Tag: 1 Corinthians 3:11

JEFF TURNER

Strip away everything secondary from the Christian faith and you eventually arrive at the thing upon which the entire structure depends. That thing is the atoning death of Jesus Christ at Calvary and the forgiveness of sin made possible through his blood. This is not one doctrine among many; it is the load-bearing wall without which nothing else stands.

Your faith and mine rest on one central confidence: that Jesus Christ died as a substitutionary sacrifice, that his death was sufficient to satisfy the demands of divine justice, and that through his blood, genuine and permanent forgiveness of sin is available to all who come to the Father through him. If that death did not occur, if that blood was not shed, then on what basis could anyone approach God and expect to be received?

Jesus came in human flesh precisely because our condition required it. He entered our world at our level, clothed in the same humanity we wear, so that we could hear him, understand him, and through him, come to understand the nature of the God he came to reveal. The incarnation was not a theological abstraction; it was God making himself accessible to the people he came to save.

To live without this foundation is to live without a floor beneath your feet. Those who have not come to Christ through faith, given by God, have no settled basis for hope, no reason to believe that the weight of their sin has been addressed, no assurance that what awaits them beyond this life is anything other than the consequences of their own record.

But for those who have received what Christ accomplished, the ground is firm. Here is where we stand: on the cross, on the blood, on the risen Saviour who now intercedes for us. Nothing in this life or the next can remove that foundation from beneath us.

For no one can lay a foundation other than the one which is laid, which is Jesus Christ.

1 Corinthians 3:11

JEFF TURNER

When Jesus spoke to Peter about building his church, he made a statement that has been understood in different ways throughout history. He said that the gates of hell would not defeat his church, and he mentioned a rock as its foundation. The Roman Catholic Church teaches that Peter himself was this rock, pointing to the idea that Peter went to Rome and became the first pope. However, there is no historical evidence to support this claim.

Looking closely at what Jesus actually said reveals a different meaning. Right after this conversation, Jesus called Peter “Satan” and told him to get out of his way. This happened because Peter was trying to stop Jesus from going to the cross. Later, Peter showed his weakness again when he denied knowing Jesus three times on the night of his arrest. Do these verses not make it clear that Peter was too unstable to serve as the foundation for the entire church?

The key to understanding this passage lies in recognizing what Jesus was really pointing to. When Peter declared that Jesus was the Christ, the Son of the living God, he spoke a truth that came directly from God the Father. Jesus acknowledged that Peter was like a small stone, but the rock he would build his church on was something much larger. It was the truth of Peter’s confession itself. The church stands on the bedrock truth that Jesus is the Messiah and the Son of God. This confession, not any human leader, forms the unshakeable foundation that hell cannot overcome.