Jesus said this to Simon Peter just after he confessed the Lord as the Christ:
"And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it." Matthew 16:28 (ESV)
I was meditating on this scripture recently. I hadn't noticed until now the importance of Jesus speaking of the gates of hell. He didn't talk about a mobile army of hell that would attack us. Indeed He seems to imply that we, as the church, ought to be the one doing the attacking. Now I don't know about you but gates don't tend to do much walking around or attacking, at least not in my experience. The way I see it, gates are the ones that tend to be attacked and always on the defence. So the gates of hell, the established kingdom 0f darkness need to be attacked.
Church, we need to go on the offensive. Recall, though,
"we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places." Ephesians 6:12 (ESV)
So we fight against the devil not other humans. Indeed though living Christ-like lives, through prayer (Ephesians 6:18, intercession and declaring the Word of God (the sword of the Spirit - Ephesians 6:17) we storm the gates of hell to free the oppressed, give strength to the weary, bind up the broken-hearted and lift up the poor.
"And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it." Matthew 16:28 (ESV)
I was meditating on this scripture recently. I hadn't noticed until now the importance of Jesus speaking of the gates of hell. He didn't talk about a mobile army of hell that would attack us. Indeed He seems to imply that we, as the church, ought to be the one doing the attacking. Now I don't know about you but gates don't tend to do much walking around or attacking, at least not in my experience. The way I see it, gates are the ones that tend to be attacked and always on the defence. So the gates of hell, the established kingdom 0f darkness need to be attacked.
Church, we need to go on the offensive. Recall, though,
"we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places." Ephesians 6:12 (ESV)
So we fight against the devil not other humans. Indeed though living Christ-like lives, through prayer (Ephesians 6:18, intercession and declaring the Word of God (the sword of the Spirit - Ephesians 6:17) we storm the gates of hell to free the oppressed, give strength to the weary, bind up the broken-hearted and lift up the poor.
No comments:
Post a Comment