Authority & Authorship

by Heidi

I was reading in the Bible, in Matthew, how Jesus was teaching the people, and at the end of His teaching "the crowds were amazed at his teaching, because he taught as one who had authority, and not as their teachers of the law."  (Matthew 7:28-29)

So I thought, well what about that? How can they tell who has authority and who doesn't? I thought about how we know who has authority in our churches and schools. Professors have titles, especially if they have a Doctorate. In church the teacher is usually called Pastor, Minister, Reverend, Father . . . Some even wear name tags with their title. We know they're in a position of authority in the organization, but it wasn't like that for Jesus. He wasn't in an organization. He wasn't even in the Synagogue or a school or anything. He was (Matthew 5:1) "up on a mountainside" talking to His disciples & a crowd of people.

I was thinking about the word "Authority". What does it really mean? I started thinking about the word "Author". We all know what that means, someone who writes something, but not just writes it, but the one who comes up with it. If you write something that someone else came up with then it's plagiarizing, or re-writing, or copying. . . . But Jesus wasn't doing any of that. He was giving new concepts on top of and overshadowing the old that the people were familiar with. The teachers of the law were teaching what they had been taught by other teachers. It was a long line of re-saying the same things, and adding more laws on top of old.

That's where He had the authority. He was speaking truth that they had never heard before. He had read the scriptures, and learned from them, but even more than that, He taught what He heard from His Father, and taught with an authority, as the author, that these people were not accustomed to.

In fact, He teaches with an authority that we're unaccustomed to. That's why it's so crucial to listen to Him for yourself, to read the Bible, and prayerfully consider it, to meditate on it. Jesus is still the greatest teacher, in fact He's the Author, teaching with an authority that you just won't find anywhere else.

Home    Copyright Information    E-mail      http://groups.myspace.com/forthosewhothirst