Discipline is often central to our lives with Christ because it is must be in place if He is to teach and we are to learn. Yet, how few of us will submit to His authority? We dislike it; we run from it; we scorn it. The fact is, we have a myriad self-interested reasons why we try to remove ourselves from it. But if we can set them aside for one minute, we could consider the problem we have if we choose for ourselves a Christ without authority. What worth has Christ to us if He has no authority?
What He promises He cannot give because He does not have the power (authority) to command them. This does not match-up well with what Jesus says to His disciples in Matthew 28:18. Following His resurrection, immediately before He ascends into heaven to be with the Father, He comes to them and says, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.”
What He claims to have conquered cannot be believed because if He had no authority He could not possibly have “disarmed principalities and powers,” much less make “a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them.” But that is the description of Christ heralded in Colossians 2:15.
And another thing, if we are not subject to His authority and loving rule, there is no doubt that we are still under the crushing power of the principalities that He created on earth which have been corrupted by sin. Earlier in Colossians (chapter one), it says, “All things were created by Him.” If this is true, than surely this includes us. “For [if] by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth” (verse 16), should we not fear Him and recognize our place before His majesty?
Shall we not commit ourselves to letting loose this idea of Christ having no authority and firmly take hold of the truth that all authority belongs to Him?
At Home with God 