s “High Priestly” prayer. He had the church on His mind on the eve of His death. In verses 6 and 14 He said His prayer was for those God had given Him “out of the world,” those who were “not of the world.” The world of which He spoke was the world of Jewish religion and life. Jesus took them to Himself. He prayed in verse 11 that God would keep them one—that is, keep them as a separate unit from that world, a unique group, a church kept (guarded) by the Father’s Name—His power, His authority. Then in verses 20-21, He prayed for them and for those who would believe on Him “through their word,” that they all would be “one.” This is a clear reference to a new community of faith, that which came to be called “the church.”
We find other clear references to a new community of faith in all four gospels that indicate the church was very present in the mind of Jesus. In fact, Paul says that Jesus loved the church so much that He gave Himself for her (Eph. 5:25). And the church is the community of believers. It is not possible to be the church and stay isolated from other believers. Those who think the church is not worth their time, effort, and money, obviously do not have the mind of Christ.
Clower, Joseph B. The Church in the Thought of Jesus (Louisville, KY: John Knox Press, 1959) 8 Vine, W.E. Expository Dictionary of Biblical Words, “New Testament Words” (New York: Thomas Nelson Pub., 1985) 162 Ladd, George Eldon. The Presence of the Future (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1974) 249
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