Exercising the Keys of the Kingdom to Lock the Gates of Hades and Build up the Church

We need to see from Matt. 16 the way to build up the church and the enemy of the building; we need to cooperate with the Lord to lock the gates of Hades for the church to be built up.

This week we come to a new topic in the series, The Development of the Kingdom of God in the Christian Life and the Church life, which is, The Exercise of the Kingdom for the Building up of the Church.

In Matt. 16 the Lord Jesus mentioned the church for the first time, and this mentioning was in the context of the kingdom; the church is revealed in a way that is inseparable from the kingdom. There is a distinction between the church and the kingdom, for each has different emphasis, but in this context, the church and the kingdom are almost synonymous.

The kingdom of God is just God Himself as life; this life was embodied in Christ, and Christ came to the earth to bring the kingdom of God on the earth. Christ Himself is the kingdom of God, and wherever He was, the kingdom was there.

He lived the life of the kingdom, and everything He said concerning the kingdom in the book of Matthew He lived out; He was the unique reality of the kingdom on earth, setting a model, an example, for all of us.

Then, He went to the cross, died and resurrected, and became a life-giving Spirit; as the Spirit, He is now being dispensed into us. Christ as the kingdom seed was sown into the human soil of our spirit, and the expectation is that this seed would grow in our heart.

He was sown in our spirit, but He is to grow in all the parts of our heart. As He grows in us, there’s a realm being produced; this realm is a kind of a living, a living like that of the Lord Jesus, a living that is the reality of the kingdom, a living that pleases God and fulfills His purpose.

The Lord’s burden and desire was that He would not be the unique One who possesses this reality and express the kingdom under God’s rule and reign, but that this would be in a vast number of people, the believers in Christ, which comprise the church.

What God wants is that not just Christ would be the kingdom but also the church would be the kingdom of God. So now we have the Head and the Body, Christ and the church, to be God’s kingdom on the earth.

Today we all are in this process of becoming the reality of the kingdom of God. The church was produced through Christ’s death and resurrection.

The seed sown into us will grow within us to have an expression, and this is the kingdom living, a living lived by the Lord Jesus and is duplicated and lived out by all of us again.

This realm, this kingdom realm, is the realm where the church exists, can survive, is maintained, and is the reality of the church in a certain aspect. This living – which is simultaneous to the growth of the seed by our having much deep, inner life with the Lord – also has an expression, which is in our daily life.

This living is the corporate God-man living, that is, we all live the God-man life and together we are blended to be a corporate God-man life as the reality of the Body of Christ.

If we all live the kingdom life, together there will be a reality of the kingdom in our midst, and this reality is the Lord’s recovery; this is God’s purpose from the side of the kingdom, and it has to do with His authority, His reign and His rule on earth.

So on one hand we need to develop the seed, be constituted with it, water it, grow it with certain hidden and deeper life experiences with the Lord. On the other hand, we need to have a certain kind of exercise, a kind of living, bearing the fruits of the Spirit so that we may live the kingdom life today and inherit the kingdom reward in the next age.

Exercising the Keys of the Kingdom to Lock the Gates of Hades and Build up the Church

God’s kingdom today is a real exercise; when we come to the matter of the kingdom of God, there needs to be exercise, for it is not natural or spontaneous that we live in the kingdom of God.

To exercise is to exert our energy, to take some action, and to have a certain kind of practice; exercising is not automatic. Yes, the law of the Spirit of life is automatic, but the kingdom requires our cooperation, our vigilant exercise on a daily basis.

For the kingdom to come forth, we need to exercise every day for the kingdom; only when we have the kingdom living among us can there be real building of the church. If we don’t have the kingdom in reality, we may do many things, but the church cannot be built.

In Matt. 16:18 the Father gave a revelation to Simon Peter concerning Christ – the Son of the living God – and then the Lord revealed that He will build His church upon such a revelation and with such stones as Peter, transformed human beings.

And then the Lord revealed that, as He wants to build His church, the gates of Hades are there. All throughout the ages there have been a warfare to build up the church, while the gates of Hades seek to destroy it, damage it, and annul it.

The problem for Christ’s work in building up the church is the gates of Hades. We need to learn how to exercise the keys of the kingdom to shut up the gates of Hades so that the building work may occur.

There are many thousands of churches on earth, and many saints have the burden of building up the church; how much building up takes place? It all depends on how much we lock the gates of Hades.

The Lord gave us the keys of the kingdom of the heavens and, whatever we bind on earth shall have been bound in heaven, and whatever we loose on earth shall have been loosed in heavens.

The gates of Hades have locks and keys for these locks, so the Lord gave us the keys of the gates of Hades. Doctrinally speaking, these keys were given to Peter to bring in the Jewish and the Gentile part of the Body together into one Body on the day of Pentecost and in the house of Cornelius.

But we don’t just want to know the interpretation of this but its application, how can we apply this in our experience.

In this portion the Lord spoke of Satan’s way, his weapon, to halt, stop, and deter the building up of the Lord’s church, the gates of Hades. Hades is the place where the dead dwell and are kept; it is a place of death, like the Old Testament Sheol.

Death is very powerful, and the gates of Hades are the gates of death; whatever comes out of these gates (and there are more than one gate) is eventually some form of death. What is killing the church today is death, all kinds and manners of death.

What does it mean to lock up these gates? It is to lock the gates of death, the gates of Hades. The Lord has the keys to death and Hades; He is the Lord as the resurrected, ascended, and enthroned One, and today we are given the practical keys (see Matt. 16:21-28) to lock up the gates of Hades for the building up of the church.

