1.2 Is the Sole and Absolute Authority

Before I became a Christian, I viewed authority, in the exercise of it or submission to it, as a means to an end. That changed, once I had began to travel on the path of submitting to Jesus Christ as Lord. Travelling? Yes, for it is not an easy journey for independent-minded people, like me, to make. Authority, in our context and culture, is not a popular word. Where greater democracy is advocated, it is often falsely assumed that the road advocates anarchy: individual self-resolution and personal independence. Rather than building a society where constructive, social responsibility towards others is cultivated, we can find ourselves immersed in increased isolation and trapped by autonomy.

The Bible, throughout its literary breadth and span, recognises authority as a necessary fabric that is woven into life itself. The question it brings to us is, ‘whose authority do we come under?’ The Biblical narratives do not allow us, contrary to the European Enlightenment’s influence on our way of thinking, to perceive people as independent and autonomous agents. Utopian societies, full of material wealth and prosperity for all can be longed for; but there are further, hidden dimensions at work in our lives.  Experiences born out of the pursuit of escape and fantasy, suffocation by popular media, as well as dabbling in horoscopes, spiritualism, occult practices and searching after the sensation of personal enlightenment, tell another story. A society filled with people who display behaviour and demonstrate lives that are desperate to discover significance and purpose, or to numb absence and emptiness, betray the reality that there is another dimension to life that seeks to exercise a destructive authority over us, where there are spiritual entities that want to oppress and diminish us.

The Bible teaches us that there are powers and principalities that would dominate (2 Timothy 2.26) and destroy us (Ephesians 6.12); spiritual forces that both affect and infect lives (James 3.15). Although we can normally neither see nor touch them, domination by exploitative practices that demean and desecrate our humanity, engineered and manipulated by demonic powers, betray their presence. These powers and the environment they generate are an ever present reality – the default setting of life - for people in a world marinated in spiritual darkness. Jesus Christ challenges and overcomes the authority of such darkness (1 John 3.8; Hebrews 2.14-15). Through embracing us, Jesus draws us into a life under His authority. He calls and invites us to inhabit the dimensions of His life and living, that we might belong to and come under the authority of God.

What does it mean, that you and I should come under the authority of God, through Jesus Christ? First, we need to understand that Jesus Christ would liberate us from the control of demonic forces. Jesus calls us to enter into a redefined relationship with God. Through the allegiance of faith, we are able to identify with Jesus Christ as children of our heavenly Father (John 1.12-13). Secondly, it involves turning towards God and away from actions and attitudes associated with the authority of the devil (Luke 4.1-14; 1 John 3.10): an intentional renunciation of practices and perspectives that would defile and destroy us (Galatians 5.16-26; 1 John 5.18-19).

In this sense, our relationship with God is to be modelled on that of Jesus Christ’s relationship with His Heavenly Father. The Father’s love for Jesus is wonderfully expressed towards His Son, when Jesus gives Himself to His Father’s calling upon His life (Mark 1.11). Jesus subsequently makes it clear that all He does is based on His Father’s will. Jesus does only what He sees His Father doing (John 5.19). He understands that His purpose is to do His Father’s will, speaking what Father has taught Him (John 8.28).

This submission to God, as His Father, characterises the life and ministry of Jesus. God wants us to adopt, in our humanity, the same attitude as Jesus Christ (Philippians 2.5ff.). Our lives are to be given over to worship of God in looking for His rule – His Kingdom – to be expressed in and realised through our lives (Matthew 6.9-13). We are to pursue a path that leads towards our words and actions conforming to the express will of God. For this to emerge within our lives, we need to grow in our appreciation of the greatness of God our Father’s love towards us, that He should call us His children (1 John 3.1-3). This cannot simply be a mind exercise. Openness, receptivity and conformity to the presence and power of the Holy Spirit leads us to confess, Abba, Father (Romans 8.15-16; Galatians 4.6). It is a filial relationship that God intends us to experience as well as to own (Romans 5.5, 15.13), a relationship that embraces every aspect of who we are.

My observation is that many people – many Christians - are unsure about the measure of God their Father’s love for them. It is one thing to know your Father loves you. It is quite another matter to accept and embrace the fact that His other children are valued no more than you. You are not an unwanted child or an afterthought. He does not prefer others to you: you matter! For all Christians, there will be something grasped of God’s forgiveness and mercy expressed through the sacrifice of Jesus at the Cross. But the unsurpassable love of Father? An awareness and conscious experience of that love? The realisation that God’s compassion, care and concern towards you is unqualified and unlimited? God knows that a knowledge of God’s love and its purifying power will come through mentally appreciating and processing that fact; but He also wants you to have an experiential encounter with the Holy Spirit, penetrating deep within you, birthing affective awareness and appreciation of His Holy love filling you throughout. This is the birthright of every Christian. God wants it for you. And you need to look for and want it from Him (Luke 11.13).

We cannot stop even there. There is something else that needs to be noted regarding Father’s love and authority. A failure to see and understand what follows here may rob us, causing us to fall short of appreciating the full extent of Father’s love. It is simply this: God has a family of children that He loves, each and every one. For each person, God has a complete an unending love. He loves and cares for each one, each person in your life that is around you, desiring to shape us together as His people. God knows and utterly loves you and each person around you. He wants to shape and mould us as a people together to bear His presence, to be the Body of Christ on Earth.

The purposefulness of God, as narrated in the Old Testament, testifies to this. God’s concern is with the holy integrity of Israel, a people of different tribes and traits, yet with one common identity.  God calls out and shapes a people to belong to Him: to be true to Him, conformed to His Law and reflecting His character and goodness. God’s concern is not simply for single persons, living in isolation, but for the structure and wellbeing of human society. Where God’s loving authority is responded to. He sees and values each person; but He also sees and cares about the relationships that exist between us as people. His desire is for the construction and maintenance of a society that reflects His nature: that nature which is made known to us in and through the person, life, ministry, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. God is concerned in shaping in us a life, whereby faith and practice are integrally expressed through the Body of Christ, the church.


Questions for reflection:


• How has your life-experience shaped your attitude towards ‘authority’?
• In what ways, so far, have you experienced God’s authority exercised in your life?
• In what ways might you deepen and enrich your appreciation of God’s caring authority exercised in your life?