Leeman Authority (with Study Questions)

How Godly Rule Protects the Vulnerable, Strengthens Communities, and Promotes Human Flourishing
1. Auflage 2025
ISBN: 979-8-8749-0563-7
Verlag: Crossway
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection

E-Book, Englisch, 312 Seiten

Accessible Guide from 9Marks Equips Believers to Steward Their God-Given Authority In every position of power-from executives and world leaders to church elders and parents-lies the potential for life-giving leadership or destructive corruption. Driven by sinful pride or opportunism, many people abuse their God-given authority, harming the ones they're called to lead and contributing to a skeptical attitude toward leadership. The answer to bad authority, however, is not no authority, but good authority-the kind that, according to Scripture, causes those under it to flourish.   In this compelling guide from 9Marks, Jonathan Leeman shows that authority, done biblically, is not only good but essential to human flourishing. Through Scripture and many first-hand stories, he presents 5 attributes of positive authority and warns against sinfulness that corrupts leadership. Dozens of study questions throughout the book guide readers as they think through each chapter individually or with a group. Pointing to Jesus as the ultimate model of good authority, Leeman equips readers to pursue godly influence in their personal and professional lives.  - Applicable: Challenges readers to identify weaknesses in their own leadership style and offers 5 attributes of godly authority - Engaging: Filled with compelling stories that illustrate key points - A Great Resource for Pastors, Employers, Officers, and Parents: Helps readers understand how to practice godly authority in church, at home, and in the workplace - Created for Individual or Group Study: This edition features study questions in each chapter of the book, encouraging deeper reflection and discussion 

Jonathan Leeman (PhD, University of Wales) is the president of 9Marks and cohost of the Pastors Talk podcast. He is the author or editor of over a dozen books and teaches at several seminaries. Jonathan lives with his wife and four daughters in suburban Washington, DC, and serves as an elder at Cheverly Baptist Church.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Leeman, Jonathan

Leseproben

Prelude

A Prayer of Confession

This is a book about authority, both the good and the bad kind. Yet I don’t want to write an abstract book about an abstract topic. I want to personally engage you and how you use your authority, which requires being personally engaged myself.

To that end, I have written in a more conversational style. More important, I begin with a confession: for me to write about the good kind of authority is to write better than I am.

The good kind of authority is beautiful, like a perfectly symmetrical face is beautiful, or a life in perfect conformity to God’s law is beautiful. But spend time staring into that face or into that law and you’ll discover, by comparison, your face isn’t perfect. And you don’t keep all the law.

But I want to help you and me both to gaze into the face of the one who perfectly kept the law and who perfectly exercised his authority, so that you and I might be changed. And the only honest way to do that is with gospel transparency. I’m not a paragon of the good. Nor are you. To think otherwise is to be like the Pharisee who prayed, “I thank you, Lord, that I am not like that tax collector over there.”

Our profoundly Pharisaical post-Christian world, which has abandoned all ideas of original sin, teaches us to think that way. It classifies everyone as an abuser or a non-abuser, oppressor or non-oppressor. Those are the only moral categories it has left. If therefore you don’t count yourself as an abuser or oppressor, you get to point the finger at the bad people and thank God you’re not like them.

The Bible does not let us off the hook so easily. It indicts all of us for misusing our authority. It teaches that Adam’s bite of the fruit and Pharaoh’s spilling of blood are differences of quantity, not quality. Pharaoh simply swung a much bigger hammer.

To be clear, some sins are far worse than others: murder is much worse than hatred and adultery than lust. Yet Jesus also asks us to meditate on how all these sins are constructed of the same stuff (Matt. 5:22, 28). Here is an unassailable fact: To some degree, you and I have misused our authority by lording it over others. We’ve used our leadership to serve ourselves rather than others. We have used our God-given stewardships at the expense of others and for our own gain. For us to begin anywhere other than acknowledging and confessing these things would be misguided.

Further, it will cause us to miss the opportunity to stare into the face of the Only One Man who is truly beautiful. It would also cause us to miss the path toward becoming like this One Perfect Man.

And Jesus called them to him and said to them, “You know that those who are considered rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. But it shall not be so among you. But whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be slave of all. For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” (Mark 10:42–45)

The path to leading like he leads requires more than a moral lesson, as in, “Do these five things.” It requires recognition and confession at the deepest levels of who we are, not just “Lord God, I have once or twice misused my authority. Oops. Sorry for the slipup,” but, “Lord God, I am, by fallen nature, a misuser of authority, and I will misuse it repeatedly apart from your grace.”

