God's Power and God's Authority Are Not the Same Thing
Jesus Way Ministries
Men run after the power of God and step around His authority, and it is worth saying plainly that these are two different things.
Power is what God does. Authority is who He is.
Everything He does proceeds from a throne — and a throne is not a chair. It is the right to rule.
Miss that distinction and you will spend years asking Him for more of the first while remaining unwilling to come under the second, and you will not understand why so little moves.
Hold it up against the two great falls
Isaiah shows a being who said in his heart, five times over, I will.
I will ascend into heaven. I will exalt my throne above the stars of God. I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation. I will ascend above the heights of the clouds. And the fifth: I will be like the most High.
Ezekiel shows the same creature from another angle — perfect in thy ways from the day that thou wast created, till iniquity was found in thee.
Now read both passages again and notice what is absent from them.
Neither one says he wanted more power.
He wanted a throne that was not his.
Rebellion against rightful authority is not a lapse in manners, and it is not a personality problem. It is the oldest sin there is, and it is the one Scripture traces all the way to the source.
Then set Saul beside him
Saul is the more useful case, because nothing about him looks like Isaiah's creature.
He kept most of the command. He brought back the best of the sheep. And he had a reasonable explanation ready, involving sacrifice — the animals were for the Lord.
Samuel's answer cut the ground out from under every religious excuse that has been made since.
Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams.
God does not want your offering instead of your obedience. He will not make that trade, and He has never made it for anyone.
Then Samuel names what partial obedience actually is: rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry.
That is a startling equation, and it is meant to be. Saul did not consult a medium. He kept ninety percent of an instruction and improved the rest.
The sober part
Here is the sentence to sit with, and it is not comfortable.
A man can hold sound doctrine and stand with Satan in principle at the same time.
He can know the book. He can defend it. He can correct other people's errors in it accurately. And he can be un-submitted to everything in his life that God set over him.
There are such men in every assembly. They are usually the ones who can quote the most.
Where authority actually comes from
Paul does not leave this abstract. There is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God. And then the consequence: whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God.
Read that carefully. He does not say resisting authority is unwise, or that it makes life harder, or that it sets a poor example.
He says what you are resisting is not the man. It is the arrangement God made.
The question underneath
So the test is not whether you want more of God's power. Nearly everyone does, and wanting it costs nothing.
The test is what you did the last time God's authority reached you through someone you did not choose, at a moment that cost you something, about a matter where you had a reasonable explanation ready.
Saul had one. It was even a religious one.
It did not survive the question.
This article is adapted from Lesson 4 of The Essentials, Fourth Edition: Formation for the Sent by Jesus Way Ministries — twelve lessons, four parts, for believers who already have the foundations.
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