Ibinabo stands five feet and two inches in her boots. For eleven years she has worked as a traffic officer in Lagos, and for most of that time her post has been a junction on Ikorodu Road where four lanes of danfos, private cars, tankers and articulated lorries try to occupy the same piece of tarmac at the same moment. In the morning rush the noise is a solid wall: horns, conductors shouting destinations, engines idling, a hawker calling out the price of gala.
Into this, Ibinabo steps with her hand raised. And the traffic stops. A forty-tonne lorry loaded with cement, whose driver could crush her without noticing, comes to a halt a few metres from her outstretched palm. She waves one lane forward and holds back another. The whole junction moves to the rhythm of her arm.
She is a member of a church I have preached in, and one Sunday afternoon over jollof rice she told me something that has stayed with me. “Pastor, you preachers like to use my work in your sermons. You say, ‘The traffic officer has no power to stop a lorry. She only has authority. The power is in the lorry’s brakes, but the authority is in her uniform.’” She smiled. “It is a good illustration. I like it. But it is only half true.”
I asked her what she meant. She told me about a morning two years earlier when a tipper driver, late for a delivery and in a foul mood, simply ignored her raised hand. He drove through the junction, nearly hitting a woman crossing with a child on her back. “My uniform did not stop him,” she said. “My authority was there, but he did not care. So I lifted my radio. In four minutes there were two of my colleagues and a police patrol in front of his lorry. Then he stopped.” She tapped the radio on her shoulder. “Authority without this,” she said, “is just a woman standing in the road.”
I have thought about that conversation many times when teaching on authority and power. The distinction preachers draw between them is genuinely useful. It also has limits, and when we forget those limits we end up imposing a neat formula on passages that do not fit it. So let us look carefully at what Scripture actually says.
Two words in one commission
Luke records the moment when Jesus first sent the twelve out on their own:
Then he called his twelve disciples together, and gave them power and authority over all devils, and to cure diseases. And he sent them to preach the kingdom of God, and to heal the sick.
“He... gave them power and authority over all devils, and to cure diseases.” In the Greek text, two words sit side by side. The first, translated power, is dynamis. It speaks of strength, ability, the capacity to bring something about. Our word dynamite comes from it, though we should be careful not to read the explosive back into the Greek. The second, translated authority, is exousia. It speaks of the right to act, the permission or jurisdiction that comes from someone higher.
Jesus gave the twelve both. He gave them the right to act in His name, and He gave them the ability to make that action effective. The two belong together. Authority without power would be a uniform with nothing behind it. Power without authority would be strength with no rightful commission, something closer to sorcery than to ministry.
And notice the purpose. “He sent them to preach the kingdom of God, and to heal the sick.” The power and authority were not decorations for the disciples’ reputation. They were equipment for a mission. Jesus gave them what they needed to announce His kingdom in word and to demonstrate it in deed.
Luke had already shown us the same pairing in the ministry of Jesus Himself. Early in His Galilean ministry, He was teaching in the synagogue at Capernaum when a man with an unclean spirit cried out:
And in the synagogue there was a man, which had a spirit of an unclean devil, and cried out with a loud voice, Saying, Let us alone; what have we to do with thee, thou Jesus of Nazareth? art thou come to destroy us? I know thee who thou art; the Holy One of God. And Jesus rebuked him, saying, Hold thy peace, and come out of him. And when the devil had thrown him in the midst, he came out of him, and hurt him not. And they were all amazed, and spake among themselves, saying, What a word is this! for with authority and power he commandeth the unclean spirits, and they come out.
“What a word is this! for with authority and power he commandeth the unclean spirits, and they come out.” The crowd sensed two things at once. Jesus spoke as One who had the right to command, and when He commanded, something happened. The spirit came out. Authority and power met in a single word from His mouth.
Why the distinction helps
PunchlineTeachers who distinguish authority from power are drawing on something real in the text, and the distinction has helped a great many believers.
It helps the timid believer who thinks he must feel powerful before he can do anything. Many Christians wait for a surge of emotion or a sense of spiritual electricity before they will pray for the sick or resist the enemy. They assume that if they do not feel strong, they have nothing to offer. The distinction reminds them that the right to act in Jesus’ name has been given to them whether or not they feel anything at all. A traffic officer does not wait to feel tall before she raises her hand.
It helps the believer who is frightened of the devil. If spiritual conflict were simply a contest of raw strength, we might have reason to fear. But our standing in Christ gives us a rightful claim that the enemy cannot match. Jesus told the seventy that He had given them authority “over all the power of the enemy” (Luke 10:19). Whatever strength the devil has, he has no right to the people of Christ.
