“Questioning Jesus’s Authority”

“And when he entered the temple, the chief priests and the elders of the people came up to him as he was teaching, and said, “By what authority are you doing these things, and who gave you this authority?” Matt. 21:23 (ESV)

The temple leaders had been at odds with Jesus and His teachings for the last three years. Here, on Tuesday of Holy Week, we find that they had finally had enough and confronted Him directly with his authority to perform miracles and to teach.  Remember, on Sunday, Jesus rode into Jerusalem as the promised Messiah, and all the people were praising God and saying, “Blessed is He that comes in the name of the Lord”. Then, on Monday, Jesus chased all of the merchants and money changers out of the Temple courtyard. Now, on Tuesday, the Temple leadership had had quite enough of the accusations that Jesus was making about them. So, now publicly, they challenged Jesus to proclaim by whose authority He was making these statements and doing these things. But Jesus saw through their pretense and knew they were trying to set up a trap for him because they “…were trying to destroy Him” (Luke 19:47).

For the past three years, Jesus had been teaching and performing miracles “And they were all amazed and said to one another, “What is this word? For with authority and power he commands the unclean spirits, and they come out!” (Luke 4:36). Jesus was very clear about from whom his authority came and told the Pharisees, “Yet even if I do judge, my judgment is true, for it is not I alone who judge, but I and the Father who sent me.” (John 8:16). Jesus, on many occasions, had claimed to have been sent from God to do God’s will, but the Temple leadership would not listen to Him. Now, seeing with what power and authority Jesus was teaching and healing, they felt they needed to trick Him into saying something they could use to accuse Him of blasphemy. They felt it was time to confront Jesus and publicly settle this issue of authority. You can feel the tension building with each encounter during this Holy Week.

However, the real issue wasn’t Jesus’s authority; the real problem was that the Temple leadership did not want to submit to the authority of God Himself. They had God’s word and knew that Jesus’ teachings were true to that word, but the leadership had rejected God’s authority and the teachings of Jesus.

This is the same problem that we have today, isn’t it? We want to be the authority; we want to establish what is right and what is wrong. We don’t want to accept anything as absolute, we want to have some wiggle room, so we can make our own truth. But truth is not something that can be changed to meet our desires. God’s truth comes from God’s Word, and God’s Word has been given by God’s authority. Like the Temple leadership, we don’t want any authority that shows us we are wrong. We want to challenge any authority that contradicts our own actions.

But believers, we do have an authority; it’s the Word of God, both the Old and New Testaments. We can know right from wrong and how to please the One who has paid the price for our eternal life. We have the very God breathed words that were given to us, and all we have to do is to follow them. We know that God has given us eternal life as a gift, not based on our good works, but on what Jesus did for us. His death, burial, and resurrection is what has established the authority to give us eternal life.

The next time you try to find the truth, you must remember to turn to the true authority, the Word of God.

"Living in Grace is not about what I can do, but about what Jesus has already done!"