Servant & The Principle of Authority – Part 2 begins to unpack some markers and behavioral characteristics of the Servant redemptive gift. Let’s take a peek, since Servant prefers to function in the background.
Servant’s Birthright*
“To be a life-giver to others, especially leaders.
To provide the cleansing and authority
others require for their destiny.”
What: The principle of authority presents one of Jesus’ conundrums for which He is known. Fitting, since in His recorded Word, He often spoke in riddles and parables that do not align with our human concept of authority. If ever there was an upside down and backwards way of living Jesus taught, the principle of authority surely lands in the top five. Or three. Or, number one.
Myriad labels have been applied to this issue of authority: leaders / followers; boss / staff; servant leadership; managers; influencers; political, legal, and law enforcement positions; health and welfare; roles in religious institutions; parent and child; husband and wife; educational system … the list is endless.
Pervasive in our society – be it the world stage, our own fishbowl of life, or lanes of living in between – Jesus’ present-day followers are also affected or infected by distortion of Jesus’ truth on the matter.
The Principle and The Perversion
Sitting down, Jesus called the Twelve and said,
“If anyone wants to be first, he must be the very last, and the servant of all.”
Mark 9:35
Friends, this does not easily compute to our way of thinking, does it? Yet, it is Wisdom’s principle of authority that God imprinted into Servant’s identity, precisely because Servant does not seek after power for their own sake. Instead, this redemptive gift has a natural drive to serve those around them, desirous to help them become all they were designed to be. Servant has many expressions but one goal.
As shared in Servant & The Principle of Authority – Love like Jesus, the stronghold that derives from the perversion of this Wisdom principle of authority is a victim spirit. It is rooted in the iniquity of embracing peace at any cost; a payment the enemy is all too eager to impose. One of his greatest prizes is to take prey the willing Servant’s God-given gift, misuse it and abuse it, and produce another powerless victim. The corrupt opposite of what God placed and appointed within the Servant portion of our human spirit.
Ephesians 2:5-6 (TLB) states what the spirit alive to God has been given 1 in the finished work of Christ:
5 that even though we were spiritually dead and doomed by our sins,
he gave us back our lives again[a] when he raised Christ from the dead—
only by his undeserved favor have we ever been saved—
6 and lifted us up from the grave into glory along with Christ,
where we sit with him in the heavenly realms—all because of what Christ Jesus did.
Our spirit made alive again is seated with Christ in the heavenly realms, where He sits at the right hand of His Father. God, who is love and His Son who exemplified that love in the flesh, is where we derive our God-given authority. Holy Spirit, present with us, sheds abroad the love of God in our hearts 2. What a pure and powerful three-fold cord of authority is available to us who believe. Servant, you are blessed.
Domination vs Dominion
To the degree our ancient adversary can keep us in the stronghold of a victim spirit, he is pleased to enforce it through strategies of domination:
To dominate someone means to exercise authority over them
in such a way that you take what is rightfully theirs for yourself.
Control is at a loss to them and a gain to you. ~ A. Burk
The perversion of the principle of authority is function through domination:
- by resorting oneself to domination over others, or
- by subordinating oneself to domination by others, which fuels the victim spirit
Both are rooted in a wrong response to pain. Both need the cleansing, healing, life-giving embrace of Christ’s authority to restore and set free to walk in dominion as imprinted in redemptive gift of Servant.
Servant’s central virtue is living in dominion, which is expressed in a life-giving context in partnership with God. The purpose of the principle of authority is always to create more authority for the kingdom of God, not for man. The authority given to us by God is for the multiplication of people and the social structures that are expanding His kingdom – which is already here, among us.
The Legitimacy of Authority
Servant, your legitimacy does not lie in building a platform of success under others. Your legitimacy comes from your heavenly Father, not from horizontal relationships. This is an area where Satan has perfected the double-knot that binds. As the father of lies, he is the ultimate perversion of The Father.
To agree with Satan’s lie that your legitimacy comes when you build a platform of success under others, plants the seed of a ‘savior’ mentality. Dear Servant, there is only one Savior. That one under whom you are standing at the expense of your God-given birthright needs that one Savior too. The enemy does not want you to realize that ‘standing in the gap’ with a savior mentality, however subtle, is an act of domination – not life-giving dominion expressed in partnership with God: Point the way vs In the way.
Conversely, agreement with Satan’s lie that the only way to survive and keep yourself and others safe is to subordinate yourself to others’ domination, tightens the knot on a victim spirit. Servant, the Wisdom principle that God chose to assign to your portion is godly, redemptive authority.
to be continued
More of the redemptive gift of Servant will be unpacked in Part 3. Take heart and be of good cheer, valiant Servant – for Jesus overcame the world and has the authority equal to your need in all things.
~ Nancy
*A. Burk/C. Wales description of Servant’s birthright
1 II Peter 1:3 2 Romans 5:5
Footnotes: [a] Ephesians 2:5 gave us back our lives again, literally, “made us alive.”
Click here for a printable PDF of this article: Servant & The Principle of Authority – Part 2
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