Well, this is the first great lesson that followed the public call of Peter. I shall now take you to another and different scene in the end of the sixth of John, where the Lord had brought out Himself, and Himself, too, in a very wondrous way—as the bread of life come down from heaven in contrast with the king that man would have liked to make Him; for they thought He was just the one for them, a king that would provide bread for his people; and so they caught at it at once.
They might have quoted scripture for it. For had not scripture declared that Messiah would feed His people with bread? Yes, and it would have been such an excellent thing for them—bread without working for it! and so they thought that this was the king that would do for them. They therefore sought to make the Lord a king, and the Lord therefore goes away from them, because, although He was born King of the Jews, and although He was proclaimed King of the Jews a little after, and although it was impossible for him to deny and not confess that truth, let it be who it might—Pontius Pilate even, that asked, without the least concern as to the reality of the answer—nevertheless, the Lord showed that He knew from the very beginning that He was come, not to reign, but to die; to reign, no doubt, by and by, for there is no truth of Christ but what will be verified. There is no seed but what will really produce fruit, even though it fall to the ground and die first; but still in that very way it is so. It all must go through death and resurrection.
And so the Lord Jesus shows here that it is not first bread, but first suffering. Hence therefore He expounds a grand truth of His person, and what He had come to do, in contrast with Jewish thoughts—that it was not to reign as they expected, although His was the title and He was really the King of that people. But then His own would not have Him— “his own received him not.” His own received Him not, because they were sinners, and after all it was impossible that He could reign over a realm of sin and of sinners. Thus one can see the perfect suitability of it that so it should be, but nevertheless God allowed it to come out as a matter of human responsibility. They would not have Him, not that He would not have them, but that they would not have Him, and it turns out after all that there was a moral unsuitability—total unsuitability—between such a king and such a people.
Well then, what does the Lord lay down? He was come to be a servant, and consequently He comes down. He comes down from heaven, He becomes a man, He is incarnate. But that is not all. When they stumbled at that, He says, “I am come to die,” and He puts this too in the very strongest way, for He says that it is not only that He must be accepted as thus coming down from heaven, and becoming a man to serve, but further—that except they ate His flesh and drank His blood they had no life in them; and yet further, that whosoever did eat His flesh and drink His blood had eternal life, and He would raise him up at the last day. Clearly not that which men have been talking about of late—a question about sacrament or mass or anything of that kind. It is Himself, beloved friends; it is Himself; but then it is Himself dying! And there, indeed, is the great delusion of men—using something that is a mere sign of Christ to do the work of Christ Himself—an idol made out of an institution of the Lord, and consequently it becomes a “saving sacrament,” call it what you please.
No, there is but one Savior, and this is what He really came for, and this was worthy of God and of His Son—to be the Savior first. He will reign by and by, but He would save men from sin; for what would be the good of the kingdom first, and then men turned into hell afterward? No, He would save them from sin first. He would save them from hell, and then reign; and so He will, and this is the way. Accordingly then, He substitutes Himself, coming down and dying for sinners in this world, giving His life, as He says, for the world. It was not merely a question of the Jews, but He gives this life for the world. He substitutes this for the earthly expectation of Israel that He was to reign over them now. Not so; this was His real work, and He closes it all by His going up to heaven as the Son of man.
And it is a singular thing that these are the two things that a Jew cannot endure. He does not believe either in God’s coming down, or in man’s going up; he denies both. It is precisely what tests all the thoughts and feelings of a Jew, and I expect that it will test Christendom too very shortly, because they are rapidly falling into the same pit of unbelief that Israel has fallen into already, and they will very soon, to their own eternal ruin, give up as a public profession, through Christendom, either that God came down to the earth, or that man has gone up to heaven. That will be the apostasy when it comes. But this chapter is full of it, and the effect of bringing this out was that from that time many of His disciples went back, and walked no more with Him. Is it not so? “Many of his disciples.” It was not merely the multitudes, but many of His disciples went back and walked no more with Him. And what had the Lord done, and what had He said? He had brought out His incomparable grace. He had brought out an infinitely deeper truth than if He had brought in the kingdom and given them to sit one on the right hand and the other on the left, if it had been possible to give the best place to every soul in the kingdom, which, of course, could not he. If it had been possible, I repeat, for every man of them to have the best place, what was that compared to His coming down and dying for sinners, giving eternal life, and raising them up at the last day? Nevertheless, it was such a shock to all their expectations that many of His disciples, from that time, went back and walked no more with Him.
