"...the gates of hell will not prevail..."

Have you ever noticed how we talk about castles in stories? The hero doesn’t usually defend a castle. The hero storms one. Think of every great tale you’ve heard since childhood. The dragon’s lair must be entered. The fortress of the dark lord must be breached. The tower where the captive waits must be climbed. The dramatic moment comes when the besieger raises the battering ram against the door of the enemy stronghold.

Yet somehow, when Jesus speaks of gates and the church in the same breath, we have managed to flip the picture entirely. We picture ourselves huddled inside the fortress of the church, drawing up the drawbridge while the dark forces of hell pound against our walls. We imagine ourselves clinging to the inside of the door, hoping it holds. We have, without realizing it, turned the most offensive promise in all of Scripture into a defensive one.

Read Jesus' words: “And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it” (Matthew 16:18, NRSV).

Whose gates are these? They are not ours. They belong to Hades, to death, to the kingdom of darkness. You don't need to be a military historian to know that gates are not weapons. Gates do not march. Gates do not attack. Gates do not advance across open ground to lay siege to a city. Gates stand. Gates defend. Gates are only there to thwart the army that comes against them, while opening only to allow those the "stronghold" wishes to welcome inside. They can also trap people inside. Prison cells have "gates," too.

The picture Jesus paints is breathtaking when you finally see it: it is the church on the march, banners high, advancing on the strongholds of darkness.

It is the people of God pressing against the very doors of the underworld, and those doors—ancient, iron-bound, and reinforced by every lie the enemy has ever told—will not hold.

They will splinter. They will buckle. They will fall.

 

A Different Kind of Church

The word translated “prevail” is katischysousin, from katischyō, meaning “to be strong against,” “to overpower,” “to hold out against.” It is the word you would use of a defender who is being overrun. The grammar itself betrays the picture: gates do not “prevail” by attacking; gates “prevail” by withstanding a force that comes against them.

Jesus is saying that the gates of Hades will not be able to hold out. They will not be strong enough to keep the church out.

And what lies behind those gates? In the Hebrew imagination, Sheol and its gates represented the realm of the dead, the place from which no one returned. The Psalmist cried out for deliverance from “the gates of death” (Psalm 9:13). Job spoke of the “gates of deep darkness” (Job 38:17). Isaiah lamented being consigned “to the gates of Sheol” (Isaiah 38:10). These gates were the ultimate barrier, the final fortress of the enemy of human flourishing.

Jesus says: that fortress falls. Those gates break. The dead come out.

If we have misread this verse, we have probably misread our calling.

A defensive church builds higher walls, suspects more outsiders, retreats further into safe enclaves of the like-minded. A defensive church measures success by what it has kept out. A defensive church spends its energy maintaining boundaries rather than crossing them.

But the church Jesus describes is not a fortress. It is a battering ram. It is not merely a refuge from the world; it is a force loosed upon the world.

It is not waiting for the end. It is bringing about the beginning.

Consider where Jesus speaks these words. He is at Caesarea Philippi, a place sometimes called Paneas in those days, dedicated to the Greek god Pan. There was a great rock face there with a deep cavern, and from that cavern flowed a spring. The pagans of the region called that cavern “the Gates of Hades,” believing it to be a literal entrance to the underworld.

Jesus stands before this very place and says, in effect: here, on this rock, I will build my church, and those gates right there will not hold against us. And you, Peter, are that rock. When I build my church upon you, as my chosen bedrock, you, too, will storm the gates of death just as I will.

Why else do you think Jesus immediately after that, in Matthew 16, Jesus tells the disciples about his death and resurrection? He's telling Peter that what he's going to go through, those "gates" will not hold him, and they won't hold Peter or the Church, either. Peter doesn't get it. Not yet. But he will soon enough. 

It's staggering when you think about it. Jesus points at the gates of hell and tells his ragtag band of common men, with a fisherman as their "general," that they are going to break them down.

 

The Long Pattern of God’s People

This offensive vision is not a New Testament novelty. It runs through all of Scripture like a bright thread. When Joshua entered the Promised Land, he did not build walls; he tore them down. When David faced Goliath, he did not wait in the trench; he ran toward the giant. When Daniel stood in the lion’s den, when the three young men entered the furnace, when Esther approached the king’s throne, the pattern was always the same: the people of God move toward the place of danger, and the danger is undone in their presence.

Even the great picture in Revelation of the New Jerusalem is telling.

The city has gates, but listen to what is said of them: “Its gates will never be shut by day—and there will be no night there” (Revelation 21:25).

The gates of God’s city are perpetually open. The gates of hell, by contrast, are besieged and breached.

Heaven is hospitable; hell is on the defensive.

 

What Has Hell Built Its Gates Against?

If we are to storm the gates of hell, we ought to ask what those gates are guarding.

What does the enemy not want us to reach? Because what's at stake here is more than hell as eternal torment, what's at stake is more than the destination of death. What's going on here is every way that "death" has reigned over creation, every corruption and brokenness that flowed out of the original sin. Which is why, precisely, God had said to Adam and Eve, "You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die.” (Genesis 2:17).

