Akintunde had been coordinating his church’s open-air outreach in Ogbomoso for three years, and he had never seen the field so full. The platform was scaffolding and plywood, and two generators had been rented from a man in the next street. By seven o’clock there were perhaps two thousand people on plastic chairs and on the grass. Okada riders had parked along the fence and stayed to listen.
Two weeks earlier Akintunde had attended a conference on the authority of the believer. He came home burning. He had heard, for the first time in his life, that Christ had defeated the devil, that believers share in His victory, and that they are meant to speak with confidence instead of begging and trembling. It was true, and it set something free in him.
So when the sky over the field turned the colour of wet cement and the first wind lifted the edges of the banners, Akintunde took the microphone from the worship leader. “We do not fear rain,” he announced. “I have authority in Jesus’ name. I command this rain to stop now, and I declare that not one drop will fall on this crusade ground tonight.” The crowd cheered. Some of them clapped toward the sky.
Ten minutes later the rain came down as though someone had emptied a tank. The sound system sparked and died. The crowd ran for the classroom blocks and the bus stop. Akintunde stood on the wet platform holding a dead microphone, soaked to the skin, while the plywood turned dark under his feet.
He came to see me the following week. He was not angry with God. He was embarrassed, and underneath the embarrassment he was confused. “Pastor,” he said, “do I have authority or not? Because if I do, what happened on that field? And if I do not, what did Jesus mean?”
It was an honest question, and it deserves an honest answer. The believer’s authority is real. Scripture teaches it plainly, and timid believers need to hear it. But it has a source, a scope and a purpose, and when we lose sight of those three things, we end up on wet platforms wondering whether the whole teaching was a mistake.
Authority begins on a mountain in Galilee
PunchlineEvery conversation about the authority of the believer must begin with the authority of Christ. If we start with ourselves, we will either inflate our importance or collapse into doubt. If we start with Him, we find solid ground.
After His resurrection, Jesus met His disciples on a mountain in Galilee. Matthew tells us honestly that when they saw Him, “they worshipped him: but some doubted” (Matthew 28:17). Even on the day of the Great Commission, the disciples were a mixture of worship and uncertainty. Jesus did not wait for their doubts to clear before He spoke:
And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world. Amen.
Notice whose authority is announced first. “All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth.” The word translated power here is the Greek exousia, which carries the sense of rightful authority, the right to rule and to act. Jesus does not say, “All power is given unto you.” He says it has been given to Him. Whatever authority His followers exercise, they exercise as people sent by the One who holds all of it.
Then comes the word that links His authority to their mission: “Go ye therefore.” Because all authority belongs to Him, they can go to every nation. The disciples are not going in their own name, with their own resources, to see what they can achieve. They are going as envoys of a King whose right to rule has already been established in heaven and on earth.
Look at what the commission actually contains. They are to make disciples, to baptise, and to teach people to observe everything He has commanded. The authority Christ gives His church is first an authority to carry His gospel, to gather people into His name, and to form them in obedience to His word. It is missionary authority. It is aimed at the salvation and formation of people.
And then comes the promise that holds the whole thing together: “lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world.” The authority of the believer is never a detached power that Jesus hands over and then leaves us to operate. It is inseparable from His presence. We act because He is with us. Remove the presence and you have nothing but a borrowed vocabulary.
Seventy ordinary disciples and a falling Satan
Long before the Great Commission, Jesus had already given His followers a taste of delegated authority. In Luke 10 He appointed seventy disciples and sent them two by two into the towns He was about to visit. They were not the twelve. They were ordinary followers whose names Luke does not even record. Jesus told them plainly, “behold, I send you forth as lambs among wolves” (Luke 10:3). They were to heal the sick and announce that the kingdom of God had come near.
When they returned, they could hardly contain themselves:
And the seventy returned again with joy, saying, Lord, even the devils are subject unto us through thy name. And he said unto them, I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven. Behold, I give unto you power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy: and nothing shall by any means hurt you. Notwithstanding in this rejoice not, that the spirits are subject unto you; but rather rejoice, because your names are written in heaven.
“Lord, even the devils are subject unto us through thy name.” Notice the word even. They had expected to preach and perhaps to see people healed. They had not expected demons to obey them. And notice the phrase through thy name. They knew where the authority came from. They had not discovered a hidden ability in themselves. They had acted in the name of the One who sent them, and the spirits had recognised it.
Jesus did not correct their report. He confirmed it, and then He enlarged it. “I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven.” While the seventy were going from village to village, something was happening at a level they could not see. The kingdom of darkness was losing ground. The fall of Satan, which would be made decisive at the cross, was already under way in the ministry of Jesus and those He sent.