“Then said Jesus unto the twelve, Will ye also go away?” And who answered? Simon Peter. And now, you see, he that was of little faith had become, I may say, of great faith. The lesson was learned, and he showed it, for when the question came the answer—the ready answer of his soul—was, “Lord, to whom shall we go?” He does not now say “I.” He does not now say, “Lord, if it be Thou.”. “Lord, to whom shall we go?” There is no “if ‘‘ now. “Thou hast the words of eternal life.” No hesitation in his soul. Ah, there is faith. There is not little faith now. There is no mingling of doubt now. There is no question. before Peter now, and what is more remarkable too, there is no such thing as that egotism that mingled with the former case, but he says, “We believe and are sure.” He puts them all with himself, “We believe and are sure that thou art that Christ, the Son of the living God.”
I am sorry on such an occasion as this, beloved friends, to bring in a little word that must correct our English Version. You must carefully remember that the English Version, after all, is not the word of God in the fullest sense, or strictest sense, of the word. That is, you must always leave room for an occasional spot or speck where man’s carelessness has a little obscured the fullness of the truth. Now, if you look at any careful, any exact, presentation of the true text and translation of the N.T. you will find it to be this, “That thou art the Christ, the Holy One of God.” “The Holy One of God” are the true words, as I believe, in this particular place. I do not think, therefore, it is the same thing exactly as we have in Matt. 16. It is a different confession of our Lord Jesus, and I will endeavor to show the great beauty and appropriateness of that which Peter says here; for mark, beloved friends, there is no anxiety now. There is no such thing as, “Lord, save me”; no such thing now. Now he is filled with Christ. He has not a thought of himself or anything else, and this is the true way in which souls enter into perfect peace with the Lord.
And again, if there is any one thing that is terrible to a sinner it is the holiness of God—and the holiness of God where it is brought fairly by faith before the soul—where it measures the believer, because the believer alone truly feels what is in those words, “The Holy One of God.” I grant you, it is not only believers. What will help to make it a little more distinct is this. We have others that say, “The Holy One of God.” It was the confession, if I can call it so—it was the expression at any rate—of the demoniacal man, the demoniac that first met the Lord when He began His public ministry. This ministry of our Lord was, as you know, first entered upon at Nazareth, where, according to His wont, He entered into the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and there was given Him the book of Esaias the prophet, in which was the scripture that showed that He was the One according to prophecy that was to bring in the acceptable year of the Lord; and He shows, therefore, the exceeding grace of God. It was no question now of judgment, no mingling of the two that man so much likes, but that it was to be unmixed grace.
But then there is another thing. Satan has got power here. Therefore there follows in Luke, when he gives the ministry of the Lord, His confronting the man with the unclean spirit in the synagogue at Capernaum on the sabbath day also. It was to be brought evidently before man—the power of Satan in this world, the power of Satan in man and over man. And then we have in the fourth of Luke (I may just refer to it for a moment in order to compare it) the demon crying out with a loud voice, Let us alone.” Mark it well. “Let us.” It is a very solemn thing how a spirit, whether it is an evil spirit or the Spirit of God, identifies himself with the man in whom he dwells, just as he who has the Holy Ghost has Him adapting Himself in grace to the man. So, though it be His own guidance, it is, nevertheless, the man’s guidance. Although it be He that works all that is good and sweet in the man, it is the man’s work. It is what the man does after all. All the in which we find this man, the demon, does; but fruits of the Spirit are not merely the fruits of the Spirit, but they belong to the man. They characterize the man, so much so that we are ourselves said to be “in the Spirit.” As the apostle says, “Ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you.” That is, He characterizes us so completely that it is no longer the flesh but the Spirit, if the Spirit dwell in us. Well, just so here. The man says, “Let us alone; what have we to do with thee.” It is not, “What have I,” merely; “What have we to do with thee, thou Jesus of Nazareth? Art thou come to destroy us?” That is what they felt. That was the dismal fear that was produced. And mark how Jesus is addressed. “I know thee, who thou art, the Holy One of God.” Nothing more awful to contemplate, nothing that so brings their utter and everlasting doom before them, for they at least believe—and with what effect? The demons believe and tremble.
