The Lord Jesus was a Man Under Authority: He had Authority and Spoke with Authority

The centurion in Matt. 8 saw that the Lord was One who had authority because the Lord was a man under authority.

The authority of the Lord Jesus was by Him being under God’s authority and was exercised through His word, and when we hear HIs words, we’re infused with faith and come under His authority. Amen!

We can experience and enjoy Christ as the man under authority who was qualified to exercise God’s authority today.

May we focus on enjoying and experiencing Christ in a subjective way today.

May we focus not just on knowing about Christ or understanding the doctrines in the Bible but on the subjective experience of Christ for our enjoyment so that we may express Christ. Amen!

This is what the Apostle Paul did. Even toward the end of his life, when he had been advanced in the Lord and also advanced in years, having much experience and enjoyment of Christ, he still freshly forgot what was behind and stretched forward to enjoy Christ and experience Him in a subjective way.

May we never be contented. May we come to Him to enjoy Him as the great light shining in the darkness day by day.

He shines in us and He shines through us. May we open to Him. He seized us.

He grasped us so that we can seize Him and grasp Him. He laid hold of us so that we lay hold of Him.

Our entire Christian life is a quest for enjoying Christ, experiencing Christ, gaining Christ, living Christ, and expressing Christ.

May we not account of ourselves as having laid hold of but do this one thing: on the negative side, we forget anything behind, and on the positive side, we stretch forward to gain Christ today.

Forget everything from yesterday, from last week, and from last month; do not rely on the past experience and enjoyment of Christ but rather, seek to gain Him more and more every day.

There is so much more of the all-inclusive Christ that we can and should enjoy and experience today!

May we pursue toward the goal for the prize to which God in Christ Jesus has called us upward. May we pursue Christ toward the goal day by day.

Our goal is the fullest enjoyment of Christ, the uttermost enjoyment of Christ in the millennial kingdom.

Then, for eternity, we will enjoy Christ forever and ever, and He will be everything to us.

Today we can enjoy Him and experience Him according to what we see in the Gospels, especially in the gospel of Matthew.

We have seen that He is the great light shining in the darkness, and by believing into Him and walking in the light we ourselves become light in the Lord.

Christ had Authority because He was a Man Under Authority, being Under the Ruling of the Father’s Life

In Matt. 8:5-13 we see the story of a centurion who came to the Lord to ask Him to heal his servant; however, when the Lord said that He would come, the centurion asked Him not to come but simply speak a word and his servant would be healed.

The centurion said that, since the Lord was a man under authority, He could just speak a word and the servant will be healed. Wow!

The centurion saw that the Lord Jesus was One who had authority because He was a man under authority.

The centurion himself was a man under authority, and so he could command those under his authority to do this or that, and they would do it.

By seeing the Lord Jesus and hearing His word, the centurion realized that the Lord was a man under authority, so He had God’s authority.

Since the centurion was a man under authority, he had the authority to command those who were under him.

Before we can have any authority we need to submit to authority.

God created man in His image and according to His likeness and gave man the authority to have dominion over all the creatures in the sea, in the air, and upon the earth (Gen. 1:26).

When man submits to God’s authority, man has authority, for God’s authority is with him.

But due to man’s fall, man rebelled against God and is unwilling to submit to God’s authority; therefore, man lost the authority of God.

As a result, all the creatures under man were no longer in subjection to man’s authority.

Therefore, not only can the poisonous snakes and wild beasts harm us today but even the small mosquitoes and flies can bite us.

We don’t have authority over them, for man has fallen.

But when man is under God’s authority, man has God’s authority.

This whole universe is full of creatures in rebelliousness and insubordination.

But one day the Lord will come with His kingdom, and in the millennial kingdom a child can play by the snake’s holes without fearing of being hurt; the right relationship of man with God will be restored, so man will have God’s authority.

The Lord Jesus was a God-man in His humanity on the earth, and He was absolutely under the ruling of the divine life of the Father (John 5:19; 4:34; 17:4; 14:10, 24; 5:30; 7:18).

He lived a life of submission to God, constantly denying Himself to take the Father as His source and everything.

As a man, Christ rejected His natural humanity and lived a human life under the restriction of the divine life of the heavenly Father.

By practically being under the ruling of the divine life of the Father, the Lord Jesus was reigning in life (Phil. 2:8-11).

He was obedient to the Father even unto death, and that the death of a cross; therefore, God highly exalted Him and gave Him the name which is above every name. Amen!

Because He was a man under the Father’s authority, the Lord had the authority of the Father.

Such a One now lives in us to repeat the same kind of life in us today.

Today we as believers in Christ need to have a clear sky above us, a clear sky like an awesome crystal by having a good and pure conscience (Ezek. 1:22, 26; Rev. 22:1; Rom. 5:17, 21; Heb. 4:16; cf. Col. 1:13) so that we may have God’s throne in the centre of our being.

We need to have nothing between us and the Lord but a clear sky so that He may be enthroned in us and so that we may be filled with the heavenly situation, atmosphere, and condition of the Lord’s ruling presence to reign in us by grace reigning in us.

We need to come to the Lord day by day and enthrone Him in our being. He is the Lord.

We enthrone Him, we deal with anything between us and Him, and we want to have a clear sky between us and Him so that He may have a way to rule and reign in us.

When we have a good and pure conscience with a throne above it, we will be filled with the heavenly situation, atmosphere, and condition of the Lord’s ruling presence, for grace reigns in us and we reign in life through the One, Jesus Christ.