It helps us understand why the apostles always pointed away from themselves. After the lame man was healed at the temple gate, Peter asked the crowd, “why look ye so earnestly on us, as though by our own power or holiness we had made this man to walk?” (Acts 3:12). The ability did not originate with Peter. Neither did the right. Both came from the risen Christ.
All of that is good and true. The trouble begins when a useful distinction hardens into a rigid formula.
When a distinction becomes a formula
Here is how the formula usually sounds. Exousia always means authority. Dynamis always means power. The believer already has all the authority he will ever need, so he must never ask for power. Or: the believer has authority, but he must seek a separate experience to receive power, and until then his authority is useless. Whole systems of teaching have been built on the assumption that these two words always carry fixed meanings and can be mapped onto every text in exactly the same way.
The Bible does not cooperate with that kind of tidiness.
Take the King James Version itself. In many passages it translates both words as power. In Luke 10:19, “I give unto you power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy,” the first power is exousia and the second is dynamis. In John 1:12, “to them gave he power to become the sons of God,” the word is exousia, and it clearly means a right or privilege: the right to become God’s children. In 1 Corinthians 8:9, Paul warns the Corinthians, “take heed lest by any means this liberty of yours become a stumblingblock.” The word translated liberty is again exousia. The same word that means spiritual authority in one place means personal freedom in another.
Dynamis is just as flexible. When the woman with the issue of blood touched the hem of Jesus’ garment, He knew “that virtue had gone out of him” (Mark 5:30). Virtue there is dynamis, the healing power that flowed from Him. When Jesus rebuked the cities “wherein most of his mighty works were done” (Matthew 11:20), mighty works is again dynamis, now meaning the miracles themselves. When Paul heard the Lord say, “my strength is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9), the word for strength is dynamis, and it describes a power that shows itself most clearly when the human vessel is weak.
Look also at Ephesians 1:21, where Paul says Christ is “Far above all principality, and power, and might, and dominion.” In that list, power is exousia and might is dynamis. Here both words describe the hostile spiritual forces under Christ’s feet. Authority and power, in this verse, are things the enemy possesses in some measure too, and both have been subjected to the risen Lord.
What does all this mean? Simply that the meaning of a word is governed by its context. The distinction between exousia and dynamis is real, and in passages like Luke 9:1 it is clearly intended. But we cannot build a system on the assumption that every occurrence carries an identical, technical sense, and then force every passage to fit. That would be letting a sermon illustration govern the Scriptures, when it is the Scriptures that must govern the illustration.
A helpful distinction becomes misleading the moment it is turned into a formula and pressed onto every text. Let each passage speak in its own context, and keep your eyes on the Christ who gives both the right and the strength.
Power for witness
If the formula is unreliable, the promise of power is not. Before His ascension, Jesus told the disciples to wait in Jerusalem “until ye be endued with power from on high” (Luke 24:49). In Acts, Luke repeats the promise in the words that frame the whole book:
But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judæa, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth.
The disciples had already been given authority in Luke 9. They had already cast out devils and healed the sick. And yet Jesus told them to wait for power. That alone should make us cautious about saying that authority is everything and power is a lesser concern. The apostles who had authority still needed the Spirit to come upon them.
The word here is dynamis, and its purpose is stated clearly: “ye shall be witnesses unto me.” The power of the Spirit is given for witness, for making Christ known from Jerusalem to the ends of the earth. It is not a private spiritual possession for the enjoyment of the few. On the day of Pentecost the Spirit came, the disciples “were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance” (Acts 2:4), and within hours Peter was preaching Christ crucified and risen to thousands. Later Luke tells us, “with great power gave the apostles witness of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus: and great grace was upon them all” (Acts 4:33).
Sincere believers differ about how this promise relates to conversion. Many evangelical believers understand the baptism of the Holy Spirit as something every Christian receives at new birth, with fresh fillings of the Spirit throughout life. Others see a distinct experience of empowering that may follow conversion, often accompanied by speaking in tongues. These brothers and sisters love the Lord and read the same Bible, and they deserve to be heard with respect.
My own conviction, shared with the Pentecostal and charismatic tradition, is that the Spirit’s empowering for witness is a distinct gift that every believer should seek and expect, as the disciples did in Acts 2 and the Samaritans and Ephesians did later (Acts 8:14-17; Acts 19:1-6). Peter told the crowd at Pentecost that “the promise is unto you, and to your children, and to all that are afar off” (Acts 2:39). That includes you. If you have not yet asked the Father to fill you with His Spirit, ask Him. He is not reluctant to give.