Now that is not at all the intention with a soul that is born of God. Faith is not intended to make us tremble, but to make us happy; to make us at perfect peace, because if I see Jesus by faith I have Him as my life. I could not have Him by faith without His being my life also, and I could not have Him as my life without having His righteousness now. I speak, of course, supposing now the work done: that is, the Christian has all that he sees in Christ. Everything that is in Christ is in his favor. What He is as the Son of God, what He is as the Son of man; everything is in his favor. He could not do without one single thing that he knows to be in the Son of God. If He were not the Son of God it would not be eternal life; and if He were not a man it would not be righteousness. But you see the whole thing then—all that Christ is in His person and work—all descends in blessing upon the head of a believer. In his case, therefore, we find the very reverse. “We believe and are sure.” Was there any trembling there? No, when Peter was not occupied with Jesus, as we saw, when he looked at the danger, the circumstances in which he was, he was full of anxiety; he was afraid. But not so now, and yet, beloved friends, he confesses Christ in the very same terms in this latter case it was awful alarm. It was the pangs of coming judgment that filled the soul, “Art thou come to destroy us?” You see, the power of Satan was to drag down the man into his terror, just as the Holy Ghost would lift up man into His sense of what grace is now in the Lord Jesus Christ. So Jesus rebukes the demon, turns out the demon, and the man is settled in peace and deliverance. But in Peter’s case we have the very same thing—the Holy One of God confessed—and yet instead of an anxiety it is the very thing that fills the heart with joy.
If we had only the sense of our Lord Jesus as the gracious One, there would still be something lacking for our souls; if we had no thought but “the day is coming when I shall see Him as the Holy One. What will it be then?” Nay, but I know that I cannot separate it. It is the holy One just as much as the gracious One now. He is the one that never admitted—always refused—evil of any kind; and that is my comfort, that it is the one who loves me best, the one that sees me through and through, the one that caused others, it may he, to doubt; at any rate, they do doubt, because there were such words of grace as never were heard before, for the Lord had never given utterance to words so full of grace as in this very discourse at Capernaum, because of which His disciples—many of them—left Him. But Peter, as now showing the simplicity and growth of faith, instead of trembling, instead of being enfeebled, instead of his going along with those that had departed, on the contrary, confesses Him that He is the Holy One of God at the very time that he says, “We believe and are sure.” There was no flinching, there was no hiding, there was no danger that that Holy One would detect or which he would cast them out from His presence. The very reverse. Peter had said, even before, “Thou hast the words of eternal life.”
Now this then is the next thing that I believe the Spirit of God would have us to see in His dealings with Peter. That is, that now, when he has Christ Himself before him, and Christ Himself in the very character that fills the demon with the sense of coming destruction, Peter stands before Him without a doubt. There is nothing so awful as divine holiness where there is sin, and sin without grace to meet it; but here the very contrary. The Lord had been bringing out all His grace, and for that very reason Peter stands in the presence of all His holiness, and he stands there with not a doubt upon his soul. He stands there confessing Him, and confessing Him with words of unusual strength.
Further too, there is a grace that takes in others, for instead of merely confessing himself, he joins others in the confession of the very same truth. Indeed, Peter knew that he had not Christ for himself; that if he had Christ, the others had also. The Lord, it is true, at that very time cautions him. The Lord brings in the solemn thought that he may have gone a little too far there. “Jesus answered, Have not I chosen you twelve, and one of you is a devil? He spoke of Judas Iscariot, the son of Simon, for he it was that should betray him.”
The Lord therefore does show not merely that there was eternal life for those that believed, but that Peter did not know that one of the twelve was no believer at all. But as far as the strength of Peter’s words went, it was all right and all true; that is to say, that those that believe have this blessed portion in Him, and that, even as for His being the Holy One of God, so far from its being a question, or an anxiety, on the contrary, it is coupled here with the strongest and fullest confession of faith that Peter had made up to that moment.