Lord Jesus, we praise You for being a man under authority and thus having God’s authority when You were on the earth. We praise You for always denying Yourself and rejecting Your natural humanity to live a human life under the restriction of the divine life of the heavenly Father. Amen, Lord, we enthrone You in the centre of our being. We take You as the Lord and the Head. You are the King and the Lord in us, and we are under Your rule. We place ourselves under Your rule and we take You as our unique authority. We want to deal with anything between us and You so that we may have a clear sky like awesome crystal with nothing between us and You! Amen, Lord, we want to have a good and pure conscience so that You may be enthroned in the centre of our being! May we be filled with the heavenly situation, atmosphere, and condition of the Lord’s ruling presence so that we may reign in life by having grace reigning in us!

The Lord Jesus Spoke with Authority, and we can be Infused with His Word to have Faith and have His Authority

The centurion recognized the authority of the Lord Jesus (Matt. 8:9); on the Lord’s side, His authority was mainly exercised in His word (v. 8).

Because the Lord was a man under authority, constantly placing Himself under God’s authority in all He did and said, He had God’s authority and could speak a word of authority to exercise God’s authority on the earth.

The centurion saw this, and he said that he was not fit for the Lord to come into his house, but the Lord could just speak a word and his servant will be healed.

The Lord was amazed at such faith; the centurion had faith in Christ as a man under authority, and he realized that Christ had authority.

How could the centurion have such a faith, a faith that the Lord said He never saw in anyone else in Israel?

It is by being infused with the Lord’s word. On our side, the Lord’s authority is exercised through faith being infused into us by Him, by the speaking of His words into us (Matt. 8:10, 13; Heb. 12:2).

The Lord Jesus is the Author and Perfecter of our faith, and He infuses faith into us by His word.

When we see the Lord and hear Him, when we listen to His word, His being and His very character infuses into us the ability to believe.

We don’t naturally believe; however, when we hear the Lord’s word, He infuses faith into us.

When we believers in Christ take time to behold the Lord in His beauty and in the excellency of His virtues, He infuses into us a living element, and this element becomes our faith, our believing ability.

The Lord initiates faith into us by speaking His words into us, and we react by believing into Him.

When the Lord Jesus was on the earth, He taught as One having authority; by being a man under authority, He taught with authority, speaking the word of God and from God (Matt. 7:28-29; Mark 1:22).

When people heard His word, they were astounded at His teaching; He taught them not like the scribes and Pharisees but with authority, being one with God.

There were the self-appointed scribes, who taught vain knowledge by themselves, and they had no authority or power (see 2 Cor. 3:6, 8).

However, the Lord Jesus was the God-authorized Teacher, teaching realities by God; He had not only spiritual power to subdue people but also divine authority to subject them to the divine ruling (Isa. 30:20-21; Matt. 23:8, 10).

We can all testify that, when we read the New Testament and are infused with the Lord’s words, we simply believe into Him; we are subdued by Him in love, and we come under His authority.

Because the Lord Jesus was a man under authority, He spoke with authority, and His words conveyed the element of God which can generate faith into those who hear.

If we read the Gospels we see that, in His service as the Slave Savior to the fallen men, the Lord carried out His teaching to bring people out of the satanic darkness into the divine light (Mark 1:21-22; 2:13; 4:1; 6:2, 6, 30; 10:1; 11:17; 12:35; 14:49; Acts 26:18).

He came as a great light shining in the darkness, and He shone by the words of life and light which He spoke.

The Lord today shines on us in our darkness by His words; when we hear the Lord’s words, we are infused with Him as faith, light shines, and we are brought into the realm of the kingdom of God, a realm of life and light.

May we daily come to Him to be under His shining, be infused with His element through His word, and believe into Him and be under His authority.

When we are under the Lord’s authority by being infused with His believing element, we will also have authority and we will speak with authority, for we will be one with the Lord to speak the word of God to those around us.

When the Lord spoke to those around Him, He shined on them; those around Him were enlightened by His teaching.

The Lord teaches realities, and He has the spiritual power to subdue people and also the divine authority to subject them to the divine ruling.

Lord Jesus, thank You for speaking to us Your living word to infuse faith into us. We believe into You. We love You. We are one with You. We want to hear Your word more today. Infuse us more with Yourself. Cause faith to rise up in us. Oh Lord Jesus, we love to be under Your enlightening by Your speaking. Shine on us and dispel any darkness. Have a way to subdue us and bring us under the divine ruling through Your word. We say Amen to Your word. Save us from trying to speak doctrines and teachings to others without us being under Your authority. May we be men under authority, those who believe into the Lord and are richly infused with His living word so that we may shine on others by speaking Your words to them. Oh Lord, shine through us. Be the great light in us shining through us on all those being in darkness. We open every part of our inner being to You. Bring us fully under the divine ruling and make us those who are one with You to exercise Your authority in our speaking!

References and Hymns on this Topic

• Inspiration for this article/sharing comes from the Word of God, the enjoyment in the ministry, a sharing by brother Ed Marks in the message for this week, and portions from, Life-study of Mark, msg. 6, by Witness Lee, as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, Experiencing, Enjoying, and Expressing Christ (2024 July Semiannual Training), week 1, Christ as the Great Light, the One Who Has Authority, the Physician, the Bridegroom, the Unfulled Cloth, and the New Wine.
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• Hymns on this topic:
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