Faith and Authority

Matthew 8:8-12

But the centurion replied, “Lord, I am not worthy to have you come under my roof, but only say the word, and my servant will be healed. For I too am a man under authority, with soldiers under me. And I say to one, ‘Go,’ and he goes, and to another, ‘Come,’ and he comes, and to my servant, ‘Do this,’ and he does it.”

When Jesus heard this, he marveled and said to those who followed him, “Truly, I tell you, with no one in Israel have I found such faith. I tell you, many will come from east and west and recline at table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven, while the sons of the kingdom will be thrown into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

Tom Wright, Matthew for Everyone (Vol. 1)

“Faith” is defined here, it seems, not as a general religious attitude to life, but as something much more specific: recognizing that Jesus posses authority (84).

The challenge for today’s Christian is to ask: what does it mean to recognize, and submit to, the authority of Jesus himself? . . . There is nothing in the New Testament to suggest that “faith” is a general awareness of a supernatural dimension, or a general trust in the goodness of some distant divinity, so that some might arrive at this through Jesus and others by some quite different route. “Faith,” in Christian terms, means believing precisely that the living God has entrust his authority to Jesus himself, who is now exercising it for the salvation of the world (see 28.19) (85).

A. Orendorff

If faith is the recognition that “Jesus posses authority”—that, as Wright says, “the living God has entrust his authority to Jesus himself, who is now exercising it for the salvation of the world”—then this ought to not only transform our understanding of “spirituality”—i.e., the action and out-living of our faith—but it ought also to transform our understanding of authority.

First, a note on faith. Too often we associate faith with an emotional or mystical experience of the divine. Here, however, we see that while it is surely not less than that, it is indeed much more. Faith is submission to the authority of King Jesus, a believing, trusting submission that sees Christ as not only able to rule, but willing to save us through the exercise of that rule. The authority of Jesus, in which our faith ultimately rests, is an authority displayed supremely upon the cross, in his dying for his enemies and praying on their behalf, “Father, forgive them, they just don’t get it.”

Second, on authority. The vision of a crucified king ought to simultaneously transform our understanding of authority as well. Even here, Jesus’ authority is displayed not in might or ridicule, which is how we often see and display authority, but in touching the unclean and healing his enemy’s servant. So too, our use of whatever authority God has entrusted to us cannot be anything less. It cannot be an authority that lords itself over others. Rather, it must be a servant authority that sets itself to using whatever power it has to bring about God's kingdom through willing and redemptive suffering.