How to Get Authority

And He gave Him authority to execute judgment, because He is the Son of Man. (John 5:27)

Authority is another one of those very misunderstood topics that keeps most confused as to what it really means, how it should be used and who should have it. Abuse of 'authority' is one of the biggest problems becoming ever more open in our society, and rebellion against authority has always been one of the most difficult issues to address effectively. This likely happens when people in rebellion come to find themselves in positions of authority without knowing how to be subject to authority themselves.

Many times, what is done to supposedly deal with rebellion is to enforce authority by resorting to force, threats, abuse of every kind and the use of fear to try to bring about conformity to the selfish desires of those who claim to have authority. But this is little different than a predator using intimidation and force to suppress the desires of a victim to expose their abuser by threatening to hurt or kill them if they ever tell anyone else what they have experienced. We shudder in horror and are outraged when such situations come into the open, and yet the way we run our government and even the way many raise their children is tainted with this mentality and we too often come to think that it is just normal and even sometimes necessary in order to achieve conformity through control.

No wonder that our internal pictures of God are so horrendously distorted while upcoming generations of children become more and more immoral and disconnected from wanting to have anything to do with religion. Those who have used religion to assert oppressive control over their children when they were young should not at all be surprised to find that their children want to distance themselves as far as possible from the religion of their parents as soon as they are old enough to break away from their control. And if the children do choose to stay within their parents religion the results of that training too often leads them to perpetuate the lifestyle of abuse instead of turning away from it in favor of a relationship-based spiritual encounter with their true Father in heaven.

This issue of authority is a constant theme that keeps emerging over and over as I look at the Gospel of John. The Jews, very much like us, had developed the art of using force, fear, shame and abusive control to demonstrate what they believed God was like and how He related to sinful human beings. In doing so their ideas of what authority was all about morphed into similar veins of thinking that we are so familiar with yet today. They assumed that authority was something you received by grasping for it, by gaining control over the lives of others through the use of force like the Roman empire did. The counterfeit concepts of authority that the world believes in had been integrated into their ideas of religion and so their views of how God exercised authority had become so perverted that they had little appreciation for real authority when they were confronted with it in the life of the Son of God.

When Jesus acted in the full authority of His Father by disrupting the traditions and routines of religion in His day, He was repeatedly accused of acting outside of proper authority. This was a constant and ongoing issue that loomed large in the minds of the leaders of Jesus' day. And it should not be surprising that the very same problem is happening again and creates problems in our day whenever someone chooses to orient their spiritual guidance system to a personal relationship with God. This will happen when one resists taking all of their cues from religious institutions and man-invented systems that try to control the minds and consciences of those within their systems.

I heard an exposition one time on this issue of authority that asserted that authority is not something you impose on others but is something that is given to a person by those who willingly choose to live under that authority. It is a very intriguing idea and I believe there is a lot of important truth in that. But I struggle to see how that fits completely with what I am finding in Scripture here. At this point I wonder if that is only part of the picture of what real authority is all about.

In this passage I find the issue of authority coming to the surface in a very marked way and also being closely linked with the reality about judgment. I can't help but believe that Jesus in these words was addressing far more than just the people standing around listening to Him that day or even all those who would read these words in coming generations. It seems increasingly clear to me that He was also addressing quite directly the supernatural intelligences that were also in attendance and that He was targeting some of the core issues of contention that had emerged early on in the initial rebellion of Lucifer in heaven. Jesus was speaking directly to the fallen angels and to Satan himself and to the questions that Satan had agitated all throughout his career as the accuser of the brethren – and particularly against the Son of God.

Lucifer had contended that Christ did not have inherent eternal life within Himself as the Father said He did. Satan has asserted that Christ did not have proper authority to pass judgment on those who disagreed with God's government and that any such judgment would be an unfair, arbitrary imposition of force just to get His own way. If God did so then the fact could be assumed that God or Christ was operating at least in part from a sense of selfishness which would mean that sin itself would then have valid justification for its very existence.

It was actually Lucifer who first began to distort the meaning of the idea of judgment and authority itself. He claimed early on that if Christ were to judge and impose sentence on those who choose a different path from that outlined by God that it would actually vindicate Lucifer's claims that there was a flaw in God's government that needed repairing. Lucifer claimed, through convoluted but compelling reasoning, that he had the answers to fix the subtle flaws in how God operated His government and that others should trust Lucifer's superior wisdom and intimate knowledge of God's government and join him in creating a 'patch' to repair those flaws.

Lucifer also agitated more and more among the angels that Christ did not really have the right to all the authority and power that He was exercising and that it was unfair that Lucifer was excluded from the intimate counsels of the Godhead while Christ was taken into those secret meetings. Lucifer became jealous of all the privileges that Christ enjoyed and his jealously kept pushing him to make more and more open accusations that Christ was acting outside of His proper role as a high angel who was supposed to work in tandem with Lucifer covering the throne of God and revealing God's will to the universe.