Now we will go to what I may call a kindred confession, but not the same, and we must return to the sixteenth chapter of the Gospel of Matthew for it. It was a time when unbelief was coming out, only here it is not the disciples; it is not that circle only that is judged; but the chapter shows us unbelief everywhere until we come to the disciples; and the Lord Himself put the question, “When Jesus came into the coasts of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, saying, Whom do men say that I the Son of man am? And they said, Some say that thou art John the Baptist, some Elias, and others Jeremias, or one of the prophets.” That is, there was the usual answer of men, the uncertainty of human opinion. “He saith unto them, But whom say ye that I am?” because the very uncertainty of men brings out the faith of God’s elect, and therefore there is no time at all that is not turned of God for good to the believer. When things are bright and happy, how happy for the believer! When things are most dark, how happy for the believer! Of course, not the darkness of the time, but the preciousness of having Christ in the darkest time. I say then that it matters not what the time of uncertainty may be. If the soul is simple, it is always well. And so here. “Whom say ye that I am? And Simon Peter answered and said, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.”
The Gospel of Mark also gives this confession, but there it is merely “the Christ.” He does not say a word about His being the Son of the living God, and this helps much to show the force of its connection, because where He is only confessed to be “the Christ” there is not a word said about building the church; not a word. But where he adds to “the Christ” that He was “the Son of the living God,” the Lord answers, “Blessed art thou.” Peter could bear now to be personally and peculiarly blest. He had shown that by the grace of God he had risen above occupation with himself, and drawing attention to himself. And it is precisely when one is thus delivered from self, as far as it goes, that the Lord can put particular honor. Not otherwise. “Thou art the Christ,” says he; and the Lord’s answer is, “Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona, for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven.” Could Peter have borne that on the night on which he sank in the water? No, not at all. But Peter was no longer “thou of little faith.” Now the Lord could tell him that this was the very special revelation that the Father had made to him. He could bear it. But He adds, “And I also say unto thee.” It is not only that the Father had revealed that, but the Lord adds His revelation also to Peter. For it is not, “I say also,” but “I also say.” Indeed, that is the true, real force of the verse. My Father hath revealed it, “and I also say unto thee, that thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church.”
What was that? It was Christ confessed, not merely as the Christ, but as the Son of the living God, so that where the Son of the living God is not brought out there is no building up of the church. Where the Son of the living God is confessed, He says, “Upon this rock I will build my church.” And so indeed it is. Christ was the One in whom the promises were to be accomplished. “The Son of the living God” is the one who is proved to be so by resurrection of the dead. I do not deny that by that very same resurrection the promises are secured, but this I do say, that what proved Him to be the Son of God, even before the promises are accomplished, was this personal glory that broke through the last stronghold of Satan—death—nay, that which was God’s judgment upon man, upon the first man. Now there is another man, but He is much more than a man. Man simply and as such could not conquer Satan. There was always one who was more, although He was to become a man. The seed of the woman no doubt should bruise the serpent’s head, but then that seed of the woman was to be the Son of God. All scripture will show it, but there never had been in any scripture a confession, on the whole, so full as this very one that Peter had pronounced. “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.”
It was a great epoch spiritually in Peter’s soul, for the Lord knows how to bring out and how to own what His own grace produces. It was the fitting time. He had said this word, and it was a word of which the Son of God Himself took most especial notice. He does not say, “Oh, it is only the Father.” Yes, but it was His Father that had done it through Peter’s lips, and the Son therefore owns this as a most weighty thing—that before the resurrection, before the death, there was the confession of that power in the presence of the Son of God that would break through death, and so, accordingly, lay a groundwork for another thing that does not belong to this creation at all—not merely an individual blest—not merely that. Individuals had been blest before, but there was to be a divine building, there was to be a new thing formed upon earth, founded upon death overcome, founded upon resurrection-power that had broken through all that Satan could do—yea, even God’s judgment; deliverance (mark it well), deliverance from the judgment of God in this world. Now that is the church. The church is that body which owes its existence to this glorious person and fact that the Son of God, in order to the giving the church a being, has broken through the power of Satan in death, and the consequence is that the church is intended to live in this constant confession of victory—victory over death and judgment, and victory only through that one person, the Son of the, living God.
