Personal Authority

All things are lawful for me, but I will not be mastered by anything.   1 Corinthians 6:12

Mastered – Who’s the boss?  In it’s simplest terms, that’s the central question of the Christian message.  Who’s in charge of you?  Bob Dylan correctly observed that all of us “gotta’ serve somebody.”  Those who have not come to terms with the personal authority issue still think that they are exempt from this universal law of human existence.  They are deluded.  Unrestricted freedom is a myth.  Jesus knew it.  We are “free” only to choose whom we will serve (see Matthew 5:24). 

Once I choose to become a servant of the King, He frees me from the Law.  I am no longer a slave to its demands.  I am freed to the power of the Spirit and the “law” of love.  Suddenly, my world is wide open.  Paul shouts the victory cry, “No longer condemned!”  I am dead to sin and alive to God.  All things are possible.

But this causes a big problem, doesn’t it?  This world of freedom scares most of us to death.  If all things are lawful to me, how will I stop from careening one way or the other? In a world without rules, how can I stay in control?  And worse than that, if all of us are free, won’t the world be nothing but the chaos of personal choice?  Suddenly freedom doesn’t look so great.

The Biblical answer is not a new regulation.  The answer is authority.  Everything is lawful because the law is gone.  But authority remains.  It is authority that provides order.  Now I do not live according to a code.  I live according to a relationship of submission to personal authority.  We see it clearly in the Greek.

“All things are lawful.”  The Greek is exesti.  From its roots, we could say, “All thing are possible to be.”  Nothing is excluded.  Why? Because Jesus’ action removed guilt.  We are clean, justified and delivered before God.  Everything that could be is covered by Him.  But now Paul says, “but nothing will master me.”  Actually, he uses a derivative of the same word (exousiazo).  “Nothing will have authority or power over me.”  We need to see the connection.  Forgiveness and justification removes the regulations on everything, but not one of all the possible things available to me will become an authority over me.  My authority is set by my relationship to Him.  Nothing else will ever determine my behavior.  What could be will never become the basis of what is for me.

In the end, all Christian freedom is restricted by personal authority.  The world is wide open, but, by choice, I am not.  The greatest freedom is the freedom to say, “No thanks.  I don’t need that in order to be me.”