Churches that charge the gates of hell don’t play it safe

There's a reason Jesus didn't deliver this conversation in Jerusalem. He could have. The temple was there. The religious establishment was there. The people who thought they had it all figured out were there. Instead, he took his disciples to one of the most disturbing places in the ancient world — Caesarea Philippi — and it's worth understanding exactly what that meant.

Matthew is the one telling this story, and that matters. He wasn't writing to Romans or Gentiles. He was a Jew writing to Jews. But not just any Jew — Matthew was a tax collector, a man who had turned on his own people for personal gain. The moment he did that, he forfeited his place in Hebrew society. He was considered an outcast, an anathema, a man who would never fit in again. And then Jesus said, Come, follow me. Matthew found a place in the kingdom that the religious establishment had already closed to him.

That shapes everything about how he tells this story. His agenda is clear: this kingdom is for the forgotten, the overlooked, the misfits. Jesus' message throughout Matthew is essentially this — those who think they're in are actually out, and those the world has written off are actually in. The fishermen, the poor, the women, the tax collectors. God is inviting them into something the gatekeepers never saw coming.

The Place

To understand what Jesus said, you have to understand where he said it.

Caesarea Philippi was built by Philip, son of Herod, who named it after Caesar to curry imperial favor. He chose this particular location strategically — it was already a major gathering place, drawing hundreds of thousands of people each year to a festival that had been growing for centuries.

At the base of the cliffs was a spring, a tributary that fed the Jordan River. That opening in the rock was considered, in the pagan religious imagination of the day, to be a literal entrance to the underworld. The Romans called it the Gates of Hell. Not metaphorically. They believed it.

The festival held here centered on the god Pan — half man, half goat — and the word pandemonium comes directly from this annual gathering. What happened at that festival was deeply wicked. I'll leave the details sparse, but understand this: it made every modern expression of cultural decadence look restrained by comparison. Carved niches in the cliffs held idols. The worship was sexual, degrading, and by any honest measure, dehumanizing.

That is where Jesus takes his disciples.

These were Hebrew men. Misfits, yes, but still deeply formed by the law and the prophets. Walking into that place, they would have known exactly what was happening there. They would have felt the weight of it. And it's in that setting — surrounded by false gods, sexual perversion, and what their culture literally called the entrance to hell — that Jesus asks the most important question in the world.

The Question

"Who do people say that the Son of Man is?"

He doesn't start with them. He starts with the crowd. What does the world think? And the disciples give honest answers — John the Baptist, Elijah, Jeremiah, one of the prophets. Serious men. Significant men. But not the answer.

Then he turns it personal.

"But who do you say that I am?"

That's the question that matters. You can spend a great deal of energy getting worked up over the world's confusion about Jesus. You can be passionate about wanting his name everywhere, about gospel initiatives and outreach and getting people into church. All of that is good. But if you don't actually know who Jesus is yourself — not as a doctrine to defend, but as a person to trust in the hardest moments of your life — you won't do justice to any of it. Before he sends them out, Jesus needs to know they know.

It's Peter who speaks up. Peter, who usually manages to say something just close enough to right that Jesus has to correct him. This time, he nails it.

"You are the Christ, the Son of the living God."

You can almost imagine the other disciples holding their breath, waiting for Jesus to say, Almost, Peter. Not quite. But he doesn't. He says, Blessed are you, Simon Barjonah. Flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven.

That kind of affirmation from a rabbi, in that culture, would have nearly stopped a man's heart. Jesus is saying: what just came out of your mouth didn't come from you. God put that there.

The Rock

What follows is one of the most debated verses in all of Scripture. Protestant theology was forged in part on this passage. The Catholic Church draws very different conclusions from it. So it's worth slowing down.

"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."

In the original Greek, two different words are used here. Petros — Peter's name — is masculine. The word translated rockis Petra, which is feminine. They sound similar, but they are distinct. Jesus is not saying he will build his church on Peter the man. He's pointing to the statement Peter just made. The confession — You are the Christ, the Son of the living God— that is the rock.

Did God use Peter remarkably? Absolutely. He preached the gospel on Pentecost and thousands were saved. He was a pillar. But Jesus was never intending to build his church on one person. No institution built on a single human being can bear that weight forever. And frankly, Peter himself would go on to prove it — confronted by Paul, making significant mistakes, writing in 1 Peter that he is not the final authority. The rock is the truth of who Jesus is.

Our church is not built on what music style we prefer, which Bible translation we use, or which programs we run. What it comes down to is who we believe Jesus is and what we believe he did. He died. He rose. He's our savior. That is the rock.

The Gates of Hell

Standing at a place the Romans literally called the Gates of Hell, Jesus says, The gates of hell shall not prevail against it.

