Marketplace Reflections (10)

Subject to Authority

In Matthew 8:5 - 13 we read:

And when Jesus entered Capernaum, a centurion came to Him, imploring Him, and saying, “Lord, my servant is lying paralyzed at home, fearfully tormented.” Jesus said to him, “I will come and heal him.” But the centurion said, “Lord, I am not worthy for You to come under my roof, but just say the word, and my servant will be healed. For I also am a man under authority, with soldiers under me; and I say to this one, ‘Go!’ and he goes, and to another, ‘Come!’ and he comes, and to my slave, ‘Do this!’ and he does it.” Now when Jesus heard this, He marveled and said to those who were following, “Truly I say to you, I have not found such great faith with anyone in Israel. I say to you that many will come from east and west, and recline at the table with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven; but the sons of the kingdom will be cast out into the outer darkness; in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” And Jesus said to the centurion, “Go; it shall be done for you as you have believed.” And the servant was healed that very moment.

If you’ve been reading this blog for any length of time you may have seen this passage before, either in illustrating Bible reading or in pondering the topic of “authority”. For years I’ve used this passage to ask the question, “What did the centurion recognize about Jesus?” And for years the consistent answer people give me is, “That Jesus was in authority.”

What is your answer?

The Bible has a lot to say about authority, about how it should be exercised, about how it should be obeyed, and about how, when necessary, it should be disobeyed. While I will explore how authority should be exercised in future posts, for now I will say that authority should be subject to authority, that it should be accountable, sacrificial, and that it should be used to serve others - whenever we are given authority we should be stewards of the authority and not owners, we should be servant-leaders. Of course there are different kinds of authority; for example there is positional authority and there is moral authority. Ideally those in positional authority will also have moral authority, but we know such people are rare.

Paul writes (Romans 13:1b) that “there is no authority except from God, and those which exist are established by God.” Sadly, as with many other things that God has given us for our good, humanity has twisted and distorted authority, so that what is meant for our good is often used for evil - therefore there are times when we must disobey authority, but when we do so we must be as certain as possible that we are obeying God and not giving vent to our own self-interests. It is too easy to lie to ourselves by rationalizing away our disobedience in the guise of “righteousness” when we are really attempting to replace one person’s agenda with our own in order to seize power and dictate events.

In his letter to the Colossians Paul writes (Colossians 4:22 - 5:1) that slaves are to obey their masters, not just in terms of external actions but more importantly in terms of heart attitude...for “It is the Lord Christ whom you serve.” He also points out to masters that they “have a Master in heaven”. Surely we can extend this principle to all who are employed by others and to all who employ or supervise others. For the Christ-follower this means that our work ought to be in accordance with Colossians 3:23, “Whatever you do, do your work heartily, as for the Lord rather than for men.”

None of this is to suggest that workplaces tend to be places without stress or conflict or without poor leadership or insensitive leadership, or even at times evil leadership. Workplaces are imperfect because people are imperfect, our goal ought not to be the absence of disagreement or conflict, but rather how we live and work with others interdependently; learning to work through disagreements and conflicts and turning them into growth opportunities - both individually and collectively.

For the Christian, respect and submission to authority entails an acknowledgement that “there is no authority except from God”. While the context of these words in Romans Chapter 13 is governmental authority, the principle dovetails with Colossians 3:22 - 4:1. When we honor authority we trust God to care for us, we commit ourselves to Him - whether others realize this or not.

This does not mean that things always go well for us in the short-term, and I think that this is a particular problem in the West with our individualistic outlook, and I think it is a problem in the Western church with its meshing of cultural narcissism and Christianity. Jesus calls us to take up our cross daily and follow Him (Luke 9:23) but we would rather use Jesus to make our lives better and softer and more comfortable and help us avoid hard choices.

Even though Saul sought to kill David, David was careful to honor Saul’s position as King of Israel; and the one time that David showed disrespect to Saul (1 Samuel 24:1 - 5) David was remorseful. Better to be the object of hatred than to retaliate. When the apostles told the Sanhedrin that they ought to “obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29) we see no evidence of disrespect in either their words or attitudes, they were simply stating a fact, communicating their decision. When Daniel disobeyed the king’s edict, and when his friends also had occasion to disobey a royal decree (Daniel chapters 3 & 6) we detect no trace of rebellious attitudes, no vitriol, no disrespect  - and no complaining about what the possible consequences might be. Whether David, or the apostles, or Daniel and his friends - they were willing to suffer the consequences of obeying God and they were not willing to attack the earthly authority that poised immediate danger.

In his letter to Titus Paul writes, “Remind them to be subject to rulers, to authorities, to be obedient, to be ready for every good deed, to malign no one, to be peaceable, gentle, showing every consideration for all men,” (Titus 3:1-2). As with Romans Chapter 13, while the context of this passage is government, the principles extend to all of life.

How many times do Christians destroy their witness by maligning those in authority in the workplace?

Peter writes (1 Peter 2:13 - 20:

“Submit yourselves for the Lord’s sake to every human institution, whether to a king as the one in authority, or to governors as sent by him for the punishment of evildoers and the praise of those who do right. For such is the will of God that by doing right you may silence the ignorance of foolish men. Act as free men, and do not use your freedom as a covering for evil, but use it as bondslaves of God. Honor all people, love the brotherhood, fear God, honor the king.

Servants, be submissive to your masters with all respect, not only to those who are good and gentle, but also to those who are unreasonable.For this finds favor, if for the sake of conscience toward God a person bears up under sorrows when suffering unjustly. For what credit is there if, when you sin and are harshly treated, you endure it with patience? But if when you do what is right and suffer for it you patiently endure it, this finds favor with God.”

In Peter’s words we see the linkage between our attitude to the authority of government and our attitude to authority in the workplace; and we see that Peter does not give us a pass if the employer is “unreasonable” - it is not for us to pick and choose who we will respect, not if we are to follow Christ. However, let us also be clear that when obedience to God conflicts with obedience to man that we have no choice, we must respectfully disobey man and obey God. This is an opportunity to witness, to share our faith, our reasons for disobedience - we can have respectful and submissive and caring attitudes toward those in earthly authority while still not doing what we have been asked or ordered to do when to comply would disobey God.

When I wrote my recent thoughts on “telling the truth” I pointed out that Jesus says that the devil is the father of lies; I wrote that we ought to keep in mind that if we lie we are drinking of the cup of the enemy. In the same manner we ought to keep in mind who is the author of rebellion - it is Satan. When we disrespect authority we drink from the devil’s cup of rebellion. Peter and Jude point out that a mark of the enemy and his false teachers is disrespect for authority (see 2 Peter Chapter Two and Jude).

To be continued...