THE SPIRITUAL AUTHORITY OF CHRIST
MARK 11: 27-33
INTRODUCTION
"By what authority are you doing these things, or who gave you this authority to do them?" The hypocritical question the Jewish leaders were asking Christ has an important reason. Nobody can speak on God’s behalf without legitimacy. You have to have divine authority to speak about the relationship between man and his Creator. Nobody can attribute words to God that He never spoke. In the same way, no religious leader can rise up and try to reform the church without a divinely inspired model to be a reference to the reformation.
The questioning from the religious leaders was motivated by everything that Jesus was freely doing at the temple. What had Christ done that was so offensive to the point of enraging the theologians and priests of His time?
- Christ was preaching a strange message of good news (Luke 20: 1-8). His message was something that called into question a spiritual system that had been socially built, characterized by a model of relationship to God that was pathological, based upon performance and subjection to a religious culture created by men.
- Christ was affirming that the “temple” institution had become the opposite of what it had been created for, which is always the tendency of big religious institutions and movements of spiritual awakening. People were using the temple not to get closer to God, but to get closer to money. They didn’t go there to repent, believe, be healed and serve their neighbor. They were there to serve themselves, exploiting others with the consent of the spiritual leadership.
The spiritual decadence of the people was irreversible and the Lord Jesus used the miracle-metaphor of the death of the cursed fig tree as a dramatized way of saying what was going to happen to Israel. Its spiritual life would wither and the great privilege they had as a nation of being the bearer of God’s revelation would be passed along to another people that would have to produce its fruit: “Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people producing its fruits.” (Mat 21:43)
Every movement of spiritual awakening and reformation will almost always have the opposition of the spiritual aristocracy who holds the privileges and who is capable of living comfortably using as strategy the exploitation of the dramas of men’s conscience. This is the reason why the Jewish leaders wanted to kill Christ.
All this therefore, motivated the question in verse 28. However, it was asked without the sincere purpose of knowing the truth and followed by Christ’s unwillingness to answer it, since God isn’t interested in answering dishonest questions. Those who experienced God’s silence, the worst kind of curse, were deprived of the knowledge of the gospel because they were playing religion. Nobody uses God’s name without consequences.
Here’s a fact deserving of note and fundamental for the understanding of this passage of Scripture: Christ wasn’t at a pagan temple. This Scripture doesn’t talk about the decadence of paganism, but about the decadence of revealed religion. Therefore, the implications for the life of the church are priceless.
DOCTRINE: ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF CHRIST’S AUTHORITY IS THE ONLY GUARANTEE THAT WE WON’T BE KILLED BY RELIGION.
1. ACKNOWLEGEMENT OF CHRIST’S AUTHORITY KEEPS THE CHURCH FROM WITHERING (Vv. 13, 14, 20).
There’s no doubt that the fig tree represented Israel. The Lord Jesus was prophesying. God had supernaturally chosen Israel to build a people for Himself that would at the same time, be light for all the nations of the world (Gen 18: 18-19). The covenant people rejected the divine calling though, transforming its relationship with God into the exact opposite of what God established through a solemn and perfectly clear pact.
In those days, God, in the person of His only Son, through the exercise of His Sovereignty, was passing to other peoples the priceless privilege –having a people that would reveal the perfections of its Redeemer. This is a principle in the spiritual realm: when a man, a church, a nation rejects the gracious offering from God to be a vehicle of His grace and bearer of His mercies, these same blessings are suppressed and passed on to others. The Bible is full of such examples.
2. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF CHRIST’S AUTHORITY LEADS THE CHURCH TO THE ALWAYS NECESSARY CRISIS OF ORDER INVERSION (V. 15-16).
Without Christ there’s no crisis, no confusion, no overturned tables, excommunicated priests. Without Christ there’s no reformation. People won’t feel the need for it and won’t know how to do it. Without Christ the church will always enjoy cemetery peace. It is Christ’s presence in the church that makes God’s people question the present, search for reference in the past and advance to a future of a higher level of holiness. Without Christ, sermons don’t disturb, prayers don’t represent a groan of repentance and the church allows itself to join the free market of religious competition.
3. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF CHRIST’S AUTHORITY LEADS THE CHURCH BACK TO THE IDEAL REVEALED BY SCRIPTURES ( V. 17).