We need to cooperate with the Lord to close, shut, and lock the gates of death which stop the building up of the Lord’s church in the local churches.

Lord Jesus, we want to exercise the keys of the kingdom to close, shut, and lock up the gates of Hades so that the church would be built up! Amen, Lord, we want to cooperate with You by exercising the kingdom to build up the church. May we not cooperate with the gates of Hades but identify them, lock them up, and release the building up of the church. Oh Lord, may there be much actual building up of the church going on by the church exercising the keys of the kingdom to lock the gates of Hades and release the building!

Seeing the Way to Build up the Church and what are the Enemies of God’s Building

Matthew 16 reveals the way for us to build up the church, and it also reveals the enemy of the building. Christ – the Son of the living God – builds the church on Himself as the rock, with stones such as Peter, transformed persons (Matt. 16:16-18).

But the gates of Hades, Satan’s authority or power of darkness, attack the church to frustrate the Lord from building up the church.

The gates of Hades, simply put, are Satan’s authority, his power of darkness, which is just death. Death is the satanic authority and the power of darkness; where there’s death, Satan’s power is there.

Even the Lord Himself can be frustrated if we don’t close up these gates; He has already shut these gates, He was victorious over death, but He is concerned about us in our present Christian life and church life, whether we cooperate with Him to lock the gates.

In order to build the church, the Lord had to pass through death and enter into resurrection (v. 21). The church exists in the realm of death and resurrection; the church was produced in Christ’s resurrection, and the only way we can be in reality in the church is by experiencing and living in Christ’s resurrection.

Christ is the crucified and resurrected Christ, and He shut the gates of Hades; He did not set his mind on the things of men but on the things of God, He denied Himself totally, and He took up His cross and remained on the cross.

We need to follow Him – follow the crucified and resurrected Christ, and use the same keys that He used to lock the gates of Hades. Even though He had a perfect humanity, the Lord still denied Himself to do the will of God.

The church was produced through Christ’s death and resurrection (John 12:24). The way to build up the church is to be crucified and resurrected (cf. 2 Cor. 4:10-12; Gal. 2:20). The church exists and is built up only in the realm of resurrection through crucifixion (Gen. 2:21-22; cf. Eph. 4:15-16).

Even before He was physically crucified, the Lord lived in the realm of death and resurrection; He died to Himself, and when He went to the cross it was the ultimately willing laying down of His life – not just His soul life, but even His physical life.

By doing this, He entered into the realm of resurrection, and it is in this realm that the church is produced.

Peter, however, when he heard that the Lord was about to go to die and be raised, had a good heart toward the Lord and he rebuked Him and tried to prevent Him from going to Jerusalem to be crucified (Matt. 16:22).

He was not some kind of a devil-possessed man but rather, he was a person who had just received the revelation from the Father and, out of his good heart toward the Lord, he rebuked Him and tried to prevent Him from going to the cross.

If the Lord did not go to Jerusalem to suffer, die, and be resurrected, there would be no church, and God’s purpose would not be fulfilled!

This is why the Lord quickly identified that Peter was a stumbling block to Him, for he wanted to deter Him and stop Him, being an obstacle to Him to take the way of death and resurrection.

It was actually not Peter but Satan who came out through one of the gates of Hades, the gate of Peter’s self, to try to frustrate the Lord form building up the church (v. 23). When Peter spoke, Satan opened a gate of Hades.

The self, the mind, and the soul-life are the main gates through which Satan comes forth to attack and damage the church (vv. 23-36). May we realise this and pray that throughout the earth the gates of Hades would be completely shut, otherwise the building work will be delayed and slowed down, and Satan is having his day to attack and damage the church life.

Lord Jesus, show us what the gates of Hades are and make us those who cooperate with You to exercise the keys of the kingdom and lock the gates of Hades. Oh Lord, show us how the self, the mind, and the soul-life are the main gates through which Satan comes forth to attack and damage the church. May we not express our self or opinion but deny the self for the building up of the church. May we not live out our soul-life but lose it for the sake of the church. Oh Lord, may our mind be renewed in Your word until it becomes the mind of Christ, useful for the building up of the church!

This article can also be read in the Romanian language / Citiți acest articol în limba română vizitând următorul link, Să exersăm cheile împărăției pentru a închide porțile Hadesului și pentru a zidi biserica.

References and Hymns on this Topic

• Inspiration: the Word of God, my enjoyment in the ministry, the message by bro. Minoru Chen for this week, and portions from, Collected Works of Witness Lee, 1978, vol. 1, “The Exercise of the Kingdom for the Building of the Church,” pp. 70-79, as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, The Development of the Kingdom of God in the Church Life and the Christian Life (2019 spring ITERO), week 5, The Exercise of the Kingdom for the Building Up of the Church.
• Hymns on this topic:
  # Freed from self and Adam’s nature, / Lord, I would be built by Thee / With the saints into Thy temple, / Where Thy glory we shall see. (Hymns #840)
  # Within those whom You’d call / Put such a restless caring / For building to give all— / These times are for preparing; / The gates of hell cannot prevail / Against the builded Church! / The hours are few, the builders too— / Lord, build, O build in us! (Hymns #1248)
  # On Thyself the Church is builded, / And though many storms assail, / Still it stands erect, for ‘gainst it / Gates of hell cannot prevail. / Thine authority possessing, / It doth bind and loose in Thee, / Bringing men into Thy kingdom, / Satan’s captives setting free. (Hymns #834)