Matthew 16:17Jesus replied, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by man, but by my Father in heaven. 18And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it.
You know what else makes no sense. Jesus is talking to Peter and uses the personal pronoun of *you* in telling him he is *Peter* and then finishes off the sentence talking to Peter with saying *upon THIS rock*. If He had meant that Peter was the rock, He should have said *upon YOU I will build my church*.
He did not. Jesus never said “Upon YOU will I build my church”. Quite an oversight, I should say if that’s what He really meant.
Calling a person a *this* is a mighty strange way of addressing someone. The only way that sentence makes any sense grammatically is that *this* refers to something besides Peter.
“You are Rock (Peter), and upon this rock I will build my Church”, makes perfect grammatical sense. It's the only way the sentence makes sense. Jesus is telling “the Rock” that the Church will be built upon him. Why would he change Peter's name to Rock and then in the next breath tell him that He's building the Church on Himself as Rock? He would have said, “upon ME I will build my Church”, if that were the case. Why give Simon a dramatic new name, “Rock”, and then change the subject by calling Himself “Rock”? Why rename Simon at all? Why then does Jesus confer the Keys of the Kingdom of Heaven on Peter and give him the power of binding and loosing, which is universal jurisdiction over the Church. Awesome power and authority, wouldn't you agree? If Jesus is building the Church on Himself as Rock, why would he rename Peter "Rock", immediately change the subject, then turn back to Peter and give him the primary authority to govern the universal Church on Earth? The whole passage is about Peter and the primacy. There's no other rational explanation.
Read the post again carefully. He called him a “this” because He had just named him a “this”, the Rock.
On a related note, since the Holy Spirit was promised to the Apostles as a sure Guide who would lead them into “ALL TRUTH”, why would God allow the entire Church for 1500 years to be confounded into believing that Peter was the Rock and had the primacy? That goes against the reliability and truthfulness of God's promises. That's utterly impossible.
What is more "strange" is that a few minutes later Christ called Peter satan ..so which is is Rock or Satan?
EXCELLENT POINTS.
THX.