Dominion

“Yours, O Lord, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the victory and the majesty, indeed everything that is in the heavens and the earth; Yours is the dominion, and You exalt Yourself as head over all.”  1 Chronicles 29:11

Dominion – Double-ups.  Two words for power.  Two words for glory.  And now, two words for kingdom.  Now you know why we have these three expressions tacked on to the end of our prayer “For Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory”.  It’s our version of David’s blessing of God.

Dominion comes from the Hebrew root malach.  It means, “to rule, to be king”.  In this verse, the noun form means “kingdom”, with an emphasis on royal power.  God is the ruler of His kingdom by right of creation.  That’s why David adds the phrase about all that is in heaven and on earth.  God made it all.  God owns it all.  God rules it all.  No one and nothing stands above Him.

In our Greek-oriented world, we often think of principles and laws as supreme, standing above all individual representatives of authority.  We say, “No one is above the law”.  This is thoroughly Greek.  This means the supreme authority is not a person; it is a principle.  But this is not the way Hebrews viewed the universe.  God is the embodiment of all holiness.  Therefore, God is the law.  His rule is a personal, intimate rule, not the application of some sterile principles.  God is not a trial bench judge handing down verdicts to His creation.  He is the actively involved sustainer, provider, ruler and governor of all that is His.  Did you think that dominion meant God was removed, managing the universe from a distance?  Think again.  Become Hebrew.  God is a close as your next breath, as near as the next heartbeat, as involved as your next thought.  His reign encompasses all that is.

This change in view has tremendous implications for every part of our lives.  But since we are speaking about dominion, let’s consider only one of these.  Work.  Your work is not separated from God’s dominion.  Your work is the sacred response of stewardship under the reign of the Creator.  It is His work through your hands.  Your dominion over the part of creation God has placed before you is nothing more than an extension of His dominion on loan to you. 

What are you doing in your work to show Him that you have accepted this sacred task?  Do you dominate as if you were God or do you serve, acknowledging His authority?