The Pulpit Commentary — Matthew — Volume 2 — Section 144

recognize their Mnster as the Christ, the time for the first founding of the Christion Church. II. Tf;E RATIFICATION OF TnE co~EBSION, 1. TM blessing. The Lord repeats the word which he had so often used on the Mount of the Deatitudes in describin" the children of the kingdom; he applies it now to St. Peter. "Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-Jona," be said solemnly, using the full name, patronymic as well as personal name, as we do on solemn occasions; as he did once again when he put to the same apostle the searching question, "Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me?" Simon was blessed, for this knowledge had come, not from human teachers, but by revelation from the Father. Simon's confession was not like other confessions of the Lord's Messiahship, an inference from his words or works; it was the expression of an inward spiritual con- viction, a knowledge gaineJ by Divine revelation, like St. Paul's knowledge of Obrist (Gal. i. 15, lG), a knowledge which transformed his heart and consecrated his whole life to the senice of the LorJ. Blessed are they now who have the like knowledge, into whose hearts God bath shined, "to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ." Blessed are they who with that inner knowledge of the heart own the Lord Jesus to be the Christ, the Son of the living God; for thus to know Christ, he himself bath told us, is eternal life. 2. T/,,e prophecy, (1) " Thou art Peter." The Lord had given him that name long ago, at his first interview with him (John i. 42). It was then given by anticipation. Now Simon had shown the truthfulness of the Lord's foreknowledge; he was proving himself to be a true Peter, or rock-like apostle, strengthened and established by the grace of Christ for the work to which the Lord had called him. He was Peter, rock-like, a piece of rock. " That Rock was Christ," the Lord whom Peter had just confessed to be the Christ, the Son of the living God. There is not "any rock like our God." He is the Rock of Ages, the Rock that is higher than the highest of saints, the Rock of our refuge, the Rock of our salvation. The Lord Jesus is our Rock, because he is God, the Messiah, the incarnate Son of the living God. "The Word was made flesh;" that great' fact is the foundation of all our hopes. "God manifest in the flesh" is the Rock on which the Christian Church is built, the one foundation once laid (1 Cor. iii. 11); the Stone which the builders disallowed, but nevertheless the Head of the comer; the chief Comer-stone, elect, precious. Peter had no strength in himself apart from the one Rock; he was sinking in the stormy sea when the Lord caught him by the band; he was falling into a deeper abyss when the Lord's loving mournful look recalled him to the sense of his sinfulness. Peter was as the dove (Bar-Jona: Jonah means "a Do,e ") that is in the clefts of the rock (Cant. il. 14); he was ouly safe, as we are only safe, when he was hidden in the R0ck of Ages. Yet, in a secondary sense, Peter may be regarded as a rock. He derived his new name, which is by interpretation "a S,tone," from Christ the Rock; be derived his rock-like character from spiritual union with the Rock of Ages ; he was one of the living stones, hewn out of the Rock (Isa. Ii. 1), built into the Rock, which form the spiritual house described by himself in his First Epistle. (Doubtless he was thinking then of these great words of Christ when he spoke of Christ as a living Stone, a chief Comer-stone, a Rock.) But he was more than this; he was one of those who helped to lay the one foundation, the one only founda- tion in the truest sense (1 Cor. iii. 11), the foundation laid by the apostles and prophets of the New Testament (Eph. ii 20), when they preached Christ as the only Saviour. And in a secondary sense he might himself, like the other apostles, be called one of the foundations (comp. Rev. xxL 14), one of the pillars (Gal. ii, 9), and in another tigure one of the master-builders (1 Cor. ill. 10). But the foundation-stones rest upon the Rock, the one true Foundation ; and the wise master-builders build under the one Master, which is Christ. (2) The Church. We meet wHh this great word here for the first time as we read the Scriptures of the New Testament in the existing order; once more only it occurs in the Gospels (eh. xviii. 17). We must remember where this prophecy was spoken; in the coasts of Cresarea Philippi, among the most remarkable rock-scenery of the Holy Land, possibly under the shadow of the high red limeslone cliff which overhangs the town, the summit of which was crow1;1ed by the wLite marble temple bu.ilt by Herod in honour of Augustue. That rock, Dean Stanley saj·s (' Sinai and Palestiue,' p. 399), "may possibly have suggested the words which Dow run round the dome of St. Pcter's." That temple with its blasphcwo,1s dcuication on. xvi. 1-28.] 'l'HE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST. MATTilEW. 147