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A classic and challenging consideration of a controversial verse in its context.
Excerpt:
MAT 18:20 It is impossible to overrate the importance and blessedness of the ground given by the Lord to His people, during the present dispensation, in Matt. 18:20. But in order to apprehend its true import and scope, it is necessary to understand the circumstances in the Lord's own history that led up to it, and the position which He Himself now occupies, as exalted to the right hand of God in heaven.
In Matt. 12 the Lord's rejection by Israel is complete, and He pronounces judgment on the nation. At the end of the chapter He breaks His natural connection with the people, and makes obedience to the Word of God the principle of association with Himself, and thus of all blessing. And this would be evidenced by doing "the will of My Father who is in the heavens." No longer would the bond be a visible and external one, such as it had previously been, but a moral and invisible one.
This principle involved an entire change in God's ways with man, and was in effect the passing from law to grace. Under law Jehovah came seeking fruit from Israel, as the vine of His vineyard, but found none, and moreover He was Himself rejected. Grace now entered the field demanding nothing, but bringing with it that which would produce fruit. This was the personal ministry of Jesus, by which souls were saved and attracted to Himself.
Rejected by Israel, a rejection consummated at the cross, He lays aside, so to speak, His Messiahship, and takes the wider title of "the Son of man," and as "the Sower" goes forth to sow the seed of the Word. This is grace taking with it that which produces fruit, and not now confining itself to Israel, but taking in the whole world as the field of its activities. This change introduces "the kingdom of the heavens," the formation and mysteries of which we have unfolded in Matt. 13. The similitudes of the kingdom are not our subject, and we merely remark that "the kingdom of the heavens" supposes the King absent in heaven consequent on His rejection by Israel, and hence its formation and character are in keeping with this fact.
In Matt. 16 the Lord calls the Jews, headed up in their rulers, "a wicked and adulterous generation," and leaving them He goes with His disciples into the coasts of Caesarea-Philippi. Alone with them there, He asks them what men generally thought and said about Him. The answers they gave showed the general unbelief that was in men as to Him. Some said one thing, some said another. It was not the bold and fanatical rejection that characterized the scribes and Pharisees, but it was the indifference of men's hearts to Him that showed conscience towards God to be wanting, as well as all true knowledge of God. He then asks His disciples, "Whom say ye that I am?" To this Peter replies, "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God." Peter's answer gave evidence of a work of grace in his soul that went far beyond all that connected itself with the promises and prophecies that relate to Israel and the earth, and became the occasion for the Lord to disclose the counsels of God concerning the Church. He replies, "Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-jona, for flesh and blood has not revealed it to thee, but My Father who is in the heavens. And I also, I say unto thee that thou art Peter, and on this rock I will build My assembly, and hades' gates shall not prevail against it.”
The Father had revealed to Peter the personal glory of His Son; a glory that far exceeded that of the Messiah as the begotten Son of God in time, according to Psa. 2. He was "the Son of the living God"—the One who had life in Himself, against which all the power of Satan, as having the power of death, should not prevail. Resurrection would be the proof of this, and He would be "declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the Spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead." Rom. 1:4. But Peter knew this already by the Father's sovereign revelation. Upon this knowledge of Himself, as Son of God according to the divine glory of His Person, Christ would build His "assembly.”