I spoke previously about the fact that in Lucifer's mind and to most others it may have been impossible to externally distinguish between Christ and Lucifer because of God's possible choice to have Christ take on the form of an angel whenever the angels were first created. Since a created being cannot grasp much about reality before their own existence, the angels would have to accept on faith that Christ was not really one of them as far as having an origin in time. Interestingly a number of people still today assert that Jesus must have been created because of some of the terms that God has chosen to use to describe His Son. But this false belief is not a new one but is just a reflection of what was originally conceived in the mind of Lucifer, the first great rebel who accused Jesus of stepping out of bounds.

As Lucifer's rebellion grew in size and influence throughout heaven, he became more bold in his accusations against Christ in particular. He knew he could not get very far by attacking God directly because God was indisputably all-powerful and pre-existent Himself. But Lucifer directed most of His accusations and insinuations against Christ as being one who was not really as equal with God as God said that He was. Thus Lucifer transformed himself from being called Lucifer, which means 'Son of the Morning', to becoming Satan which means 'Accuser of the brethren'.

Satan's campaign of accusations has gone on for millennia, from long before this earth was even created. It has only strengthened in intensity and aggressiveness but is soon to come to a final climax in a showdown called the Great Day of Judgment. But unlike Satan's version of what judgment is all about that most people embrace today, the actual judgment is really going to be conducted God's way and is going to be radically different than how Satan has lead most to believe it will happen.

One reason that this issue of authority was so central in the ministry of Jesus while He was here on earth is that it was precisely during that time that Jesus was actually gaining the rights to legitimate authority that was so crucial in order for Him to effectively carry out the final solution to sin on the last Day of Judgment. I can see in this passage I am looking at right now how it clearly states that Jesus will have authority to execute judgment because He is the Son of Man. This speaks volumes about the true nature of authority and is an important key to unlocking the truth about what true authority really is and how a person receives it.

When I link this passage with the one in Philippians 2:3-11 where Paul talks about Jesus coming to this earth to serve, it becomes much more clear to me how real authority is received as well as why and how it is exercised. These passages are an exposé on the true nature of real authority and how it is to be earned and exercised. It is sharply different than most ideas of authority that we see in this world's systems, but it is vital that we learn the truth about authority so that we can escape the deceptions of the enemy and the deadly consequences of rebellion that will become plain in the final Day of Judgment.

By becoming a human being Jesus gained the credibility with all humanity to be able to relate to what they have to experience in life. But far beyond that, Jesus chose to become a human weakened by 4,000 years of the effects of sin and at a time in history when humanity had sunk to one of its lowest levels both physically and morally. In doing this Jesus gained His credentials through personal experience and earned the right to the respect of everyone who will someday face the final judgment with Jesus acting as the Judge. If Jesus had not condescended to suffer like us and pass through the struggles and painful experiences that we must endure, we would not really ever be able to believe that He had the right to expose our faults or make declarations about our eternal fate.

Only as a person who can identify with our weaknesses, our pain, our sorrows, our struggles can Jesus have the credibility to earn our respect as the final Judge of our lives. And even much more than that, Jesus took upon Himself the last few days of His life on earth, all the consequences internally of all the sins that have ever or will ever be committed in addition to all the other experiences of humanity He had already endured. This was done so that there would be no excuse left whatsoever for anyone to doubt His ability to identify with their problems and temptations and His ability to understand them.

But it is at this point that many get off on a very popular but very dangerous track of thinking. Jesus did NOT come to this earth to appease an angry God by taking upon Himself the arbitrary punishments intended by God for rebellious sinners. Jesus came to reveal the incomprehensible love of the Father, a love that is so foreign to our way of thinking that it actually elicited the greatest resentment, bitterness and hatred and caused humans and demons alike to vent all the wrath produced in sinful hearts against a love that will not let them go. When love is resisted the inevitable result is enormous pain and suffering. So when Jesus died on the cross of a broken heart, it was not because God had gotten angry at Him but it was because the passionate love of the Father came into such close proximity to the rebellious nature of the sins that were laid supernaturally into the mind and heart of Jesus that it killed Him. His agonizing death demonstrated the ultimate consequences of the total incompatibility between sin and righteousness.

Jesus' death was not an exhibition of God's anger toward sinners but was an exposé of the wrath inherent in sin itself against the irresistible love of God. In effect, the actions and attitudes and response of Jesus acting with the Father's presence internally controlling Him fully, while facing sinners and demons doing everything possible to force Him to act defensively or selfishly – all of this cried out, “There is nothing you can ever do, no matter how evil or painful or disgusting or wicked that can ever make Me stop loving you to the very end of my human existence or even for eternity!”

All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men's sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. (2 Corinthians 5:18-19 NIV)