Then He told them exactly what He had given them: “Behold, I give unto you power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy.” Two different Greek words stand behind the two uses of power in that sentence. The first is exousia, authority. The second is dynamis, ability or strength. Jesus has given His disciples authority over all the strength of the enemy. Whatever force the devil can muster, the disciple who walks with Christ is not at its mercy. Serpents and scorpions were familiar dangers on the roads of Galilee, and they had long been pictures of spiritual evil. The promise is that the enemy’s poison cannot finally overcome those whom Christ has sent.
That is a staggering grant, and believers should receive it boldly. Some of us have lived as though the devil were the strong one and we were the vulnerable ones, hiding from his schemes and hoping not to be noticed. Jesus says the opposite. The disciple sent in His name has authority over all the power of the enemy.
NuggetThe authority Christ gives His people is real, and it is aimed squarely at the enemy. It was never given so that we could rule the weather, the calendar or other people’s choices.
What the authority is over
Read the passage carefully and you will see that the authority Jesus describes has a clear object. It is authority over the enemy: over devils, over serpents and scorpions, over the strength of the adversary. It is spiritual authority for a spiritual conflict, exercised in the service of the kingdom.
What it is not, in this passage, is authority over the free response of other people. Earlier in the same chapter, Jesus prepared the seventy for rejection:
And into whatsoever city ye enter, and they receive you, eat such things as are set before you: And heal the sick that are therein, and say unto them, The kingdom of God is come nigh unto you. But into whatsoever city ye enter, and they receive you not, go your ways out into the streets of the same, and say, Even the very dust of your city, which cleaveth on us, we do wipe off against you: notwithstanding be ye sure of this, that the kingdom of God is come nigh unto you.
The same disciples who would soon see devils subject to them were told to expect towns that would not receive them. Jesus did not give them a word to make unwilling hearts receive. He told them to wipe off the dust and leave, and still to announce that the kingdom had come near. Authority over demons did not give them control over the will of the people they preached to. The gospel invites. It calls. It warns. It never forces.
That distinction matters for the way we pray. You can resist the devil who is stirring up strife in your home. You cannot command your husband to love you or your adult son to come back to church. You cannot decree that a particular employer will offer you a particular job by Friday. You may pray for those things with faith and expect His goodness, but that is the language of request, offered to a Father who knows best.
Nor does this passage give us a general command over every circumstance of life. Jesus did rebuke the wind on the lake, and God has at times answered His people’s prayers by stilling storms and sending or withholding rain. Elijah prayed and the heavens were shut, and he prayed again and they opened (James 5:17-18). But James tells us Elijah prayed. He did not treat the sky as something placed under his personal command. When God acts over creation in answer to faith, He acts as Lord, and the believer receives it with thanksgiving. Akintunde had mistaken a promise about the enemy for a licence over the weather.
Raised far above every name
Paul gives the widest view of where this authority comes from. In his prayer for the Ephesian believers, he asks that they would know “the exceeding greatness of his power to us-ward who believe,” and then he tells them how to measure it. It is the power God “wrought in Christ, when he raised him from the dead, and set him at his own right hand in the heavenly places,” placing Him “Far above all principality, and power, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come” (Ephesians 1:19-21).
Every rank of spiritual power that might oppose you is named in that list. Principalities, powers, might, dominion. Paul adds every name that is named, so that nothing can claim an exemption. All of it is beneath the risen Christ. “And hath put all things under his feet, and gave him to be the head over all things to the church, Which is his body” (Ephesians 1:22-23).
Here is the heart of the believer’s authority. Christ is the Head. The church is His body. The authority belongs to the Head and is expressed through the body that is joined to Him. A hand has no authority of its own apart from the head. Cut off from the head, it cannot move at all. But joined to the head, it can do what the head directs, and the full strength of the person stands behind it.
That picture both lifts us and humbles us. It lifts us, because the body shares the position of its Head. Whatever is under His feet is, in a real sense, under the feet of His body too. You are not standing at the bottom of the spiritual order, looking up at principalities. In Christ, you are above them.
It humbles us, because the body does not direct the Head. The hand does not decide what the person will do and then expect the head to follow. Authority in the body of Christ flows from Christ’s will, revealed in His word and by His Spirit. The moment a believer begins to treat spiritual authority as a means of getting his own way, he has reversed the order of head and body. He has made himself the head and Christ the instrument.
A man under authority
One of the finest pictures of authority in the Gospels comes from a Roman soldier. A centurion in Capernaum came to Jesus because his servant was paralysed and suffering. When Jesus offered to come to his house, the centurion said that there was no need. Jesus only had to speak the word. And he explained why he was so confident: “For I am a man under authority, having soldiers under me: and I say to this man, Go, and he goeth” (Matthew 8:9).
Notice the order of his words. Under authority comes before having soldiers under me. The centurion’s commands carried weight because Rome stood behind him. If he had deserted his post or rebelled against his superiors, his orders would have meant nothing. His authority depended on his submission. He recognised in Jesus the same pattern at a far higher level: One who stood under the authority of God, and therefore spoke with the authority of God.