It requires repentance and faith.

For my part, then, I began this project by asking those “above” me (like bosses), “beside” me (like friends), and “beneath” me (like children or employees) whether I use authority well, asking each to especially highlight the negatives. Gratefully, people have said nice things. Yet to share my shortcomings, one person observed, “Every once in a while, you can be really intense. At worst, this can feel a little controlling.” Another remarked, “You can be very straightforward, which I enjoy. But I can imagine someone who doesn’t know you finding the occasional remark abrasive.”

Did you notice the subtext? Ordinarily, I know how to “behave.” I know how I should appear in my leadership on the outside. But “every once in a while” or “occasionally” something else slips out, and those little slips reveal the fallen version of me—or the “natural me” apart from God’s grace. They reveal something in the deeper waters of my soul.

What would that be? Perhaps a deeper and more chronic overestimation of myself and my ability to control things. And deeper than that, an ongoing tendency to believe the serpent when he said to Eve, “You can be like God.” And deeper still than that, a profoundly diminished view of who God is. And together with all that, too little love for the ones I lead, sensitivity to them, and desire for their growth and strength.

Yet what about you? You have authority. Everyone does, even if you’re a thirteen-year-old and have rule only over your bedroom or the thoughts inside your head. You have dominion over something—some plot of dirt like Adam and Eve in the garden. Do you view that plot of dirt as a stewardship given by God? Are you using your authority to create life, prosperity, and vitality for others? Or do you look at your domain and say, “It’s mine!” and use it for your own purposes and glory? And if we could see into the deeper waters of your soul, what would we find there? Would we find the impulse to say together with John the Baptist about Jesus, “May he increase and I decrease,” or just the opposite?

Those are some of the things I encourage you to think about as you read this book. Don’t read the stories about people who have used authority well and quickly tell yourself that you’re like them. Rather, thank God for their example, but ask yourself how you have not been like them but have been more like the people in the darker stories. Part of what’s wrong on this planet is that each one of us assumes, “I’m the good guy in that story,” when the Bible tells us over and over, “No, there is only One Good Guy.” His name wasn’t Adam or Abraham, Moses or David, Miriam or Mary, Peter or Paul. It is Jesus.

If you think you can simply adopt the five moral lessons that I offer midway through the book on how to exercise authority well, you might as well stop now. You will remain proud. And if you remain proud, you will eventually use your authority in a way that hurts or belittles or undermines those whom you lead, even if God simultaneously uses your selfishness for good through his common grace. Insofar as you and I remain anxious or insecure or selfish or boastful or controlling or proud, no tools can finally help us. There is no “how to.” We will use our authority wrongly, even if we dress it up with lipstick and nice manners. As Jesus said, a good tree bears good fruit, and a bad tree bears bad. Good authority grows out of good natures, but if you’re a bad apple, you’re going to taste rotten. We need new natures, so that we can lead out of those new natures.

To gain new natures, we must begin by getting low, confessing our sins, and putting our hope in Christ. Perhaps the best way to begin this book, then, is with a prayer of confession. The goal of such confession isn’t just to feel bad about ourselves. It’s to name things accurately, so that we can then build a better life on a foundation that’s truly good and lasting, namely, on Christ:

Father God,

You have given us authority to give shape to the world around us. You have asked us to image you in how we use that authority, and to demonstrate for the world your own righteousness, love, generosity, and goodness.

Yet we have used our authority for our own gain, our own fame, our own power. We have failed to serve and love those under our care. We have taken advantage of them and their strength for our own purposes.

We’ve been like all those kings of Israel, who thought they could rule without being accountable to you; and the priests, who forgot your word.

We’ve been like Pharaoh, who used and even destroyed others for his own gain, instead of using his authority to give and encourage life.

We’ve been like David, when he refused to discipline his sons, taking the shortsighted and easy path, to the hurt of his family and kingdom.

We’ve been like the foolish child in Proverbs, despising the counsel and wisdom of others as they try to help us lead.

We’ve been like Abraham, when he put his wife in harm’s way instead of undertaking the risk and burden himself.

We’ve been like Adam and Eve in the garden, who thought they were equal with you.

We’ve not been like Christ, who proved himself king by laying down his life for the sake of love. We have not loved.

Forgive us, Lord, both for what we’ve done and what we’ve left undone with the authority you have given us. Thank you for your promise that, if we confess our sins, you are faithful and will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from...