Notice the imagery. Gates are defensive. They don't attack — they hold ground. Jesus is not painting a picture of his church huddled together, praying that darkness doesn't break through. He's painting a picture of a church on the move, pressing forward so aggressively that even the enemy's fortifications can't hold against it.

The church was never meant to play defense.

Three things this should produce in us:

First, resist the pull to conform. The disciples were standing in the middle of a culture that had normalized the unthinkable. The pressure to just blend in, to go along with what everyone else is doing, was real. That pressure hasn't changed. The world is constantly trying to press us into a mold of its own making — telling us that living for yourself is freedom, that dependence on others is weakness, that truth is relative and surrender is foolish. None of that leads anywhere good. Every generation that has believed it eventually collapsed under the weight of it. Resist it.

Second, believe that Jesus is who he says he is. There has always been a more comfortable version of Jesus on offer — Jesus the good teacher, Jesus the moral philosopher, Jesus the inspirational figure. But a good teacher doesn't get thousands of people killed for refusing to deny him. A mythical hero doesn't transform civilizations, fund hospitals, and build universities. If Jesus didn't rise from the dead, none of this matters. If he did, then everything he said about himself is true, and bending the knee to him isn't a loss of dignity — it's the most rational response in the universe.

Third, learn to think offensively. Here's a question worth sitting with: What would you attempt to do if you knew God had guaranteed your success? The first thirty seconds you'll spend on silly answers. But give it a real minute. Let the noise settle. What would you actually do if failure wasn't the final word?

That's not a hypothetical for followers of Jesus. He has already told us the outcome. His kingdom will not fail. The gates of hell will not prevail. The question isn't whether Jesus will build his church — he said he would, and he has, and he will. The question is whether we're willing to be part of it.

The Worst Day and the Best Day

Peter's highest moment and his lowest come within the same breath of this passage.

He gets it exactly right — You are the Christ, the Son of the living God — and Jesus blesses him for it. Then, a few verses later, Jesus begins to explain what must happen: he will go to Jerusalem, suffer, be killed, and rise on the third day. Peter, fresh off his greatest moment, pulls Jesus aside and rebukes him. Far be it from you, Lord. This shall never happen to you.

Jesus turns to him and says, Get behind me, Satan.

What a day Peter's having.

But here's what you don't want to miss: Peter doesn't quit. He doesn't walk away. He's confronted by Paul, he makes mistakes, he denies Jesus three times — and he doesn't let any of it pull him off mission. The most spiritually mature people you'll ever meet aren't the ones who haven't failed. They're the ones who have failed more than you know, and they've let God redeem every bit of it. Don't let your mistakes convince you you're done. Jesus is building his church. He knows who he's working with.

An Honest Word About What's at Stake

Our church recently celebrated ten years. By almost any measure, God has been generous with us. In a season when the average American church is plateauing or declining, we are healthy and growing. We support missions. We do real work in our community. These are blessings we are responsible for.

But there's a danger in health, if we're not careful. Health becomes comfort. Comfort becomes safety. And safe churches don't charge the gates of hell.

When I was thirty years old and raising money to plant this church, I carried a map of Virginia showing what they call the golden crescent — the arc of population running through Hampton Roads, Richmond, and the DC metro. At the time, five and a half million people lived in that crescent. Today it's closer to nine and a half million. And when I showed that map to larger church planting organizations, more than one of them told me Portsmouth was the wrong place to start — too poor, too much crime, not the right conditions.

I think those are exactly the conditions where churches are most needed.

When I was twenty years old, I preached from this same passage for the first time. At the end of those notes — barely legible, embarrassingly rough — I wrote that this promise is still powerful today. And I meant it. I committed my life to planting a church and building it as faithfully as I knew how. Some of what I planned came true. Much of it didn't. We never started those three college campus ministries. But we do have thirty small groups. We do have a youth ministry. We set a goal to give $50,000 to missions. Last year we gave $120,000.

God has been good. And now we are responsible for what we do with what he's given us.

My hope — and I want to say this plainly — is that in the years ahead, we send people out. Not just to support other people's work from a distance, but to go. There will come a day when I'll introduce you to someone on our team, and I'll tell you they're leaving in a year and a half to plant a church somewhere. And I'm going to ask you to prayerfully consider going with them. Not as a spectator. As someone who serves, leads, and gives themselves to something that matters.

We have one life.

I'm for you doing excellent work at your job. I'm for you raising your children well. But if we're not careful, we'll assume someone else is taking the risks. Someone else is charging the gates. Someone else is planting the churches in the places nobody wants to go.

The big things never happen without a lot of small things happening first. Invite someone. Share your story. Tell somebody what Jesus has done for you. That's where it starts.

The gates of hell will not prevail.

But someone has to show up at the gates.