Why the Promise that Jesus Will Build His Church Does Not Mean He Will Necessarily Build My Church

I suspect that in our personal Bible readings through Exodus, with all the fireworks that come in the first half of the book, we often miss the beauty of the ending of Exodus. After all that God’s people went through, after all that was stacked against them—the sin of the Egyptian enslavers and the sin in the hearts of Israelites—God was faithful to his promise to lead his people out and to cause them to worship him (cf. Ex. 3:12 and 40:34–38). It’s a beautiful, encouraging ending to a truly epic book.

Our church recently finished preaching through the book of Exodus. In my final sermon, I connected this ending in Exodus with a passage more familiar to us, the promise that Jesus makes in Matthew 16:18 to build his church. “On this rock,” he tells Peter, “I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.”

I take the “upon this rock” statement not to be Peter in and of himself but rather the rock of Peter’s confession. Just before Jesus made the promise, he asked the disciples, “But who do you say that I am?” and Simon Peter responded, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God” (16:15–16). Peter’s rock-solid confession is the rock upon which Jesus builds his church. As one popular worship song puts it, “This gospel truth of old, shall not kneel shall not faint.”

After the sermon, a member of our church asked what this promise might have to do with individual churches, particularly here in the West. Many churches have become so progressive that they might not be Christian churches anymore, and other churches have become so political that they might be more political than spiritual, more partisan than Christian.

Does it not seem in so many ways, we wonder, that the church of Christ is not being built but torn down?

I love this question because it aims to take seriously the promise of Jesus, which is how Christians should take the promises of Jesus. But I don’t think we should understand the promise that Jesus will build his church to mean that any individual church will increasingly thrive or even survive indefinitely. The same goes for churches in any particular region, such as churches in North America or the West more generally. Instead, I take the promise to mean that, upon the rock of the confession of Jesus as the Christ, Jesus will always be building his church somewhere.

I’ll give one scriptural reason for this view and a few reasons from church history.

Reasons from the Bible

In Revelation 2–3 we have letters from Jesus to individual churches in different regions. Each letter has encouragement and challenges. Some of the letters even have threats, or maybe we would call them warnings. For example, to the church in Ephesus, we read, “Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent, and do the works you did at first. If not, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place, unless you repent” (Rev. 2:5). To the church in Pergamum, we read, “Therefore repent. If not, I will come to you soon and war against them with the sword of my mouth” (2:16). Famously, to the church in Laodicea, we read, “I know your works: you are neither cold nor hot. Would that you were either cold or hot! So, because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth” (3:15–16).

It’s verses like these that help me understand what Jesus means and does not mean by building his church. The promise that Jesus will build his church cannot mean that every individual church will remain prosperous; otherwise, the verses that warn of punishment for unrepentant disobedience wouldn’t have teeth.

Reasons from Church History

Second, I think we’re helped by church history, even the church history within the book of Acts. While the church of Christ grows throughout the book, we do not necessarily see the continual, unbroken growth of the churches in Jerusalem. True, “the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved” (Acts 2:47). When persecution comes, however, many Christians and church leaders scatter (Acts 8:1). But even in the scattering because of persecution, although it hurt the church in Jerusalem, scattering seems to be part of the very way Jesus was building his whole church.

When we leave the book of Acts to look at the rest of church history, we’re left with many questions about sometimes growing and sometimes shrinking and, inevitably, disappearing churches. Why, for example, has the church in France been cold, even hardened, to the gospel for hundreds of years, especially after a season of gospel fruitfulness? And why has the church in the global south been exploding in growth after being unreached for so long?

I’m speaking in generalities and acknowledge plenty of exceptions: there are good churches in France and bad ones in the global south. But this does seem to be how God is building the church in this day.

Again, why? What does all this mean for the church in America? What are we to make of the recent news regarding the Southern Baptist Convention? On Sunday this last week, during the sermon, I briefly mentioned the terrible news about the SBC and the abuse scandals and how sad they make me. How will Christ build his church on such shaky ground?

I don’t know any more about this question than anyone else. Yet, many people seem to think that the American church will keep getting better and better, but I don’t see any reason, at least not a scriptural one, why this would have to be true.

How Should We Then Live?

Behind the question about Jesus building his church, I suspect any thoughtful Christian would have much to be discouraged about. I, too, am confused and sad about aspects of the church in America.

Just last week I was talking to a pastor with deeply evangelical and orthodox convictions who belongs, for now anyway, to a very liberal denomination. I asked him how many pastors are like him, that is, how many pastors in his denomination believe the Bible and the historic tenets of Christianity, such as Jesus rising bodily from the dead. I won’t give this pastor’s answer. But it was a very low percentage. This is why, I think, a few years ago we saw a dozen or so churches in this denomination close in the city of Harrisburg. I’m sure some of these church buildings had a few genuine Christians who attended them each week, but I would say that it is hard enough to keep a church healthy when you actually preach the gospel. It would be even harder, indeed impossible, to build a church without the gospel. You can’t build upon a rock when the rock ain’t there.

Even as there are many things to be thankful for in the Western church, there are so, so many things to lament. And that’s probably all we can do. Lament and pray. And stay faithful in whatever church context God has called us, confessing our sin and confessing Jesus as the Christ . . . loving an imperfect local church, loving her members and her pastors . . . and loving our neighbors . . . and raising our kids . . . and planting our gardens . . . and exercising and enjoying our hobbies . . . and, of course, praying and lamenting some more. That’s about all we can do.

But that’s not nothing. It’s the sort of faithful living that God uses to build his church.

* Photo by Avel Chuklanov on Unsplash