BUILDING ON THE ROCK: THE KEY TO CHRISTIAN UNITY AND A GREAT HARVEST OF SOULS

And I say to you that you are Peter and on this Rock I will build My church
and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. - Matt. 16:18

It is obvious to any honest observer that Christendom is seriously fractured and divided into thousands of entities, churches, and denominations. The prayer of Jesus, recorded in John 17:21, is obviously not yet answered. He prayed, That they all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in you; that they also may be one in Us, that the world may believe that You have sent Me.

If there is going to be unity between Catholics and Protestants and the Eastern Orthodox, there must be a clear understanding of the identity of the Rock on which Jesus said He would build His church. Our Catholic brothers and sisters say that the Rock is Peter and that the pope, being his successor, is therefore the key to unity for today’s church.

However, this claim of supremacy by the Roman bishop has actually been the source of the great divisions in Christian history. The Eastern Orthodox churches, for example, never did accept the claims of supremacy by the bishop of Rome and this led to the major division between East and West in 1054.

And the division that took place at the time of the Reformation was not ultimately over doctrine. Luther never wanted to leave the Catholic Church but was excommunicated when he refused to yield to the demands of the pope. Commenting on this rupture at the Reformation, the renowned Catholic theologian, the late Dr. Hans Kung, said, “From a historical perspective there can be no doubt that it is not Luther but Rome which bears the chief responsibility” (Hyatt, Infallible Pope: Key to Unity or Source of Division?, 54).

If there is going to unity in the church today there must be a return to Jesus. He is the Rock. He is the Living Bread that came down from Heaven (Jn. 6:51). He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life (Jn. 14:6). He is the Savior, the Healer, and the Baptizer in the Holy Spirit. He is Lord!

His Lordship is the Issue

Jesus Must be Lord!

One of the most common designations for Jesus in the New Testament is that of “Lord.” This speaks of His supremacy and authority, and we are told that if we want to be saved we must confess Him as “Lord” (Rom. 10:9). This is not some abstract doctrinal confession but an acceptance of His lordship in our lives where we hand Him the wheel and say “take me where You want me to go.”

This is what it means to be built on the Rock and this was highlighted in the life of my new father-in-law, a 70-year-old retired detective who had never been saved and who was described to me by his daughter (my wife) as a “tough cop.”

Through God’s providential working, George and I took a long trip together and had lots of time alone to talk. As the conversation turned to God, I saw that he had an ideal of what a Christian should be and thought that if he could ever attain to that ideal he could call himself a Christian.

I said to him, “George, becoming a Christian is merely changing masters.” I went on to explain that in the natural we are our own masters and that becoming a Christian is vacating the throne of our lives and inviting him to sit on the throne and be our master.

That resonated with him, and he replied, “Yes, I have always been my own master.” By the time we returned from the trip He had changed masters and made Jesus His Master and Lord. He had not been baptized and had not joined a church (those things are all good), but he had done that one essential thing. He had placed his life on the Rock by making Jesus his Lord.

He Immediately Understood Unity

Immediately, he had no problem fellowshipping with any “Christian” who loved Jesus. He knew very little about the various doctrines of the different churches, but he knew that Jesus was the one essential thing that mattered. It reminds me of the words of Hans Kung who wrote,

The road to unity is not the return of one Church to another, or the exodus of one Church to join another, but a common crossroads, the conversion of all Churches to Christ and thus to one another (Hyatt, Infallible Pope: Key to Unity or Source of Division, 58).

The Early Church Was Built on the Rock

The centrality of Jesus in the early Church is obvious everywhere in the New Testament, even in how the word “Christian” came into use. Neither Jesus or Paul ever used the term “Christian,” and it is found only three times in the entire New Testament. The earliest followers of Jesus were known as “disciples.”

A "disciple" is a committed follower and learner. The rabbis of Jesus’ day all had their disciples. John the Baptist had his disciples. Paul had been a disciple of Gamaliel, one of the most respected rabbis and teachers of the day (Acts 22:3). When Jesus began His ministry, He gathered a group of disciples that He would teach and train. Even after His resurrection, His followers were known as His disciples.

It was outsiders who gave the disciples of Jesus the name of “Christian,” because their lives and message were so centered in Christ. Luke writes, And the disciples were first called Christians in Antioch (Acts 11:26b).

In the same way that we would designate someone from Italy as an “Italian” or someone from “Nigeria” as a Nigerian, the disciples of Jesus were designated as “Christians” because Christ was so central to everything they said and did. They were built on the Rock.

A Final Thought

As a final thought, Jesus said that He would build His church on this Rock—on the revelation Peter had of who He is. Wherever Jesus is proclaimed as the Lord, Messiah, Savior, Redeemer, Son of the Living God, we can be confident that He will be at work through His Holy Spirit building His church.

It was this sort of Christ-centered witness and preaching that ignited the Great Awakening, which transformed colonial America. During the Awakening a British official wrote to his superiors in England and said, “If you ask an American who is his master, he will tell you he has none, nor any governor but Jesus Christ” (Hyatt, 1726: The Year that Defined America, 81).

As we zero in on knowing and preaching Christ in the coming days, I believe we could see unparalleled unity and the greatest harvest of souls the church has ever seen. After all, Jesus did say in John 12:32, And when I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw everyone to myself (NLT). It's all about Jesus!

Dr. Eddie Hyatt is an author, historian, Bible teacher. This article was derived primarily from his latest book, Infallible Pope: Key to Unity of Source of Division, available from Amazon and his website at www.eddiehyatt.com.