Lecture 23: The Narrow Gate, the New Israel, and the Rock of Matthew 16

The lecture, section by section

1. The narrow gate is a transformed life

   Those who receive the kingdom's power in Matthew are transformed; they become new people. So the narrow gate of Matthew 7, in its own context, is not a phrase about praying a prayer; it is about lives of obedience, for that is how the sermon ends: false prophets are known by their fruit, and not everyone who says Lord, Lord will enter the kingdom, but the one who does the will of the Father. Schreiner is careful on both sides. Such obedience can never be the basis of salvation, for we remain sinners; it is the evidence of transformation, and entering the gate is bound up with becoming a disciple, with accepting Jesus' authority, which is what the whole sermon is about. What the passage will not permit is the reading that walks through the gate and then lives however it pleases. Jesus has transformation in mind, and the house built on the rock.

2. I never knew you

   The sermon's most sobering words fall on impressive workers: people who preached, cast out demons, and did miracles in Jesus' name, to whom he will say, I never knew you; depart from me, you lawbreakers. Schreiner loves the precision: not, I knew you and you fell away, but never, you never belonged to me, even while you ministered. Judas is the proof. Judas preached, cast out demons, worked miracles, and we know it because on the night of the Last Supper, when Jesus said one of you will betray me, no heads swiveled toward the one man who could never do miracles. They had no idea; only in retrospect did the hints appear. Schreiner adds that John MacArthur's The Gospel According to Jesus has this exactly right: there is a real change in those who are Christ's, an indication of transformation, never the basis of righteousness.

3. A king means a people

   The kingdom comes with the King, and with the King comes a people, for God's kingdom is God's rule over God's people in a place. Matthew alone among the Synoptic Gospels speaks of the church, and the choice of twelve apostles is loud symbolism: they are the nucleus of the new Israel. The people of God are no longer defined by the twelve tribes; the true and new Israel is shaped around the King and his twelve.

4. Under apostolic authority

   To belong to the true and new Israel, you must put yourself under apostolic authority, and Schreiner observes that all Christians actually confess this. Roman Catholics locate apostolic authority in the pope and his bishops; evangelicals answer that the apostles are gone and their authority is found in the Scriptures. The church is built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, as Ephesians 2:20 says, and for us that apostolic foundation speaks today in the written Word of God.

5. Gentiles in the genealogy

   During his ministry Jesus focused on the lost sheep of the house of Israel, as the story of the Canaanite woman shows. But Matthew signals from his first page that the people of God will be wider than Israel. The genealogy names Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, and, pointedly, not Bathsheba but Uriah's wife, and Uriah was a Hittite. The reason the women are named, Schreiner argues, is not that they were women but that they were not Jews, and the phrase Uriah's wife is the clue. Then come the magi of chapter 2, fulfilling the hopes of Psalm 72 and Isaiah 60, and the centurion whose faith moves Jesus to say that many will come from east and west to recline at the table, joining the restored, true Israel. For there is only one way into the people of God: you must be Abraham's children, and Romans 4 says Abraham has children both circumcised and uncircumcised. So the book ends where it was heading: go, make disciples of all nations, baptizing and teaching. Ethnic Jews are not left out; the King's people has become universal.

6. The Messiah's assembly

   Matthew alone gives us two passages where Jesus speaks of the church, and the word matters. In the Old Testament the assembly of the LORD, the qahal, the ekklesia, was Israel, the congregation of the LORD. Now the Messiah's assembly is those who belong to Jesus Christ and live under the church's authority, an authority to bind and loose as it is led by the Spirit, to declare sins forgiven insofar as it follows the gospel. On the nature and authority of the church Schreiner is, in his own words, an unashamed apologist for the 9Marks writings, from technical works to Jonathan Leeman's fantastic short books, adding, as always, that commendation is not agreement in every detail.

7. Authority that disciplines

   That authority is exercised in real congregations. Schreiner describes his own church's practice: members are interviewed and affirmed before the congregation as credibly Christian, and, when necessary, the congregation also removes. Jesus lays out the steps, one on one, then two or three, then tell the church; and 1 Corinthians 5 shows that some sins are so egregious that removal comes at once, with restoration waiting on repentance proven over time. A bare I am sorry, Schreiner argues, is not what Scripture means by repentance in such cases; the proof takes time. Membership that can be affirmed meaningfully must also be able to be withdrawn meaningfully.

8. Peter is the rock, with his confession

   You are Petros, and on this petra I will build my church. Why the shift from masculine name to feminine noun? Some conclude the rock must be the confession rather than Peter. But grammatically, Schreiner answers, the Greek word for rock is feminine and there is no masculine noun for rock to use; and when you name a man, the name must take masculine form, for calling Simon Petra would have made the room roar. The gender of nouns signals nothing about sex, but names always match the person. So the wordplay gives us Peter: Peter is the rock on which the church is established, and yet not Peter apart from what he has just said. The rock cannot be separated from the confession that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God; the two are bound together.

9. But not the Pope

   What the text will not yield is the papacy: there is nothing here about successors, and reading them in is anachronism if anything is. Peter stands here for all the apostles, first among equals, so that Matthew 16 is Ephesians 2:20 in narrative form: the church built on the foundation of the apostles. And the authority is contingent on the gospel confessed. Paul writes that even an apostle preaching another gospel is accursed, and Paul rebuked Peter himself, not for preaching but for living out of step with the gospel. Schreiner notes that Peter-as-rock, joined to his confession, is now probably the majority Protestant reading, and that many Roman Catholic interpreters candidly grant the exegesis does not establish the papal office.

10. Two feedings, two peoples

    Why does Jesus feed five thousand and then four thousand? The second feeding takes place, on the majority reading, in largely Gentile territory around the lake, and that is the point Schreiner finds most persuasive: Jesus feeds the Jews and then feeds the Gentiles, a quiet early sign of Jew and Gentile at one table. Otherwise it is hard to say what the second story adds, and Matthew does not waste stories.

1. The sermon ends with fruit, not claims. If the people nearest you described your fruit from this past year, what would they name, and what would you ask the Father to grow next?

2. Apostolic authority now speaks in the Scriptures. Where is the Word functioning as real authority in your life right now, and where has it quietly become a suggestion?

3. Matthew joins belonging to authority: affirmation, discipline, restoration. What would change this month if you treated membership in your congregation as citizenship in an outpost of the true and new Israel?