The same pattern governs the believer. James puts it in two short commands: “Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you” (James 4:7). The order is not accidental. A believer who is resisting God cannot expect much success in resisting the devil. Authority over the enemy grows out of surrender to the Lord.
This explains why some quiet believers carry far more authority than some loud ones. The widow who has walked with God for forty years, who forgives easily and obeys promptly, may say very little in a deliverance meeting. But when she prays, darkness takes notice. Her authority comes from the fact that she is a woman under authority.
There is a practical test here. Before you speak with authority over any situation, ask whether you are walking in submission to Christ in that same area. Are you bitter toward the person you are praying about? Are you holding on to a sin the Lord has asked you to release? Are you trying to get something God has not promised? These questions do not cancel your standing in Christ. That rests on His finished work. But they do shape whether you are speaking as His representative or as someone using His name for your own plans.
Authority in Philippi
We see the believer’s authority at work, with all its power and all its limits, in a single episode from Paul’s second missionary journey. Paul and Silas had arrived in Philippi, a Roman colony, and they were going to the place of prayer by the river when they were met by a young slave girl:
And it came to pass, as we went to prayer, a certain damsel possessed with a spirit of divination met us, which brought her masters much gain by soothsaying: The same followed Paul and us, and cried, saying, These men are the servants of the most high God, which shew unto us the way of salvation. And this did she many days. But Paul, being grieved, turned and said to the spirit, I command thee in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her. And he came out the same hour.
Several things in this account deserve attention.
First, Paul did not act at once. “And this did she many days.” The girl was shouting things that were technically true: these men are servants of the Most High God. But the source was a spirit of divination, and the effect was to attach the gospel to the fortune-telling trade of Philippi. Paul endured it for many days before he acted. Authority does not mean reacting to every manifestation of darkness the moment it appears. Paul waited until the moment was right.
Second, when he did act, he spoke with complete directness. “I command thee in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her.” He did not plead with the spirit or negotiate with it. He did not hold a long conversation with it or demand its name. He gave one command, in the name of Jesus Christ, and the spirit “came out the same hour.” This is the believer’s authority in its proper use: aimed at a spirit, grounded in the name of Christ, and effective. Pentecostal and charismatic believers have seen this kind of deliverance again and again, and we should not be shy about it. The girl was set free.
Third, notice what happened next:
And the multitude rose up together against them: and the magistrates rent off their clothes, and commanded to beat them . And when they had laid many stripes upon them, they cast them into prison, charging the jailor to keep them safely: Who, having received such a charge, thrust them into the inner prison, and made their feet fast in the stocks. And at midnight Paul and Silas prayed, and sang praises unto God: and the prisoners heard them.
The girl’s owners lost their income. They dragged Paul and Silas before the magistrates, a mob formed, and the two men were stripped, beaten with rods and thrown into the inner prison with their feet in the stocks. The same man who had just cast out a spirit with a single sentence did not then command the magistrates to stop or the rods to break. His authority over the demon did not give him control over the city’s response.
And yet look at them at midnight. “Paul and Silas prayed, and sang praises unto God.” They did not conclude that their authority had failed. They worshipped, and God then acted in His own way, with an earthquake, an open door and a jailer’s household brought to faith. The authority they had exercised earlier never promised them a painless outcome. Paul would later leave a fellow worker, Trophimus, “at Miletum sick” (2 Timothy 4:20). The apostle who commanded spirits did not control every circumstance of his ministry. He lived under the lordship of Christ.
Bold without being presumptuous
What does this mean for an ordinary believer in Ibadan or Abuja or Port Harcourt this week?
It means, first, that you should stop living as a victim of the devil. If you belong to Christ, you are not at the mercy of the enemy. Tormenting fear, oppressive heaviness in the home, recurring nightmares that leave your children terrified, a sense of darkness pressing on your mind: these are places where you can and should take your stand. Speak to the enemy in the name of Jesus. Tell him he has no right to your household, because you belong to Christ and Christ has defeated him. Jesus said to the seventy, “nothing shall by any means hurt you” (Luke 10:19). Take Him at His word.
It means, second, that you should pray for the sick and the oppressed with expectation. Jesus said of those who believe, “they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover” (Mark 16:18). The authority of the believer belongs at the hospital bedside, in the prayer meeting and in the counselling room. A church that has learned to be cautious about excess can easily become a church that never expects God to do anything at all. That is its own failure.
It means, third, that you hold your authority with humility about everything it does not cover. Pray boldly for healing, and also take your medicine and listen to your doctor. Medical care is one of the ways God’s goodness reaches His people. Resist the enemy who stirs up strife in your marriage, and also have the honest conversation and seek counsel. Speak against fear over your exams, and also study. Spiritual authority is never a substitute for ordinary obedience.
