The Church Fights

The church means action. Being the church does not mean defending an idea that is past its use-by date. The Church fights! The Church advances. If we are not advancing, we must not assume that Christ is not! If we feel flat and defeated, we must not assume that is how Christ feels! Listen him in Matthew 16:

I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.

Jesus calls the church, ‘my church’. He owns it, he builds it and he runs it. He is intent on building his church.

To build means to create something to a plan. Dumping rubble creates a pile, but is not building, because there is no plan. Jesus is building his church to a plan (we have it here in the Bible). He is rolling out his programme of revealing himself to humankind and rescuing all who will be reconciled to God. He is increasing his Church at the expense of something else. Jesus’ building costs Satan - because Jesus is annexing, that is taking over Satan’s territory. He is taking over Satan’s territory and he cannot hold out against Christ.

Matthew 12.28 But if it is by the Spirit of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you. 29 Or how can someone enter a strong man's house and plunder his goods, unless he first binds the strong man? Then indeed he may plunder his house.

Jesus said that the gates of hell will not be able to resist his Church. We need to understand what ‘gates of hell’ means. It doesn’t mean that Satan owns hell. God owns hell. Hell is God’s final and unceasing judgement on evil and death. God controls it and God decides who will be permitted to remain there. Hell is reserved for all who will not make peace with God. Satan’s objective is to qualify as many people as he can to be enemies of God. His aim is to fill hell with rebels. He holds people captive to their sin by deceiving them. He knows he is going down. He has a mad and unchangeable envy and hatred of God and aims to take as many men and women with him under God’s judgement as possible.

So, when Jesus says that he is expanding his church and the gates of hell will not be able to hold up against its pressure, he is describing the aggressive fight that the church undertakes in every generation to release people from God’s judgement. They are under his judgement because they refuse to be reconciled to him. Satan works day and night to deceive people into believing that they have no need of God. Every sinner who learns about forgiveness, repents and is baptised, is a loss to Satan. The gates of hell have been prised open and another soul has been pulled out of the darkness into the kingdom of light. The fight is very, very hard and each individual that is pulled free is an enormous prize and significant victory for the church. This is good news. It is the good news about Jesus Christ.