But whichever view you hold, the point of Acts 1:8 is the same. Power is for witness. The test of the Spirit’s power in your life is not the volume of your prayer or the drama of your meetings. It is whether Christ is being made known through you, in your workplace, your family, your street and beyond.
The measure of the power toward us
Paul gives us a breathtaking description of the power available to believers in Ephesians 1. He prays that the believers would know “what is the exceeding greatness of his power to us-ward who believe, according to the working of his mighty power” (Ephesians 1:19).
Paul seems to run out of words. In that single verse he uses four different Greek terms for strength. There is dynamis, power. There is energeia, the working or operation of power. There is kratos, might that prevails. And there is ischys, inherent strength. He piles them up because no single word is big enough for what he is trying to describe.
Then he gives us the measure. It is the power “Which he wrought in Christ, when he raised him from the dead, and set him at his own right hand” (Ephesians 1:20). The power at work toward believers is resurrection power. It is the strength that reached into a sealed tomb, overturned death and lifted a crucified Man to the throne of the universe.
And look at where that power placed Christ: “Far above all principality, and power, and might, and dominion” (Ephesians 1:21). The resurrection settled the question of authority. Every rival claim, every hostile right, every rebel jurisdiction, was placed under His feet. In the risen Christ, authority and power meet completely. He has both the right to rule and the strength to make His rule effective. God “gave him to be the head over all things to the church, Which is his body” (Ephesians 1:22-23).
This is why we should not split authority and power into two separate packages that a believer must obtain independently. Both are found in Christ. The believer does not possess authority as a private store, or power as a separate tank to be refilled. He is joined to the Head, in whom all authority and all power dwell. The questions Do I have the right? and Do I have the strength? receive the same answer: you are in Christ, and He has both.
When authority did not work
NuggetNow we come to a passage that every teacher of spiritual authority must face honestly. It appears in the very chapter where Jesus gave the twelve power and authority over all devils.
A few weeks after their mission, Jesus came down from the mountain of the transfiguration with Peter, James and John. A crowd was waiting, and in it a desperate father:
And it came to pass, that on the next day, when they were come down from the hill, much people met him. And, behold, a man of the company cried out, saying, Master, I beseech thee, look upon my son: for he is mine only child. And, lo, a spirit taketh him, and he suddenly crieth out; and it teareth him that he foameth again, and bruising him hardly departeth from him. And I besought thy disciples to cast him out; and they could not. And Jesus answering said, O faithless and perverse generation, how long shall I be with you, and suffer you? Bring thy son hither. And as he was yet a coming, the devil threw him down, and tare him . And Jesus rebuked the unclean spirit, and healed the child, and delivered him again to his father.
“I besought thy disciples to cast him out; and they could not.” These were the same disciples who, at the start of the chapter, had received “power and authority over all devils.” They had gone out and seen results. And now, facing a tormented boy, they failed.
The grant of Luke 9:1 had not been withdrawn. Jesus had not revoked their commission. Yet their authority did not operate automatically. Mark records the conversation that followed in private:
And when he was come into the house, his disciples asked him privately, Why could not we cast him out? And he said unto them, This kind can come forth by nothing, but by prayer and fasting.
“This kind can come forth by nothing, but by prayer and fasting.” Jesus did not say they lacked authority. He pointed them to dependence. Some of the oldest manuscripts read simply “by prayer,” and either way the emphasis falls on the disciples’ reliance on God. In Matthew’s account Jesus also names their unbelief (Matthew 17:20). They may have begun to treat the earlier grant as a possession they could use on demand, and they had drifted from the posture of prayerful trust in which it had first worked.
Here the formula breaks down again. If authority were a fixed possession that functioned regardless of the believer’s walk with God, the disciples should have succeeded. If power were a separate commodity one either has or lacks, Jesus might have told them to go and get more of it. Instead He called them back to prayer, faith and dependence on the Father. The answer to failure in ministry was renewed fellowship with God, and no new technique.
That should be a comfort to anyone who has prayed with authority and seen nothing happen. Your commission has not been cancelled. Jesus Himself healed the boy that day, and He still delivers. But it is also a summons. Prayer, fasting and trust are the soil in which delegated authority grows strong.
Anointed, and God was with Him
When Peter preached to Cornelius and his household, he summarised the ministry of Jesus in a single sentence:
How God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power: who went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil; for God was with him.
Every part of that verse is worth weighing. “God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power.” The eternal Son, who had all authority by right, ministered on earth as a Man anointed by the Spirit. He said of Himself, “I can of mine own self do nothing: as I hear, I judge” (John 5:30). If Jesus lived in that kind of dependence on the Father, we should not imagine that we can operate independently of Him.
