When people feel empowered, they are more likely to be transparent and honest. It keeps a church from being tribalistic. A man who continually gives away authority teaches those around him that he is most interested in the success of the gospel, regardless of who’s leading (see Phil. 1:12ff.).

Moses:
God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” (Gen. 1:28)

Paul:
If we endure, we will also reign with him. (2 Tim. 2:12)

John:
…by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation, and you have made them a kingdom and priests to our God, and they shall reign on the earth. (Rev. 5:9b–10; see also Rev. 22:5)

Authority Creates Life

God created Adam and Eve to be a king and a queen. To rule. That’s what the first verse above says.

As it turned out, however, they didn’t rule on God’s behalf like they were supposed to. But fast-forward to the end of the Bible and we discover that, somewhere in between the bad beginning and the good end, God makes sure his people turn into the right kind of kings and queens. That’s what the second and third passages above say.

The Greek word translated as “reign” in those latter two passages is the verb form of the word for “king.” A slightly more formal translation of these verses would be, “we will also be kings with him” and “they shall be kings on the earth.”

These latter two verses are talking about Christians. Christians in the new heavens and the new earth will be kings and queens together with Christ.

If you’re a Christian, this is your destiny. Amazing, no?

The principle to observe here is that good authority doesn’t steal life, it creates it. It’s a principle we learn by looking at God himself and how he uses his authority with us. He created us to be kings, yet even when we failed God spent thousands of years preparing our coronation ceremony anyway. And then he wrote a book about it.

Passages like 2 Samuel 23:3–4 and Psalm 72 articulate this chapter’s principle even more explicitly. Good authority, said David, is like the sun and the rain that cause grass to grow. It lifts up the needy and crushes the oppressor, said Solomon. The apostle Paul, too, referred to “the authority that the Lord has given me for building up and not for tearing down” (2 Cor. 13:10). And the psalmist says that God “is the one who gives power and strength to his people” (Ps. 68:35).

Yet it’s hard to think of a better illustration of this principle at work than by peering into the structure of human creation (he created us kings!) and the goal of redemption (he will re-crown us as kings!). The life-giving goodness of good authority is hardwired into our existence, our ontology, which in turn exposes how intrinsically and bounteously generous God is.

Not only that, but the very first command in the Bible is a command to use our kingly authority to create life: “Be fruitful and multiply,” says the Lord. People today might bemoan parenting. Yet the Bible presents bearing and raising children as a paradigmatic picture of being a king like God.

In all this, God’s generosity is difficult to fathom. God would have done a far better job of ruling over creation by himself in the first place. He never would have made mistakes. He never would have misstepped. He never would have exploited or abused people. We often wonder why bad things happen in this world. The answer, in part, is that God decided not to do the whole job of ruling the world himself. Instead, he delegated. He shared. And he continually trains us in the work amid all our failures.

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