Chapter 38: Authority
AUTHORITY
THERE is deep down in all of us a strong resistance to, ultimately amounting to hatred of, authority. We writhe under it. “Nobody’s going to tell me what to do. I’ll do what I please.” “Who does he think he is?”
But the world doesn’t run without authority. Somebody has to tell us what to do. The question is not who he thinks he is but whom does he represent. A soldier salutes the uniform, not the man, for whether the man is his superior in other ways or not, in the army he represents a certain level of authority. He has been given rank. His rank does not prove that he is taller or nicer or stronger or more intelligent than the man who salutes him. He has in some way, however, earned his rank.
Those who call themselves Christians are people who have accepted authority. They believed God’s estimate of them and received His remedy on the basis of the authority of the Bible. Jesus said, “All authority is given to me,” and when He called disciples He called them to do three things: deny themselves, take up their cross, and follow. It is impossible to do these things without recognizing authority. There is a story in the Gospel of Matthew about a centurion whose servant was lying paralyzed at home, in terrible distress. Jesus offered to go and heal him, but the centurion asked Him only to say the word and he was sure his servant would be healed. “For I am a man set under authority, with soldiers under me; and I say to one, ‘Go,’ and he goes, and to another ‘Come,’ and he comes, and to my slave, ‘Do this,’ and he does it.” It was his own experience of authority that enabled him to understand the authority —that is, the power —of Jesus’ spoken word, and Jesus said He had not found such faith even in Israel. In response to the man’s faith, Jesus spoke the word and the servant was healed.
In order to exercise authority it is necessary to obey authority. The centurion declared that he was a man “under authority,” with soldiers under him. He respected the authority of Jesus and submitted himself to it in faith.
In order to be a disciple we must deny ourselves —this is to exercise authority over our own spirit. We must take up the cross —this is to submit to Christ’s authority. And we must follow —this is continued obedience. This is the road not to confinement, to bondage, to a stunted or arrested development, but to total personal freedom. It means not death but life, not a narrowly circumscribed life but “abundant” life. The gate is narrow but not the life. The gate opens out into largeness of life. There is, we know, also a broad way. We know where it leads —to destruction.
Acceptance of the divinely ordered hierarchy means acceptance of authority —first of all, God’s authority and then those lesser authorities which He has ordained. A husband and wife are both under God, but their positions are not the same. A wife is to submit herself to her husband. The husband’s “rank” is given to him by God, as the angels’ and animals’ ranks are assigned, not chosen or earned. The mature man acknowledges that he did not earn or deserve his place by superior intelligence, virtue, strength, or amiability. The mature woman acknowledges that submission is the will of God for her, and obedience to this will is no more a sign of weakness in her than it was in the Son of Man when He said, “Lo, I come —to do Thy will, O God.”