I have recommended Jonathan Leeman’s book Authority a number of times, most recently in connection with our look at Ephesians 5 and the authority of husbands. I wanted to give some of the best quotes from the book, to give you a taste and perhaps whet your appetite to read it.
To give you a quick overview of the book’s focus, it begins by answering the questions: What is authority, what is submission, and how does good authority work? The final section then looks at specific authoritative roles that Scripture speaks to: husband, parent, government, manager, church, and elder.
Here are some highlights:
“Bad authority discourages, cripples, wilts, sucks dry, dehumanizes, snuffs out, annihilates. It uses, but doesn’t give. It is political imperialism, economic exploitation, environmental degradation, business monopolization, social oppression, child abuse.” (pg. 9)
“Good human authority is never absolute. Good authority is always accountable. Good authority drives inside the lines that God has painted on the road. In fact, good authority is always submissive! You shouldn’t lead if you cannot submit or stay in your lane, because good leadership is always in submission to God and anyone else whom God places over us.” (pg. 11)
“…good authority, as set down in Scripture and as I’ve witnessed it, is seldom an advantage to those who possess it. It involves leading and making decisions, to be sure. Jesus led. But what the godly leader feels day to day are not all the advantages, but the burdens of responsibility, of culpability, of even bearing another’s guilt. Good authority is profoundly costly, usually involving the sacrifice of everything.” (pg. 11)
“When humans play God, we stop listening to the voices of others. We don’t heed counsel. We’re easily offended or threatened when corrected. We presume to be omniscient.
When humans play God, we strive to maintain control. We fight and lie and manipulate and charm and humor and browbeat and force and do whatever we can to maintain control. We presume to be omnipotent.
When humans play God, we trust our own instincts about right and wrong. We honor our own moral evaluations before we listen to our parents, bosses, pastors, and certainly the Lord. We justify our every emotion, defend our every decision. We measure fairness and justice by the standards of ourselves. We presume to be righteous.” (pg. 36)
“People today might fear being under authority because of the abuse they’ll receive. Yet a Christian view of authority might teach us to also fear being the one who is in authority, because of the abuse you’ll receive as Christ did, at least if you’re doing it right…good authority often places itself into the position of the most vulnerability.” (pg. 50)
“To submit to someone’s authority—to defer to their judgment—requires faith. If faith is a posture of trust, that trust then shows itself inescapably and necessarily in an act of submission. Faith comes first, but faith always comes with submission. If you don’t see submission, you know there is no faith.” (pg. 69)
“Others-oriented leaders manage risk by doing things that don’t always make sense in the short term. In the short term…it doesn’t make sense to rely on people less skilled or knowledgeable than you are. You will do a better job than they. I’m reminded of this every time an older pastor steps out of the pulpit in order to let a younger, inexperienced man preach. The young man fumbles his way through the sermon, and the congregation is asked to exercise a measure of patience. Yet what’s better for the church, the organization, or the space agency in the long run, as well as for every member of it? What builds a deeper bench, more committed workers, or a stronger machine that can survive and thrive even when the leader steps aside?” (pg. 117)
“One way to fight for humility is to ask lots of questions, including from those ‘beneath’ you. Work to be teachable. Are you? One way to avoid teachability is to accuse the giver of counsel with an error in how they give the counsel, like throwing a case out of court on a technicality. Maybe their motive was wrong or their tone was off. Yet the only one who loses when this happens will be you. You’ll miss any good that might have come from their counsel, even if it was given for wrong reasons.” (pg. 119)