And Jesus answering said to him, Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-jona, for flesh and blood has not revealed [it] to thee, but my Father who is in the heavens.
Peter has just confessed who Jesus is, and Jesus points straight to the source of that confession. The verse shows how anyone comes to know who Jesus is.
Jesus calls Peter blessed. But the confession behind that blessing was not Peter's own achievement:
Jesus Himself declares that the soul who knows Him as the Son of the living God is blessed of the Father. No doubt Peter had learned much from the Lord, as he had followed that lovely and blessed life of devotion and self-sacrifice. But the Father took hold of that uneducated, unlettered Galilean fisherman and taught him the truth. The blessed Man he was following was the Son of the living God. The Father Himself alone can teach you this blessed truth, my friend. No university course and no human teaching can give your soul this knowledge of the Son. But the Father loves to teach the willing soul that seeks Christ.
So what does "flesh and blood" mean here?
Here "flesh and blood" means everything that belongs to man as he now is. It means man in his present condition: a poor, weak, miserable creature... So here the Lord says, "Flesh and blood has not revealed this to you ... but My Father who is in heaven." You have no power to discover this by man's wisdom.
This settles what argument can and cannot do:
So we have no hope of convincing the natural man that the Son is God. Argument will not do it, and no proof of any kind will do it, apart from the work of the Holy Spirit. Jesus said to an apostle, "flesh and blood has not revealed this to you." And we are also told that the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God.
Jesus does not say God, or the Almighty, but My Father. That choice of name is itself part of the gift:
We have tasted that the Lord is gracious and equal to all our deep need. But the Father in His grace has done more. By revealing to us who His Son is, He has opened our hearts to a new position, a new calling, a new place of favour. The revelation is from heaven, and God has made it not as the Almighty or as Jehovah, but as Father, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
The Lord calls him Simon, son of Jonah, not Peter. Commentators see a deliberate contrast:
Was not this to emphasise his lowly position as a man? Apart from divine grace, was he not merely Simon, son of Jonah?... Here, at Caesarea Philippi, the contrast is between two things. On one side is what man is by nature, weak at the core. On the other is the high privilege given to the apostle: to declare the divine glory of his Master more fully than ever before. So we see there is a very pointed contrast between Simon Bar-jona and Peter.
What Peter confessed reached past the title Israel was waiting for:
A confession so remarkably rich drew out the Saviour's recognition of His Father's grace to Simon Barjona... He was the Son of the living God. If He had been only the Christ, the Messiah of Israel, that would not have been a strong enough basis for the Church. His dignity as Messiah might have been rock enough for Israel, since it was their faith and hope. But "the Son of the living God" was a revelation of His glory that went far beyond it.
Receiving a revelation and living up to it are two different things:
Though he had just made the blessed confession of Christ which the Father had revealed to him... when the Lord spoke of His path of humiliation, as Son of Man, Peter could not bear it... Peter's flesh was not broken down enough to walk in the power of the truth he had received and rejoiced in. So it is with us.
- Source — Peter did not reach this himself. The Father in heaven revealed it, and so Jesus calls him blessed.
- Limit — "flesh and blood" is man as he now is, and no amount of human wisdom or argument reaches this truth.
- Name — God gives it as Father, not as Almighty, so the revelation brings a new place of favour along with it.
- Contrast — Jesus names him Simon, son of Jonah — the weak man by nature — and hands him this high privilege.
- Foundation — the Father showed more than "Messiah." He showed the "Son of the living God," the one basis of the Church.
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.
Peter has just confessed that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God. The Lord answers by announcing something new: He will build a church of His own. Two questions have divided readers ever since. What is the rock? And what is this church He promises to build?
The Lord's words turn on a difference between two Greek words that English hides. One writer sets them side by side:
The Lord now speaks to Peter by the name He had given him. Peter is petros, a stone. The rock He builds on is petra, the great rock foundation. And the gates of hell — the schemes and plots of Hades, the underworld — will not prevail against it.
So the new name is a gift of grace tied to what Peter had just said, while the foundation itself is the truth he confessed:
By grace Peter had confessed what no one ever had: that Christ was the Son of the living God. The Lord acknowledges the grace given to him. He gives him the name Peter, a stone. So by grace, through his confession, Peter shares in the very thing he confessed. For it was on that truth — that Christ is the Son of the living God — that He would build His church.
The tense of the verb matters. The Lord had not built anything yet:
Notice the expression. It is not, I have been building; but I will build My Church. He had not built it yet, nor begun to build it: it was altogether new. I do not mean that no one believed in Him before, or was born again of the Spirit. But it is a mistake to call all believers from the beginning to the end of time "the Church."
If the building had not started, something first had to happen:
When the Lord spoke, He had not begun to build. "I will build" is future. That building could not begin until Christ had finished the work of redemption, until He had risen and gone up into heaven, and until the Holy Spirit had come.
The Lord calls this building His own. That ownership decides what it will be like:
Here we see what the church is for Christ. He says, "I will build my church." Many other Scriptures speak of the church as belonging to God. But here the Son of God speaks of it as His own, as something He Himself is building… Men can spoil, break and ruin what they build. What Christ is building stays perfect, and nothing can break into it.
Commentators read "the gates of hell" as the power of death, and they tie the promise back to the confession it rests on:
So the gates of hades — the power of death, held by Satan — will not prevail against the church. For the resurrection declared Christ to be Son of God with power, above all the power of Satan. The church is built on this rock, on His being the Son of the living God. So Satan's power, the power of death, could not overthrow it.
The exact word the Lord uses matters:
Note, it is His church, and He is still building. No wonder then that the gates even of Hades shall not prevail against it. They shall not "prevail." The Lord does not say that His church will escape heavy and painful blows. He says the gates of Hades will not prevail against it. This should comfort us; for His church must stand.
Knowing the doctrine is not the end of it. One writer presses the verse home:
So it is not enough to say, "I have Christ," however blessed that is. If I know that He is the Son of God, I must also believe that He is now building the church. Do I know my place in His church? Am I walking in the life of Christ, a living stone in my proper place in the house He is building?"
- Confession — Peter names who Jesus is first. Only then does the Lord announce the building.
- Foundation — Grace gives Peter a name meaning "stone." But the rock underneath is the truth he confessed: Christ, the Son of God.
- Future — "I will build" is future. The work waited for redemption, resurrection, ascension, and the coming of the Spirit.
- Ownership — He calls it "My church." Men can ruin what they build. Nothing can break what Christ builds.
- Outcome — Death and Satan may strike heavy blows. They cannot prevail, because the risen Son of God is the foundation.