Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Matthew · About this commentary
You Are the Christ
Matthew 16:13-20
13 Now when Jesus came into the parts of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, saying, “Who do men say that I, the Son of Man, am?” · WEB
At the northern edge of the country he asks who they think he is, and Peter's answer is met with a promise about a rock, a building, and keys.
Now when Jesus came into the parts of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, saying, "Who do men say that I, the Son of Man, am?" Matthew 16:13.
The setting is the far north, and Caesarea Philippi is as far from Jerusalem as the ministry goes. The question is asked twice, and the first form is a survey. "Some say John the Baptizer, some, Elijah, and others, Jeremiah or one of the prophets" Matthew 16:14. Every answer is respectful and every one is a category — a returned prophet, a great man of the past. Public opinion has settled on the highest thing it can imagine that requires nothing of it.
"But who do you say that I am?" Matthew 16:15. The pronoun turns, and this is the question the whole book has been walking toward.
Simon Peter answered, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God" Matthew 16:16. The confession and the command to silence are in the earlier account Mark 8:27–38. What follows in Matthew is three sentences carried nowhere else.
"Blessed are you, Simon Bar Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven" Matthew 16:17.
The blessing is on a disclosure rather than an achievement. Peter did not reason his way there; he was shown, which is what the parables discourse said about the difference between the disciples and the crowd Matthew 13:11. It is also the first thing to hold on to before the rest of the paragraph: the man about to be spoken of as a rock has just been told that the one thing he got right was given to him.
"I also tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my assembly, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it" Matthew 16:18.
There is a play on words here that the English half-carries: the name means a stone, and this rock is a different word for a rock shelf or a mass of bedrock — the word used for the foundation the wise man built his house on Matthew 7:24–25. Readers have long divided over what the bedrock is, and the text supports the weight of the question rather than settling it in a phrase. Three things in the passage bear on it.
The first is that what is immediately in view is the confession. It is what the paragraph is about, it is what was revealed, and it is what is repeated when the church is described later as built on a foundation whose cornerstone is Christ Ephesians 2:20 1 Peter 2:4–6.
The second is Scripture's own settled use of the image. When the Old Testament calls something the Rock it means God Deuteronomy 32:4 Psalms 18:2, and the stone the builders rejected becoming the head of the corner is a text this Gospel puts in his mouth against the chief priests Matthew 21:42 Psalms 118:22.
The third is the next paragraph. Within six verses the same man is called Satan and a stumbling block Matthew 16:23, and the placement is deliberate — a Gospel that wanted an unqualified claim about a man would not have put that there.
"The gates of Hades will not prevail against it." Gates are defensive, and a gate that does not prevail is a gate that fails to hold. Hades is the grave, the place of the dead, and what is promised is that death's stronghold will not keep what it has taken. It is a resurrection promise, spoken in the same conversation in which he first tells them he is going to die.
"I will give to you the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will have been bound in heaven; and whatever you release on earth will have been released in heaven" Matthew 16:19.
Keys open. The image is the steward of a house entrusted with access Isaiah 22:22, and the record shows what Peter did with them: he preached the sermon that opened the door at Pentecost, and he was the one sent to open it to a Roman household Acts 2:14 Acts 10:34–35.
The binding and releasing needs its tense read carefully, and the rendering here has it: will have been bound. Heaven does not ratify what earth decides. Earth announces what heaven has already settled — which is the only arrangement under which such authority is safe, and the reason the same words are given two chapters later to any two or three who gather, not to one man Matthew 18:18–20.
Then he commanded the disciples that they should tell no one that he was Jesus the Christ Matthew 16:20. The confession is right and it is embargoed, because the word Christ in that country meant a king with an army, and the next thing he says is that he is going to Jerusalem to be killed.
held with reason What this mark means