Luther denies that Matt. 16, 18. 19 establishes the papacy in the Church of Christ.  He denies that this text creates a one-man power in the Church, that it vests one individual with a sovereign jurisdiction over the spiritual affairs of all other men, making him the sole arbiter of their faith and the exclusive dispenser of divine grace, and, last, not least, that it says one word about the Pope.  Luther makes, indeed, a clean and sweeping denial of every claim which Catholics advance for the God-given supremacy of their Popes.  Inasmuch as the papacy stands or falls with Matt. 16, 18.19, he has put the Catholics in the worst predicament imaginable.

Catholics believe that Peter was singled out for particular honors in the Church by being declared the rock on which Christ builds His Church, and by being given the keys of the kingdom of heaven.  Peter’s supremacy as Primate of the World, they hold, passed over to Peter’s successor and is perpetuated in an unbroken line of succession in the Roman Popes.  Three questions, then, confronted Luther in the study of this text in Matthew.  First, does the “rock” in Matt. 16, 18 signify Peter?  The Lord had addressed to all His disciples the question, “Whom say ye that I am?” Instead of all of them answering and creating a confusion, Peter, the most impulsive of the apostles, speaks up and says, “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.”  With these words Peter expressed the common faith of all the disciples.  Not one of them dissented from his statement; he had voiced the joint conviction of them all.  Peter was the spokesman, but the confession was that of the apostles.  Any other apostle might have spoken first and said the same, had he been quicker than Peter.  If there is any merit in Peter’s confession of Christ, all other disciples, yea, all who confess Christ as Peter did, share that merit.  In replying to Peter the Lord takes all merit away from Peter by saying to him:  “Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona; for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but My Father which is in heaven.”  He addresses Peter by the name he had borne before he became an apostle:  Simon, son of Jonas, and tells him that if he were still what he used to be before he came to Christ, he could not have made the confession which he had just uttered.  In his old unconverted state he would not have formed any higher opinion concerning Christ than the people throughout the country, some of whom thought that Christ was John the Baptist risen from the dead; others, that he was Jeremias; still others, that he was one of the ancient prophets come back to life.  The deity of Jesus and His mission as Christ, that is, as the Messiah, our Lord says, are grasped by men only when the Father reveals these truths to them.  A spiritual nature, a new mind such as the Spirit gives in regeneration, is required for such a confession.  The glory of Peter’s confession, therefore, is the glory of every believer.  To every Sunday-school child which recites Luther’s