Simon Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”
Jesus replied, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by flesh and blood, but by my Father in heaven. And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.”
There was a song in the late seventies sung by a popular band named "Led Zeppelin". The title is "Stairway to Heaven". The song paints a picture of a woman on a fantastic voyage that ends up being a metaphor for our own journeys. It's quite deep, but also misses the mark by a fair piece.
In this scripture, Peter risks a revelation of Jesus that I think he may have been secretly keeping inside for some time. He opens up about it at this moment for his closest friends to hear. And Jesus' response sets the tone for the history of the Church - namely that, as long as She builds on the faith and knowledge that He is the Messiah then the proverbial sky is the limit. Moreover, whatever we legislate on earth will be legislated in heaven.
Indeed, it hearkens back to another recorded encounter that the Patriarch Jacob had with the Father in Genesis 28:11-13.
When he reached a certain place, he stopped for the night because the sun had set. Taking one of the stones there, he put it under his head and lay down to sleep. He had a dream in which he saw a stairway resting on the earth, with its top reaching to heaven, and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it. There above it stood the Lord, and he said: “I am the Lord, the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac. I will give you and your descendants the land on which you are lying.”Here, Jacob is in a place of rest (on a rock, no less) when he dreams of a stairway to heaven. At the top of the stairway stands the Lord who says that the land belongs to his descendants. When we are given land, it's not just a place where we are to be "hanging out" or merely existing; it's a place over which we are to exercise authority - much as Jesus stated when he gave us legislative authority over the earth in the opening scripture above.
Indeed Jesus even states that He, Himself is the stairway in John 1:51.
“Very truly I tell you, you will see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.”So then - how is the Church to be built? We are to be built only on the revelation that Jesus is the means to accessing heaven. And what's more, this revelation opens up the means to exercising heaven's rule and reign on the earth.
