Using Your Authority Part II

1 Corinthians  9:16  The people were amazed at his teaching, because he taught them as one who had authority, not as the teachers of the  law.

Both good and bad leadership can emerge from
the same soil.

Part 1 of our series on authority was an exploration of how Christian leaders acquire authority. In short, we learned the importance of both receiving authority in the proper manner and defining the scope of one’s authority. Part 1 was also about positional authority. It was not about leadership per se. It was about a foundational requirement for the soil from which good and bad leadership emerges. Unfortunately, this soil is a requirement for good leadership, but it can also be the breeding ground for poor leadership.


When you find yourself standing in the soil of authority as a positional leader, you must then decide (consciously or unconsciously) what your leadership will look like—Jesus or the world. Here is where some of you will struggle. Theologically, all of you should agree that Jesus had every possible spiritual gift, which means He is our perfect leadership model. However, many of you will look at His life and draw the conclusion that it displayed more of his gifts of teaching and healing than his gift of leadership. Because of this, you will tend to defer to a contemporary leader who has demonstrated some enormous accomplishment, leaning toward imitating whatever that person did. While I admit that this might have some value (Paul even exhorted men to "imitate" him), we must filter our behavior and practices through the life of Christ first. 

Jesus’ Life as a Model of Leadership

You might say that Jesus' life does not speak loudly on the topic of leadership because there are not enough examples of Jesus as the successful leader. Friends, if you have come to this conclusion, it is because we all have the tendency to look for the wrong examples. Might I suggest that the absence of certain behaviors in Jesus' life should speak to us as loudly as those He displayed? Look at our scripture verse. While it appears that Jesus was demonstrating His teaching gift at this time, ponder with me what He is teaching us about positional authority.

"The absence of certain behaviors in Jesus' life should speak to us as loudly as those He displayed."

Would you agree that we might conclude the following from this scripture?

1.  While being granted authority over all the earth, Jesus did not display the fact that He outranked everyone. 
2. The ultimate reason His authority was recognized was because of the times he used his other gifts, namely His teaching. While He was helping people understand, people began to recognize this as authoritative. 
3. The power/authority that Jesus displayed was distinctively different from anything people had ever seen or heard from their own leaders. 

Applying Jesus’ Leadership Model to Our Own Lives

What application to the use of authority can we learn from Jesus’ treatment of his authority and leadership? Consider these:

1. Don't walk around telling everyone you are the boss. Don't lead by intimidation. 
2. Try helping those under your authority to better understand the goals you have set, and once you’ve given this your best effort, then you can assess that understanding as well as goal accomplishment.
3. Don't assume that contemporary leaders are the ones to imitate. While what you see in public can be worth imitating, much of what goes on behind the scenes is not. Be very careful. 

I have communicated this before, but it cannot be repeated too often: Jesus' life on this earth was more a demonstration of restraint than any one of His other attributes or behaviors.

Think about that for a moment. Even if you believe that statement halfheartedly, you are on your way to imitating the leadership of Christ.