Authority

Ever noticed how people who are in authority never ever think that that authority can be passed on to somebody else. Most people want to stay in their positions of power believing that they are best suited for that position and no one else can perform better than they do.

Sometimes life creates shifts which bring about changes that do not please us but regardless of us being pleased or not, it doesn’t change the fact that these changes have to come. Most people fight change and try as much to discredit new authority especially when that authority tends to term their position irrelevant.  Sometimes it is true that the new change is bad but sometimes, a closer look inside reveals who is the worst of tyrants.

As so it was with the teachers of the law in the times Christ. When Jesus appeared in the scene, doing things only previously done by prophets the crème de la crème of the religious faculties got shaken. Here is a new guy in town who is turning water into wine, healing the sick and God knows what else he is going to do. He’s been preaching with such authority and there’s a buzz in town all about him.

Then appears one guy who really gives them jitters and they don’t know what to think about it all. He was ‘supposedly’ blind as from their cross examination. He claims to have met Jesus and Jesus made mud using spit and then continued to apply it to the man’s eyes. He later asked him to go wash in the pool of Siloam. From there the man now claims he can see.

The teachers of the law wanted to hear it from the man’s parents for they did not for one minute believe his story.

Joh 9:18  But the Jewish leaders would not believe that the man had once been blind. They sent for his parents

When the parents came, after being summoned by the ‘authority’ of the teachers of the law they confirmed that actually the lad had been blind but they too did not understand the circumstances that led him to be able to see.

“Ask him, he is old enough to answer for himself” the parents said, with a tone which suggests that they did not like the direction that this form of questioning was headed.

They confronted the man again about his new found ability to see and in the process wanted him to paint Jesus as a sinner; the man just let himself go.

“Sinner or not, I don’t know (or care), what I know is, I was blind but now I see!”

Joh 9:26  "What did he do to you?" the Jewish leaders asked. "How did he heal your eyes?"

This next question just did it for the once blind man. He had started to see not just literally but was able to see what these teachers of the law really were.

“I told you once before, why do you ask me again, do you want to be his disciples?” obviously a question with a bit of sarcasm in it. 

From there the teachers of the law went on a rant about how they did not know nor acknowledge Jesus’ authority and actually believed that it came from the devil.

The man found this strange, for the teachers of the law were supposed to know these things. Anyone who came performing miracles had to be aforementioned in scripture and it was their job to know. He did not mince words with them because they were in a position of perceived ‘authority’ but made them know that this was the first time in history that a man who had been born blind had been given sight and whoever did such  a feat had to have come from God himself.

The leaders felt cornered and actually admitted that this man was actually teaching them. They did what every bully does and that is to get confrontational. They insulted him and chased him from attending their teachings.

I wouldn’t have minded if I was the blind man for certainly what they were teaching was amiss of something.

Later after Jesus had become popular and had done many great miracles, they plotted to kill him for they feared that they were becoming irrelevant. They wanted to kill a sinless man because he was going to take all their jobs and nobody was going to listen to them again for a greater teacher had appeared.

Because they did not believe in his teachings, they condemned themselves because the same scripture they had used to teach in temples and in the synagogues gave the account of the coming of Jesus. Jesus was to bring God’s children back to God by grace but those who did not believe in grace and stuck to the law were to be judged by the law.

When this new authority came, it came easy on sinners. All one had to do is to believe in Jesus and he was to be saved regardless of the sins one had committed. What the teachers of the law taught was Mosaic Laws; one’s act condemned or saved him. They now lay condemned by their own actions yet the new authority still cried when they crucified him.

“Forgive them for they don’t know what they are doing”.

 

This new authority turned out to be their only salvation.