Understanding Authority in the Bible

For the past few years, we have been involved in a local community of faith, Northridge Church. Recently our pastor talked about the life and death of Martin Luther King, Jr., and in our small group we studied Mark 10:32-45.  There are many striking things about this passage, when the historical, theological, and immediate context is taken into account. One thing that struck me in a fresh way was the radical nature of the teaching of Jesus on the connections between authority, leadership, honor, and service. These teachings were exemplified in many ways by MLK.

Many people, regardless of whether or not they have a faith commitment, equate leadership with the exercise of authority. But as usual, the way of Jesus is radically different than the way of human nature and culture. For him, greatness means service, becoming "a slave of all". Most of us who aspire to leadership aren't thinking, in the midst of our amibition, "I really want to lead so I can be a slave of all!" But this is precisely what Jesus does, and what he calls his followers to do as well. It strikes me that if anyone deserves honor, it would be the Son of Man. But he willingly sets that aside in sacrificial love for human beings.

We can see in this passage that the possession of authority does not entail its exercise in the kingdom of God. Jesus has authority, but he does not use it in this context because there is something important at stake, the redemption of humanity and the rest of creation. Or better, he uses his authority in a way that is different from how we tend to employ it. He uses it to serve.

Finally, this distinct way of understanding authority relationships and practicing leadership has important implications for other passages in the Bible dealing with authority in the context of marriage, parenthood, work, and the church. Many of these passages pose difficulties for us and surface as objections to the teachings of Scripture, but I believe that a large part of the problem is that we are operating from a misguided understanding of authority and leadership. If we understood leadership and authority as Jesus understood and practiced it, many of these issues would fall by the wayside.