Well, “upon this rock,” says He, “I will build my church,” and nothing can be more solemn than that. The very thing in this world that Satan has forged, and which takes its stand upon this verse more than any other, is of all things most distant from it. For there is no one thing, as you well know, no one body under the sun bearing the name of Christ, that has so completely denied this very truth as that dreadful imposture, that spurious woman and most corrupt that makes the earth drunk with the wine of her cup, and that has stained herself with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus. No doubt, because they have found that it answers their purpose; no doubt blinded by Satan’s power, they have given up this truth, and they make the thing a question of merchandise, a question of masses and money, of priests and ordinances, and after all no salvation, no victory over death or judgment, but the very contrary, the constant sound of wailing and lamentation, and everything that would betoken fear and anxiety and question, to keep souls in thralldom and bondage, if peradventure there may be a little more money. Nothing can be more thoroughly opposed to the truth of God than that very body that has attempted to take its stand upon this very verse. I mention it as a singular instance, though, indeed, the same thing is true of all scripture. You will find that whenever men boastfully take their stand upon anything without Christ there is nothing that more completely opposes them, and nothing that they more completely mistake, than the very scripture which they misuse for their own purpose. And hence you will always find, if you have to do with those who are not led by the Spirit of God, that the scriptures that they adduce are the very best answers to their pretensions. Take the scripture that they misuse and you will find that it is the most powerful engine against themselves. And so here with popery which I have just been referring to.
There are other scriptures, but this is the grand point for our own souls. Peter takes his stand upon this, and a remarkable thing, too, is the manner in which Peter brings out the church. Although he does not call it the church in his own epistle, what he speaks of there more nearly answers to this than, perhaps, to what you will find in any other part of the New Testament. When the Lord says, “Upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it,” it is clear that although it be not the body as such, upon the other hand it is not that which man builds. It is what Christ builds, and there is that peculiarity of it, because when in scripture Christianity is presented under the figure of a house or a building you get, as a usual thing, what may be corrupted; you get what does not necessarily suppose life. But that is not the case with what the Lord calls “My church.” Nor is it the case with what Peter describes in his epistle, “To whom coming as unto a living stone, ye also as living stones.” He does not suppose a dead stone to come. He was evidently filled with this truth that the Lord gave his soul upon that very day, “Upon this rock will I build my church”; for it is evident that what Christ builds always must come to its fulfillment according to the purpose of God. “Upon this rock,” then he says, “I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it,” so that although it be the building, it is only the building viewed as built divinely. It is not the responsible thing that man is occupied with, and where man’s weakness comes in by building on the foundation what is not worthy and not suitable.
Here it is very different. “And I will give thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven.” So He did. Peter opened it on the day of Pentecost to the Jews, and afterward to Cornelius the Gentile. It is the same thing. “And whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.” Peter had this place, though not exclusively. As we find in the eighteenth chapter, the disciples bind and loose. I do not say the apostles, but the disciples. But the disciples had not got the keys of the kingdom of heaven. No, nor the other apostles either; not at all. You remember that it is not the key of heaven. There is no more profound mistake than to confound “the kingdom of heaven” with “heaven.” The kingdom of heaven is the rule of heaven over the earth, and therefore there may be all kinds of mistakes and all kinds of things that are not according to God. We must not confound the kingdom of heaven, therefore, with Christ’s church. The kingdom of heaven is what He governs. The kingdom of heaven, therefore, is the scene of profession, and consequently there may be all sorts of things there that are far from Christ; tares as well as wheat. And so Peter, I say, opened that kingdom on the day of Pentecost. But the other part was not exclusively Peter’s, though Peter has it put here in a personal form.
Then Christ charged His disciples that they should tell no man that He was the Christ. That was no question now. There was no question of His being Christ; He was going to die.
W. K.
(Continued from page 196)