But if you keep reading, Adam and Eve didn't keel over the moment they bit the fruit. They found themselves naked, though, and ashamed. Their lives were "ticking down" to that moment on a grave-defined trajectory. And the grave, the shame of their sin, had killed the shameless, beautiful, life they'd enjoyed in communion with God, and in loving relationship with each other.

The point is this: death looms over every aspect of life, and insofar as we remain under the weight of sin, death lingers in our very members, it haunts every aspect of our lives like a specter. Storming the gates of Hades, of Sheol, isn't just about the fact that we will be raised with Christ in the end, it's about conquering death and all its effects, all it's corruptions, all the suffering born from the very day when we would "die" when we chose a life lived apart from the gift of God's design.

In that respect, when someone colloquially says they are going through a "living hell," they might be more correct than they understand.

Hell builds gates around the lonely, hoping we will not come close enough to call them friend.

Hell builds gates around the addicted, hoping we will not love them long enough to walk them through recovery.

Hell builds gates around the grieving, hoping we will avoid them rather than sit with them in their ash heap.

Hell builds gates around the prisoner and the prostitute and the prodigal, hoping the church will be too respectable to go where they are.

Hell builds gates around our own hidden places too: the resentment we have nursed, the fear we have coddled, the bitterness we have fed.

The enemy would prefer that those rooms in our heart remain locked, that we never bring the light of Christ into them.

To storm the gates of hell, then, is not first to march on some distant geopolitical evil. It is not merely a hope in a distant future, that we will one day be raised from our graves in Christ. But it is certanly that, too, which is the ultimate consummation of our victory. Today, in our daily lives, to storm the gates of hell is to advance, with Christ, on every place where death has set up shop.

It is to refuse the tyranny of despair. It is to insist that no one is too far gone, no situation too hopeless, no darkness too deep for the light to break through.

 

A Different Kind of Warfare

We must be careful here, because the language of “storming” can mislead us.

Jesus did not storm the gates of hell with cavalry. He stormed them with a cross.

He stormed them by being lifted up between two thieves, by speaking forgiveness to a soldier, by entrusting his mother to a disciple, by descending into the very heart of death itself. As the ancient hymn of the church proclaims, he “trampled down death by death,” and the gates fell.

If we are to follow him, our storming will look much the same. It will rarely look like a parade. It will more often look like a kneeling figure, a whispered prayer, a meal taken to a grieving neighbor, a hand extended where a hand had not been extended before.

Saint Paul gives us the strange weaponry: “for the weapons of our warfare are not merely human, but they have divine power to destroy strongholds” (2 Corinthians 10:4).

Strongholds. Fortresses. Gated places.

He goes on: “We destroy arguments and every proud obstacle raised up against the knowledge of God, and we take every thought captive to obey Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:5).

The storming begins inside us, in the captive thoughts and the proud obstacles, and then it moves outward, into a world full of locked doors that need to be opened from the outside.

 

Living the Promise

So what do we do with this? How do we live as people on the offensive rather than people on the defensive?

First, we examine our posture. When you read the news, when you think about the state of the world, when you consider your neighborhood and your workplace, what is your default? Is it retreat, anxiety, and fear? Or is it engagement? The defensive Christian asks, “How do I keep the world from getting in?” The offensive Christian asks, “How does the kingdom get out?”

Second, we identify a gate. Somewhere in your life, there is a place where the kingdom of darkness has set up gates. Maybe it is a relationship that has been written off. Maybe it is a part of your community that the church has avoided. Maybe it is a grief you have refused to let Christ into. Pick one gate. Just one. And begin, in prayer and in action, to press against it.

Third, we remember whose strength we lean on. Storming gates is not a project of human grit. It is a participation in the victory already won. Christ has already descended. Christ has already risen. Christ has already led captivity captive. Our work is not to win the battle; it is to walk into territory he has already conquered and announce the news to those still imprisoned there.

Fourth, we go small and slow, with persistence. The gates of hell are rarely broken by spectacular acts. They are broken by faithful presence over time. The neighbor visited weekly. The prayer prayed for years. The forgiveness offered again and again. The patient love that simply will not give up. This is the rhythm of a holy siege. When we think the only real "attack" is some major, frontal, assault, we tend to shift the responsibility to others, people with more "influence," or "power." We might even look to the wrong weapons entirely, imagining political change will destroy the enemy's stronghold, or that we need some kind of large-scale revival, rather than the slow, patient, loving presence that converts hearts, one heart at a time.

Finally, we expect the gates to fall. This is the most countercultural part of the whole vision. We are not engaged in a noble but doomed effort. We are not trying to hold a hopeless line. The promise of Christ stands: those gates will not prevail. Whatever stronghold you are pressing against in love and faith and prayer, it cannot ultimately stand. The crucified and risen Lord has guaranteed it.

So lift your eyes today. The fortress you are huddled inside was never meant to be your home. It was a staging ground. The doors are open and the field is wide. Somewhere out there, perhaps even within your own soul, a gate waits to be stormed. A captive waits to be freed. A piece of hell waits to be unmade.

Go. The gates will not prevail.