“Who went about doing good.” The power of God in the life of Jesus expressed itself in goodness. He healed, delivered, fed, comforted and restored. His power was never used to impress crowds, to punish enemies or to make Himself comfortable. When He was hungry in the wilderness, He refused to turn stones into bread for Himself. Power in the hands of Jesus always served the good of others and the will of the Father.
“And healing all that were oppressed of the devil.” The anointing was aimed at the enemy’s works. That is where authority and power belong: against the oppressor, for the oppressed.
“For God was with him.” This phrase is the secret of the whole verse. Authority and power were not things Jesus wielded at a distance from the Father. They flowed from the Father’s presence with Him.
This guards us against two errors. One is the error of Simon in Samaria, who saw the Spirit given through the laying on of hands and offered money, saying, “Give me also this power” (Acts 8:19). The word is exousia. Simon wanted the right and ability to impart the Spirit, detached from repentance and relationship, as a tool to sell. Peter’s answer was severe.
The other error is to assume that visible power proves a person’s standing with God. Jesus warned that many will say in the last day, “in thy name done many wonderful works,” and He will answer, “I never knew you” (Matthew 7:22-23). The wonderful works are dynameis, powers. Displays of power can coexist with a heart far from God. Samson kept his strength through many years of compromise, and then one morning “he wist not that the LORD was departed from him” (Judges 16:20). And Paul tells us that even faith “so that I could remove mountains” is nothing without love (1 Corinthians 13:2).
So we pursue power, and we should pursue it eagerly. Paul said that “the kingdom of God is not in word, but in power” (1 Corinthians 4:20), and a church without the Spirit’s power is poorer than God intends. But we measure power by Christ: by goodness, by deliverance of the oppressed, by the Father’s presence, and by love.
Ibinabo still works the same junction. When I last passed it, on my way to a meeting in Ojota, she was there in the rain with her hand up and a line of tankers obeying her.
I thought of what she had told me over jollof rice. Her authority was real. It came from the Lagos State Government, not from her height or her voice, and the drivers who stopped for her were responding to the state that stood behind her uniform. But on the morning the tipper driver ignored her, her authority alone did not stop the lorry. She lifted the radio, and help came.
That is where the illustration runs out, and where the gospel goes further. Ibinabo had to call for help that was four minutes away. The believer’s help is never four minutes away. The One who gives us authority is the One who promised, “lo, I am with you alway.” The Spirit who empowers us lives within us. We do not stand at the junction of this dark world with a uniform and an empty radio. We stand in Christ, who has all authority and all power, and whose Spirit has come upon us for witness.
PunchlineThe last time I spoke to her, she laughed when I told her I wanted to use her story. “Use it,” she said. “But tell them about the radio.”
So I am telling you about the radio. Your authority is real. Do not wait to feel powerful before you use it. But do not ever imagine you are standing in the road alone. Pray. Stay close. Be filled with the Spirit. And when you raise your hand against the works of darkness, remember whose presence makes it count.
Teaching Companion
For Reflection
- How have you understood the difference between authority and power until now? Has that understanding ever been turned into a formula in your own thinking?
- Why do you think the disciples who had received authority in Luke 9:1 failed to deliver the boy later in the same chapter?
- What does it mean to you that the power God shows toward believers is measured by the resurrection of Christ?
- What is your conviction about the Spirit’s empowering for witness? Have you asked the Father to fill you with His Spirit?
- How does Acts 10:38 shape the way you think about the purpose of spiritual power?
This Week
Read Luke 9:1-2, Luke 9:37-42 and Acts 10:38 slowly this week, perhaps one each day, and then all three on the fourth day. Choose one day this week to set aside a meal and spend that time in prayer, asking the Father to deepen your dependence on Him and to fill you afresh with His Spirit for witness. Then look for one practical opportunity to “go about doing good”: visit someone sick, pray for a neighbour, or share Christ with a colleague. Do it consciously as one sent in Jesus’ name.
A Prayer
Lord Jesus, You have all authority in heaven and on earth, and You were anointed with the Holy Ghost and with power. Thank You for giving Your disciples both the right to act in Your name and the strength to make it effective. Forgive me where I have treated Your gifts as a formula or a possession I could use without You. Draw me back into prayer, faith and dependence on the Father. Fill me with Your Spirit for witness, and let any power You give me be used to do good and to set the oppressed free. Keep me close to You, so that Your presence is always with me, as the Father was with You. 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.