“Surely the Lord Jehovah will do nothing, except he reveal his secret unto his servants the prophets” (Amos 3:7).
God has restricted Himself to functioning only in accordance with what He has revealed in the Holy Scriptures; all authority derives from the Word of God and the Word is the only guide for life. Nowhere do we see this made clearer than in the life of Jesus.
Jesus final words to His disciples were; “…all authority was given to Me in heaven and upon earth” (Matthew 28:18). The verb “given” is in the aorist passive, which means that He was given this authority in the past. Where did this authority come from? From God’s Word of prophecy, which is the only source of authority in the universe! Today, as always, “He is sustaining all things by the Word (rhema) of His power” (Hebrews 1:3).
We read in Isaiah 9:6, for example, that the government will be upon the shoulders of the child to be born, the promised Messiah. The prophet Daniel tells us (Daniel 7) of the vision in which he saw the Son of Man coming in the clouds up to the Father’s throne to be presented to Him and to present to Him the Blood of His sacrifice. Daniel tells us that in this vision he saw that everlasting authority was given to Jesus, the Son of Man, over every tribe, nation and tongue. We can see for ourselves the fulfillment of Daniel’s vision taking place, in Acts 1:9-11, where Luke records Jesus being taken up into heaven in a cloud. Thus, Jesus gets His authority from the prophetic scriptures of the Word of God.
That Word tells us also that Jesus is the One to Whom has been devolved all divine authority until “He delivers up the kingdom to the God and Father, when He has abolished all rule and all authority and power; for He must reign until He has put all His enemies under His feet. The last enemy that will be abolished is death; for He has put all things in subjection under His feet. But when He says, “All things are put in subjection,” it is evident that this excepts the One Who put all things in subjection to Him. And when all things are subjected to Him, then the Son Himself also will be subjected to the One who subjected all things to Him, that God may be all in all” (1 Corinthians 15:24-28).
The interesting thing about Jesus’ claim in Matthew 28:18 is that He says that all authority was given to Him; not is, but was. Yet in His life on earth He never exercise that authority; “but laid aside His power, taking the form of a servant, becoming in the likeness of men and was appearing as a man in outward form” (Philippians 2:7). The reason is, of course, that He did not take up His authority in this life because He had first to fulfill the conditions upon which the authority was given to Him; in other words, the authority was not activated until He did that for which He had come; not only to be a propitiation for sin and to redeem mankind, but to be perfected in obedience (Hebrews 5:8-9); where Adam failed, Jesus succeeded and thus, the authority given to Adam and surrendered to Satan in the Garden, was restored to the Son of Man.
Christ Jesus is the Word of God, “living and active and cutting sharper than any double edged sword”(Hebrews 4:12); He is the One “with Whom we have to do” (Hebrews 4:13). He is the One to Whom we owe allegiance!
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