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In all cultures there are material symbols to express the non-material realities. The Bible is also full of symbols representing higher truths, and one of them is “The Rock”. In the Old Testament God is presented as a Rock¹, both for what He is and for what He does. God is like a safe place where find refuge when there are dangers, threats and insecurity. Only in God we are safe. ‘The Lord is my rock and my walled town’.² It also shows God as a Rock of salvation in the middle of a storm.³ And finally, it presents God as a solid Rock where you can build a building without danger of erosión.⁴ There was no other Rock outside God.⁵

The New Testament identifies Christ as the Rock⁶, the true and eternal Rock of the Old Testament, the ‘Living Stone’⁷ because Christ is God. Jesus Christ himself is presented as a refuge where to go to feel us safe, ‘Come to me, all you who are troubled and weighted down, and I will give you rest’.⁸ He is the Savior of world.⁹ Finally, the New Testament presents Jesus Christ as the solid Rock on which to build the Church as a collective and and also the individual life. Everyone to whom my words come and practice them, ‘will be like a wise man who built his house on a rock’¹⁰; is like the man ‘who built his house, who went deep and put base of it on a Rock’.¹¹ Jesus is the Messiah and the Rock, and ‘On this rock I will build my church’.¹² This last passage is explained by Peter identifying the Rock with Jesus Christ, not with himself.¹³ The Church is not built on fallible human beings, but on Christ himself, the eternal Rock.

Biblical References:

1. Deuteronomy 32: 4; 2 Samuel 22: 32; Psalms 18: 2
2. 2 Samuel 22: 2
3. Psalms 19: 14; 62: 2
4. Isaiah 28: 16
5. Psalms 18: 31
6. 1 Corinthians 10: 4
7. 1 Peter 2: 4
8. Matthew 11: 28
9. 1 John 4: 14
10. Matthew 7: 24
11. Luke 6: 48
12. Matthew 16: 18
13. Acts 4: 11