We run our website the way we wished the whole internet worked: we provide high quality original content with no ads. We are funded solely by your direct support. Please consider supporting this project.

gates-of-hell

Storming the Gates of Hell

Jesus said:

“I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it.” (Mt 16:18)

To understand Jesus’ teaching here, there are a few things you should know. First, “Hades” was the standard term for the underworld, which means that Jesus was probably referring to the whole of the Satanic kingdom. Second, the phrase “gates of Hades” is a metaphorical reference to the fortified walls of the Satanic forces. They are closed to keep opposing forces out, and therefore they need to be overcome. Third, Jesus says that these gates will not be able to “prevail against” the church. Jesus is here portraying the church as being on the offensive and Satan’s kingdom as being on the defensive.

Jesus is saying that he is going to build his church on the rock of his divinity—the confession that he is the “Son of the living God”—and the way this church is going to be built will be by bashing down the gates of Satan’s fortress. In other words, the church is to be involved in the very same warfare work that Jesus himself was involved in throughout his ministry. Ministering in his authority and his accomplished victory on the cross, the church is to storm the fortress of Hades and bash down its gates.

Jesus follows this by saying “I will give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven” so that what the church binds and looses on earth will be bound and loosed in heaven. Whatever the church locks up when it bashes down the gates of Hades will be locked up in heaven, and whatever it unlocks and sets free will be set free in heaven. I can only read this as referring to the church’s authority to bind up demonic forces and to set people free.

This teaching provides a blueprint of what the body of Christ is to be about. It is to be about what Jesus was about: aggressively breaking down Satanic fortresses wherever we find them. In people’s lives, in families, in churches and in society at large, the church is to expand the rule of God on the authority of Christ by binding evil and setting people free. In a word, our charter is to live out a theology of revolt, throwing all we are and all we have into guerrilla warfare against the occupying army, the tyrannizing powers of darkness.

—Adapted from God at War, pages 216-217

Photo credit: zoomion via Visual hunt / CC BY-NC-SA

Related Reading

Prayer and the Open Future

Kurt Willems posted a blog today written by Derek Ouellette regarding why understanding that the future is partially open is the only thing that really makes sense of prayer. Derek addresses his thoughts to your younger self, the self that was more “Open. Teachable. Curious. Adventurous.” Let’s all be willing to respect and freely interact…

The Problem with “Church”

Many people think of church as a religious building people attend once a week to sing, hear a sermon, take an offering and perhaps participate in the Lord’s Supper (or “take Communion”). Many refer to the church as “the house of the Lord,” imagining that God is more present in this sacred building and during church…

Topics:

Divine Drama

Jeff K. Clark posted last week on God as Master Story-Teller and Finding Our Place Within the Divine Drama. There’s an enormous difference between talking about God using abstractions versus locating him in the stories he has chosen to inhabit. God comes to us not only in the history of his interactions with his people,…

Prayer and Co-Reigning with God

God’s primary objective is a world in which free agents love God and one another. For this to be possible, people need a stable environment and freely chosen, irrevocable, morally responsible say-so. Prayer is simply the spiritual side of our morally responsible say-so. We influence things by what we do through our bodies and in…

Podcast: How Do You Expel Unrepentant People From Your Church?

Greg gets tough on Tom Foolery and discusses dealing with behavior that is sinful and unrepentant. http://traffic.libsyn.com/askgregboyd/Episode_0205.mp3

Tags:

So Much Evil. Why?

In light of the profound evil being experienced by the people of Paris and countless other locations around the world, we thought we would raise again the question that many ask when things like this occur: Why? Of course, Greg has spent much of his writing and speaking energy addressing this. Here is a basic,…