It means, fourth, that you refuse to turn authority into a weapon against people. If someone has wronged you, your authority in Christ does not include the right to curse them, to decree their downfall or to call down fire on them. When James and John wanted to do exactly that to a Samaritan village, Jesus rebuked them (Luke 9:55). The enemy is the devil. People, even hostile people, are the ones Jesus came to save.
Rejoicing in the right place
We have not yet looked at the most surprising part of Luke 10. After confirming the disciples’ authority and enlarging it, Jesus redirected their joy: “Notwithstanding in this rejoice not, that the spirits are subject unto you; but rather rejoice, because your names are written in heaven” (Luke 10:20).
Jesus had just given them the authority, and He did not call it unimportant. But He would not let it become the centre of their joy. Authority is a gift for the work. A name written in heaven is the gift of belonging, and it does not change from one day to the next. A disciple whose happiness rises and falls with visible results will soon be either proud or crushed. A disciple who rejoices first in being known by God can handle both the night when devils flee and the night when the rain falls.
Luke then records something remarkable: “In that hour Jesus rejoiced in spirit, and said, I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes” (Luke 10:21). Jesus Himself was full of joy, and the reason was that the Father had shown His kingdom to ordinary people. The seventy were babes, in that sense. They had no special training and no impressive titles. They had simply been sent, and they had gone.
That is where the believer’s authority finally rests: on the Father’s pleasure in revealing Himself to the weak and on the Son’s victory over the enemy. None of it is earned. Because it is received, it must be held the way a child holds a gift from his father: gladly, confidently and without any illusion that it makes him the master of the house.
Akintunde and I spent most of an afternoon in Luke 10. At first he wanted me to tell him what he had done wrong, as though there were a missing ingredient in his declaration. Had he not believed enough? Had he spoken too late? I told him that he had not lacked faith. He had aimed his faith at something God had not promised him, and he had done it in front of two thousand people.
He was quiet for a while. Then he asked, “So what do I do with the authority?”
Punchline“Use it on the enemy,” I said. “And rejoice that your name is written in heaven, rain or no rain.”
The outreach went ahead again three months later. This time Akintunde rented two large canopies. When the clouds gathered, he did not take the microphone to make a public decree. He asked the ushers to help people move under cover, and he asked the intercessors at the back of the platform to pray that God would keep the meeting safe and use whatever happened for His glory. A light rain fell for twenty minutes and then stopped.
Near the end of the night, a young woman was brought forward by her aunt. She had been tormented for months, unable to sleep, hearing voices that told her to harm herself. The family had already taken her to the hospital, and she was on medication, which Akintunde encouraged her to continue. But there was something else at work as well, and the leaders discerned it. Akintunde laid his hand on her shoulder and spoke quietly but without hesitation: “In the name of Jesus Christ, I command every tormenting spirit to leave her now.” She wept for a long time. Her aunt told the pastors a week later that she had slept through the night for the first time since the harvest.
Akintunde rang me the next morning. He was not boasting about the deliverance. He told me about it, and then he said, “Pastor, the rain fell on my head again last night. And I was happy anyway. My name is in the book.”
That is the authority of the believer. Aimed at the enemy. Held under the lordship of Christ. Carried with joy that does not depend on the weather.
Teaching Companion
For Reflection
- Before reading this, how would you have described the authority of the believer? What has changed in your understanding?
- Why do you think Jesus began the Great Commission by speaking of His own authority before sending His disciples?
- In what situations have you tried to exercise authority over things God has not placed under your command, such as people’s choices or particular outcomes?
- Where in your life do you need to take a bolder stand against the enemy instead of living as his victim?
- What would change in your service to God if your deepest joy rested on your name being written in heaven?
This Week
Read Luke 10:17-20 and Matthew 28:18-20 each morning this week. Then take a sheet of paper and draw a line down the middle. On one side, write the areas where Scripture gives you authority to resist the enemy: fear, oppression, torment, the lies he speaks about your identity. On the other side, write the things you have been trying to control that belong instead in the category of prayerful request: other people’s decisions, timings, particular outcomes. Over the week, take a bold stand in the name of Jesus over the first list, and bring the second list to your Father in trust. End each day by thanking God that your name is written in heaven.
A Prayer
Lord Jesus, all authority in heaven and on earth belongs to You. Thank You that You have sent me in Your name and promised to be with me always. Thank You that the enemy’s power is beneath Your feet, and that in You I am not his victim. Teach me to stand against him boldly, to pray for the sick and the oppressed with expectation, and to resist every lie he speaks. Keep me under Your authority, so that I never use Your name to pursue my own will or to harm other people. Let my deepest joy be that my name is written in heaven. Amen.
Truth received brings freedom. Truth believed establishes the heart.
Scripture quotations are from the King James Version. · Illustrations using first names only are composites unless stated otherwise.