Meditations in Matthew Sixteen: Church and Kingdom

Jesus asked his disciples an important question. “Whom do men say that I the Son of man am?” (Matt 16:13). Peter responded correctly: “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God!” (Matt 16:16 HCSB).

Jesus then gave Peter a great revelation:

Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven. (Matt 16:18–19; emphasis added)

This revelation establishes a close connection between Christ’s “church” and the “kingdom of heaven.”¹ 

This post will provide definitions for these terms.

The Church

The term “church” (Gk. ekklēsia) refers to a congregation or group of persons. It is an “assembly duly summoned.”²

A “church” can be a group gathered for any purpose. It can be a mob like the one that attacked Paul at Ephesus. “Some . . . cried one thing, and some another: for the assembly (Gk. ekklēsia) was confused” (Acts 19:32).

We want to examine the religious uses of “church.” How does the Bible use this word to describe a congregation that worships God? Specifically, what did Jesus mean when he said, “I will build my church”?

The Church in the Mosaic age

To grasp Jesus’s meaning, we should recognize that another church then existed. In the Mosaic age, God’s church (Gk. ekklēsia) was “the Jewish congregation.”³ It comprised the descendants of Jacob and proselytes to the Jewish faith. This congregation was “Israel after the flesh” (1 Cor 10:18). It was “the church (Gk. ekklēsia) in the wilderness” (Acts 7:38).

The Septuagint (LXX)⁴ often refers to Israel as God’s congregation. God gave the law to Moses when Israel’s wilderness journey began. It contained “the words, which the LORD spake . . . in the day of the assembly (Gk. ekklēsia)” (Deut 9:10).

At the end of their time in the wilderness, “Moses spake in the ears of all the congregation (Gk. ekklēsia) of Israel” (Deut 31:30). They then entered the Promised Land and lived there as “the congregation (Gk. ekklēsia) of the LORD” (Micah 2:5). “The whole Jewish nation was then the visible church.”⁵

God gave a symbol necessary for membership in the Mosaic-age church. He said, “And ye shall circumcise the flesh of your foreskin; and it shall be a token of the covenant betwixt me and you” (Gen 17:11). 

Proselytes also received the covenant sign of circumcision. “And when a stranger shall sojourn with thee, and will keep the passover to the LORD, let all his males be circumcised, and then let him come near and keep it; and he shall be as one that is born in the land: for no uncircumcised person shall eat thereof” (Exod 12:48). No circumcision, no church membership.

God also called the Mosaic-age (Jewish) church his house (Num 12:7). The New Testament credits Moses with building it (Heb 3:2–6). This explains our use of the term “Moses’s church” below. 

The Jewish church comprised all persons in covenant relationship with God during the Mosaic age. Scripture refers to the covenant then in existence as the “first” or “old” covenant (Heb 8:7, 13). Circumcision was the indispensable sign of membership in that church.⁶

The Church in the Messianic Age

Jesus said “I will build my church” in a unique historical context. God was about to bring an end to the Mosaic age and its church (e.g., Matt 24:1–3, 34). The messianic age would follow.

The context in Matthew emphasizes this situation. Jesus had just said the Pharisees and Sadducees were unaware of the alterations this age-change would bring. They could “not discern the signs of the times” (Matt 16:3). He also said the change would come soon. “Verily I say unto you, There be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom” (Matt 16:28).

This setting shows Jesus would build his church for the new age. Moses’s church would soon pass away. The age for which he built it was about to end. Jesus’s church would replace it in the messianic age.

Moses’s church was a type (1 Cor 10:6, 11). Jesus’s church would be the antitype. The Mosaic-age “congregation of the Lord” (e.g., Num 27:17) was a God-ordained picture of the messianic-age “assembly of God” (Acts 20:28 YLT).

This type-antitype relationship helps us define what Jesus meant by “my church.” Like the type, his church comprises all persons in covenant relationship with God. But the messianic-age covenant differs radically from that of the Mosaic age. Scripture calls it the “new” and “better covenant” (Heb 8:6, 8; cp. Jer 31:31). Christ is the mediator of this covenant (Heb 12:24). We must delay further discussion of these differences.

Here is our confession: the church “consists of the whole number of the elect, that have been, are, or shall be gathered into one, under Christ, the Head thereof.”⁷ Several New Testament passages confirm this definition of Jesus’s church: Acts 20:28; 1 Cor 10:32; 12:28; Eph 1:10, 22–23; 3:21; 5:23–25, 27, 29, 32; Col 1:18; Heb 12:23; et al.

The Kingdom

Jesus used another Greek term of interest to us in Matt 16:19. Basileias means “kingdom, dominion” or “reign.”⁸ As with the term “church,” it carries no inherent religious meaning. We read, for example, of “the kingdom of Og in Bashan” (Deut 3:4). 

Here we want to know about “the kingdom of God.” Commentators recognize that Scripture speaks of God’s kingdom in two basic ways. The first is “the dominion which belongs to him [Christ] originally and essentially as God.”⁹

The kingdom in this sense refers to God’s reign over all things. Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon spoke of this reign as God’s “everlasting kingdom” (Dan 4:3). Our past posts have referred to it as God’s “creation kingdom.”¹⁰

Jesus did not give the keys of the kingdom in this sense to Peter. Such a thing is impossible. Christ cannot give any part of the dominion which is his “originally and essentially as God” to a man.

