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The Church

Name: The Church
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The Church Jesus said: “I will build my church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it” (Mt 16:18). In that tough church, the toughest thing on earth, the insecure find unshakable security, the nameless find divine identity, the lonely find unfailing fellowship, the dying find indestructible life, the disgraced find endless glory. All who yearn for those treasures had better get into that church! (He 12:22-24)

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The Church - Ecclesiology of the church Jesus said: "I will build my church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it" (Mt 16:18).

That saying comes strangely to our ears - we do not usually think of gates as prevailing - but to the people of Bible days it was pregnant with meaning. In fact, Jesus' words must have had a stunning impact on his hearers.

The phrase "the gates of hell" was a common idiom in the Greek world. It was used to convey the idea of the strongest possible force. Today we might say, "mighty as an atom bomb ... powerful as an earthquake ... terrible as a tornado;" but when a Greek wanted to express irresistible, invincible force, he would speak about "the gates of hell" - he could think of nothing stronger.

Now to people who were familiar with that idiom, the effect of associating it with Jesus' little band of disciples must have been quite startling. As though he had said – "Until now you have known nothing mightier than the gates of hell - but I am about to create a new thing, my church, against which the gates of hell will be as impotent as a paper sword against granite!"

What does this mean to us?

The Church is the Toughest Thing on Earth

The church tough? Indestructible?

On the face of it, that proposition would seem absurd to many people even today, but it must have seemed still more absurd to the people who first heard Jesus proclaim it.

Look at the scene: Jesus is speaking to a small collection of fishermen, tax collectors, publicans, and peasants - only a dozen men all told, and one of them is under suspicion of being a thief. Yet Christ is promising to turn them into a body tougher than the proverbial "gates of hell". One can almost hear a guffaw of derision: "What? That lot? Tougher than hell? It'll be a wonder if they survive the first prod of a Roman spear!"

Even the men Jesus was speaking to found it hard to accept. In fact, neither they nor anyone else was surprised when, some two years later, he was arrested in Jerusalem and they did all desert him (Mt 26:56).

Despite two millennia of conflict - through rivers of blood, against fire and sword, rack and lash and prison, fang and claw, hatred, slander, and falsehood - the church has stood firm.

Gloriously, incredibly, the promise of Christ has proved to be absolutely true. Against his church, not even the gates of hell have been able to prevail!

This book is now also available as an ebook from Smashwords The Church - Ebook version

This course is part of Church Studies | Diploma. Find additional courses and study streams below.