Christ's Prayer For His Disciples

"Father, the hour is come. Glorify your Son, that he can bring glory to you in return. You have given him authority over every man and woman on earth, that he might impart eternal life to those you have given him."

--Jesus

What "authority", exactly, does Jesus have over every man and woman on earth?

To get a perspective it is helpful to remember the response to the Boston Marathon bombing

where the governing authorities  ordered every man, woman and child to "shelter-in-their-homes" for a day.  It is  a chilling reminder of how earthly rulers, even in the land of the "free" and home of the "brave", wield authority by coercion and brute force.

We know from eye witness accounts that Jesus had authority over physical things such as wind and waves; over disease such as blindness, leprosy, deafness; over spiritual and emotional paralysis such as demon possession and seizures; over moral decay such as money-grubbing in the temple.

Bruce Marchiano as Jesus,
 from the Matthew video series

But the real authority he wielded was the ability to rouse in people the desire for things eternal.  By using the consequences of bad decisions, sinful behavior, disease and nature's most fearsome threats, he demonstrated God's divine desire to draw our heart to His; to save us from our own destructive ways and embracing, in childlike gratitude, His perfect Will; of creating true hunger and thirst for a righteousness that He alone can satisfy.

To better understand this authority it is well to view Jesus' reaction to the response from certain individuals at His healing touch.  Consider the leper who refused to heed Jesus' command to refrain from broadcasting the healing miracle. 

Jesus got angry. 

"The Lord, who can read the heart, saw that [the miracle] had made in the leper no true response-that there was not awakened in him the faith Jesus desired to rouse: he had not drawn the soul of the man to his. The leper was jubilant in the removal of his pain and isolating uncleanness, in his deliverance from suffering and scorn; he was probably elated with the pride of having had a miracle wrought for him.

In a word, he was so full of himself that he did not think truly of his deliverer.

The Lord, I say, saw this, or something of this kind, and was not satisfied. He had wanted to give the man something so much better than a pure skin, and had only roused in him an unseemly delight in his own cleanness-unseemly, for it was such that he paid no heed to the Lord, but immediately disobeyed his positive command. The moral position the man took was that which displeased the Lord, made him angry.

Jesus saw in him 

•  positive and rampant self-will and disobedience, 
• an impertinent assurance and self-satisfaction. 
• Filled, not with pure delight, or the child-like merriment that might well burst forth, mingled with tears, at such deliverance; 
• filled, not with gratitude, but gratification, the keener that he had been so long an object of loathing to his people; 
• filled with arrogance because of the favor shown to him, of all men, by the great prophet, and swelling with boast of the same, he left the presence of the healer to thwart his will, and, 
• commanded to tell no man, at once 'began'-the frothy, volatile, talking soul-'to publish it much, and to blaze abroad the matter, insomuch that Jesus could no more openly enter into a city, but was without in desert places.' 

(from The Displeasure of Jesus, Unspoken Sermons III, MacDonald)

Do you believe he still wants to give to every man and woman "something so much better than pure skin", that is, Life Eternal?  Than be sure, his anger--the mark of his authority--the anger of a good Man, unyielding in its desire for purity, truth, humble gratitude, and loving obedience will burn until he awakens faith and rouses righteousness in the hearts of all mankind!

Lord Jesus, do your work in me today.  May my response to your healing touch result in greater faith in you and deeper love for you inside the circle of your consuming fire!

The Great Commission.7

Go announce to the world: "The kingdom of heaven has come to dwell among you."
Heal the sick, restore the lepers to health; raise the dead; cast out devils! Remember what I have told you: "Freely you have received. Freely give!"

--Jesus

Question: What, for God's sake, is the Good News of His Kingdom?

Answer:  That the evidence of the character of His Kingdom is in you, follower of Jesus!!

The angels, in a purity of strength and conviction barely comprehensible to humanity, announced Good Tidings of Great Joy: the Great Gift of God to the  World, the Only Son, the Great Prophet, Healer, Teacher, Giver of Good Gifts, Who Will Save Us From Our Sins!

Years later, reading from the Isaiah scroll in the temple, all of Nazareth's finest gathered to hear their homely son, speak these sweet, gracious words, 'I am come to deliver men from sorrow and pain, ignorance and oppression, everything that makes life hard and unfriendly.' What a gracious speech, what a daring pledge to a world whelmed in tyranny and wrong!" 

 "He is the refuge of the oppressed. By its very woes, as by bitterest medicine, he is setting the world free from sin and woe. This very hour he is curing its disease, the symptoms of which are so varied and so painful; working none the less faithfully that the sick, taking the symptoms for the disease, cry out against the incompetence of their physician. 'What power can heal the broken-hearted?' they cry. And indeed it takes a God to do it, but the God is here! In yet better words than those of the prophet, spoken straight from his own heart, he cries: 'Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.' He calls to him every heart knowing its own bitterness, speaks to the troubled consciousness of every child of the Father. He is come to free us from everything that makes life less than bliss essential. No other could be a gospel worthy of the God of men."

Would it be more or less like Him to commend his followers to the same effort?  

Heal the sick.  In the distracting debate over healthcare, with the world's best resources in science, medicine, and technology, with the ability to routinely replace vital organs, joints and hair we have lost the answer to the question: where does one go to heal a broken heart, a wounded relationship, debilitating despair, enervating evil or empty existence?  What cost to heal the body, what willingness to endure financial, emotional, physical pain for temporary relief?  Freely we have received from the treasure house of healing the things that make life truly worth living: perfecting love!  Let us give freely!


Restore Lepers to Health.  Who are the socially outcast, the ugly, untouchables longing for the gentle touch of humanity to enfold them and draw them away from their loneliness and isolation? In the Kingdom of Love there is no place for racism, bigotry, fear, meanness or misunderstanding.    In the parking lot at Walmart last night I noticed a "man of color" looking under the hood of a car and explaining something to a lady nearby.  After he shut the hood I asked if everything was alright.  He smiled and said he was just explaining how to fix a problem the lady was having with her car.  At the moment a lady of Caucasian complexion strode up offering assistance with a smile.  It was a moment in the brotherhood of kindness.  A moment to drink deeply the love that binds, overcomes, overlooks.

Raise the Dead.   As surely as the fact that there are none so blind as him who will not see, there are none so dead as him who will not live.  May we never be intimidated by the hostility of the spiritually dead but live to bring them to life. "To believe in such a man as Jesus is life from the dead!  To yield oneself, to live no more in the idea of self, but with the life of God.  To commit the creature he has made that He may live in it, and work out its life--develop it according to the idea of it in His own creating mind.  To fall in with His ways is to trust him, to believe in Him, to obey him, to be rendered capable of and receive a pure vision of His will, freedom from the limitation, from bondage to a finite existence.  Less than the liberty of a holy heart, less than the freedom of the Lord himself, will never satisfy one human soul."

Cast Out The Devils.  Jesus came to destroy the works of the devil.  Jesus lived to do His Father's perfect Will.  Jesus died that we might die like him, die to any ruling power but the Perfect Will of God. To be a follower of Jesus is the reason every human being is born!  To live in his power and purpose is light to the world!

quotes from MacDonald, The Hope of the Gospel, Jesus and his Townsmen