Saturday, July 14, 2007

Authority In The Kingdom

Ron McKenzie at Blessed Economist is currently writing a series of posts (starting with his July 9 post) about how authority is dealt with in the kingdom of God. Since Ron usually strings a bunch of posts along on the same topic, I'll link to his whole month of July here. His point is that authority is diffused and not concentrated in one individual or group. When a Christian holds authority, he will teach others how to use that authority and give it to them. Kind of a "hot potato" authority.

For a while now I've held to the ideas of decentralized authority in the church, in the civil realm and in other realms. But I hadn't thought of it in the way Ron puts it. Authority is transferred, and frequently. Jesus received authority from His Father, and immediately transferred it to His disciples and sent them out. He also gives us authority to build the kingdom, and when we're done, He'll return to claim His kingdom. He'll turn it over to the Father, Who will in return give it back to the Son.

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