Without Christ, nobody rises up to say: “It is written.” There’s no return to God’s great dreams for His people. Everyone becomes enslaved to a religious culture socially built. It’s established the reality of religion without God, without soul, without fire, without tears, without perplexity, without awe, without beauty, without love, without praise, without worship. The temple is not a house of prayer anymore. We lose the perception that the biggest blessing God offers us is Himself, whom we can approach through prayer. This is, no doubt, the main mission of the church: bring people into relationship with God.
Without Christ there’s no prayer, since we don’t seek the presence of someone we don’t find interesting.
4. ONLY AKNOWLEDGEMENT OF CHRIST’S AUTHORITY KEEPS THE CHURCH FROM BECOMING SUBJECT TO THE COMMAND OF CHRIST’S KILLERS (V. 18, 27, 31-33).
Non-subjection to Christ means subjection to someone else; evaluate the relationship with God from the perspective of finite beings, prone to evil, incapable of speaking from a neutral perspective, free of historic and cultural influences. It’s looking for something better than sunlight to see by. It is to be invited by the evil forces through their messengers to know a God that looks more like the devil. To know God without the mediation of Christ is to have an encounter with Satan.
5. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF CHRIST’S AUTHORITY ALLOWS THE CHURCH TO KNOW THE GOSPEL (V. 33).
To know Christ’s authority means to know the gospel. If the Lord Jesus had answered the Jewish leaders’ request, He would have taught them in a more intimate and private way than what He did at the temple. But that privilege belonged to the disciples.
Christ’s answer to the Jewish leaders is the worst thing that can happen to a man. It means that God has hidden the gospel forever, leaving the sinner without a solution for his guilt problem before God. It’s what the puritans called “judicial hardening.” Somebody has talked about the “cosmos inattentive, deaf coldness.” We’re faced with the silence of a loving Being who refuses to speak His eternal truth to those who don’t value it.
APPLICATION
Everything we’ve learned from this important Scripture should lead us to the following precautions:
1. WE SHOULD NEVER IGNORE THE OPORTUNITIES GOD GIVES US IN LIFE TO GLORIFY HIS NAME.
The picture of the withered fig tree is the picture of Israel and what His people did to the incomparable manifestations of God’s grace in their life. Because of such despise, the covenant people received God’s word that made them wither at the root. Don’t play with the sacred.
2. BE SUSPICIOUS OF CEMETERY PEACE.
No church is immune to this kind of subversion of the status quo. There are moments when the established order needs to be questioned. The lack of disturbance and perception of the need for reformation in the church may lead its members to a false peace, where everyone is content with themselves and nobody approaches God with a contrite and broken heart. Christ’s presence in the church will always produce reformation.
3. BUILD IDEALS BASED ON THE PRINCIPLE OF SCRIPTURES.
“It is written,” is what the Lord Jesus said at the temple in Jerusalem. We can’t talk about reformation without mentioning the biblical paradigm. We can’t mistake our own Biblical interpretation for the Bible itself. We need to keep the Scriptures as a whole, never neglecting any specific portion of God’s Word. At the same time, though, we need to emphasize what is vital for church life, like the Lord Jesus did at the temple. He addressed the core: “My house will be called a house of prayer.” He didn’t waste His time with irrelevant issues.
4. KNOW WHO TO LISTEN TO.
How much do we honor authors and preachers according to the level of their faithfulness to Christ? Those people were at the mercy of a religious leadership that intended to practice some kind of assassination of God. Remember that dealing with religion without Christ is the worst thing you can do to your soul. It’s impossible not to be harmed. Don’t give up care for your soul to false prophets.
5. ALWAYS REFUSE ANY SPIRITUAL PROJECT THAT IS NOT ESSENCIALLY MEDIATED BY THE GOSPEL.
It was the lack of understanding of the gospel that transformed the religious experience of the people of Israel in something that looked like paganism. No Christian institution is immune to this kind of problem. The gospel has to be preached. But church life also has to be evangelical. The gospel must be the regulating principle for behavior, formation of institutions and goals.
CONCLUSION
To know Christ’s authority is to know the Gospel. To know the gospel is to be saved from religion.
Antônio C. Costa
Ps. Translation: Ester Moore
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