The Scriptures speak of “the kingdom of heaven” in another sense. We will return to the Mosaic age to help us understand that sense.

The Kingdom in the Mosaic Age

As we saw above, Israel was God’s church in the Mosaic age. It was also his kingdom. God said, “if ye will obey my voice indeed, and keep my covenant, then . . . ye shall be unto me a kingdom (Gk. basileios) of priests, and an holy nation” (Exod 19:5–6; emphasis added).

Samuel also spoke of Israel as God’s kingdom. Israel had rejected God’s rule and had demanded a king like the other nations. Samuel anointed Saul, then “told the people the manner of the kingdom (Gk. basileus)” (1 Sam 10:25; emphasis added).

Abraham Booth said, “The Israelitish church was a kingdom of this world.”¹¹

The Kingdom in the Messianic Age

We will take the same step for the kingdom we took above for the church. The Mosaic-age kingdom was a type of the messianic-age kingdom.

This fact helps us define the second way Scripture uses the term kingdom. The “kingdom of heaven”¹² refers to Christ’s reign over his messianic-age church.

In the kingdom thus defined, Christ is “invested with a delegated and official dominion as Mediator.”¹³ Our previous posts have called this delegated reign his “church kingdom.”¹⁴

This agrees with standard confessions of faith. One, for example, says “Christ has here on earth a spiritual Kingdom, which is the Church, which he has purchased and redeemed to himself.”¹⁵

J. L. Dagg wrote “the first full system of theology prepared by a Baptist in America.” He said, “The obedient subjects of his [Christ’s] reign, are the same persons that compose the church universal, which has been defined ‘the whole company of those who are saved by Christ.’”¹⁶

Abraham Booth, an English Baptist, also agreed with this definition. He said, “the kingdom of Christ is no other than the gospel Church.”¹⁷ And, “the Empire of Christ, or the gospel church, is called ‘the kingdom of heaven.’”¹⁸

Loraine Boettner also took this view of the kingdom. “‘God’s holy mountain’ . . . is the familiar and endeared name for the Church or Kingdom in the present Messianic age.”¹⁹

In Jay Adams, we hear echoes of the Mosaic-age kingdom of Exod 19:6. He says, “Revelation 1:6 assures the reader that God has made the church on earth a ‘kingdom and priests.’”²⁰

Conclusion

We will repeat our definitions here to make them as clear as possible.

By “my church” in Matt 16:18, Jesus meant the congregation comprising all persons in covenant relationship with God during the messianic age.

By “the kingdom of God” he meant his rule, reign, and dominion over that church.

These definitions fit well in our inmillennial prophetic model.

Our terms “Mosaic-age church kingdom” and “messianic-age church kingdom” are not absolute necessities. Yet, they help clarify which church, kingdom, and age we have in mind in a given context.

Our definitions of “church” and “kingdom” raise important questions. How does “the church” relate to the “churches”? How did Peter (and others?) use the keys of the kingdom? How does one enter the messianic-age church? Is there a sign of covenant membership? Etc. If the Lord wills, we will address such questions in future posts.

1. The image in this post is Repentant St. Peter by Rembrandt (1606–1669). This file (here) is in the public domain (PD-US).
2. Henry George Liddell et al., A Greek-English Lexicon (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), 509.
3. Liddell et al., A Greek-English Lexicon, 509. This per the Septuagint (LXX).
4. The Greek translation of the Old Testament.
5. Abraham Booth, An Essay on the Kingdom of Christ (Paris, AR: The Baptist Standard Bearer, 1987), 49.
6. We will not pause to prove women and children also belonged to the Jewish church through their male representatives.
7. The Baptist Confession of Faith and the Baptist Catechism (Birmingham, AL: Solid Ground Christian Books, 2010), 26.1.
8. Liddell et al., A Greek-English Lexicon, 309.
9. William Symington, Messiah the Prince or, the Mediatorial Dominion of Jesus Christ (1881; repr., Edmonton, AB Canada: Still Waters Revival Books, 1990), 17.
10. Our reasons for using these terms are here, here, and here.
11. Booth, An Essay on the Kingdom of Christ, 28.
12. And similar terms like “kingdom of God,” “my Father’s kingdom,” etc.
13. Symington, Messiah the Prince, 17.
14. Again, see here, here, and here.
15. William Lumpkin, Baptist Confessions of Faith, 3rd ed. (Valley Forge, PA: Judson Press, 1969), 165. Emphasis added. This quote is from article 33 of the 1644 London Baptist Confession of faith. I have modernized the spelling.
16. J. L. Dagg, Manual of Theology, Second Part: A Treatise on Church Order (Charleston, SC: Southern Baptist Publication Society, 1859), 139. Emphasis added.
17. Booth, An Essay on the Kingdom of Christ, 4.
18. Booth, An Essay on the Kingdom of Christ, 63. Emphasis added.
19. Loraine Boettner, The Millennium (Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1958), 89.
20. Jay E. Adams, The Time is At Hand: Prophecy and the Book of Revelation (Woodruff, SC: Timeless Texts, 2000), 94.