How Should Christians View Authority? | Jonathan Leeman

All right, welcome to another episode of the Room for Nuance podcast. Seriously, two hours?

Two hours. I'm Sean DeMars, and we're going to go two hours, maybe longer. And Jonathan Lehman is our guest for this show.

Brother, before you tell us about yourself and why we should listen to anything you have to say... Are we going to pray here? You're going to lead us in prayer.

Are you being Mark in this? Are you being the one who interrupts with sarcasm? Open us in prayer.

Let's do it. Father God, thank you for my good friend Sean. Thank you for the salvation that we share in Christ and the gospel partnership we pursue together in different ways in different states.

God, you are so good to use folk like us. We pray that you would use even this conversation now for your glory, for the church's good.

In Christ's name, amen. Amen. All right, brother, tell us who you are and why we should listen to you.

Jonathan Lehman, Editorial Director, Nine Marks. Married to Shannon, father of four daughters, three of whom are teenagers.

Written a book on authority, which is what I think we're going to talk about now. Also an elder at Chevrolet Baptist Church.

Yeah, that's right. And you have a whole bunch of degrees, right? Undergraduate in political science and English.

Celsius or Fahrenheit? Yeah. Sorry, go ahead, man.

Is it going to stay that good? Oh, yeah, that's good. A master's degree in political theory. Another master's or an

MDiv from the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and then a PhD in theology slash political theology.

Okay. You have more degrees than hairs on your head. That's crazy. Jonathan, how do we know each other?

But not as many as you have pounds on the scale, right? Amen? Good try, man.

Good try, dude. All right. Yeah. What did I ask you just now? How do we know each other?

Well, I want you to tell the story. You were a member of Capitol Baptist for a number of years and I first met you.

For one year. Yeah. Okay. That long. You made a multi -year impression on me, though.

And then you came back as an intern. Yeah. Is there more you're fishing for there? No, that was good.

Yeah, that was really good. Man, I just want you to give the answer you feel is most appropriate. Now, I really enjoyed my time as an intern because I tried to, as much as I could, saddle up next to you.

I learned a lot from Mark. He's a fantastic role model, following him as he follows Christ.

Yep. But there's a sense in which I felt like I could, in many ways, not just learn more from you.

I don't even know if more is the right word, but I felt like I could learn from you in a different way. I remember one time talking to Mark, asking him if he had ever struggled with depression.

And he said, I think I was really sad for like a week once in college. Well, what

I was going to say is you and I have the ability to relate together as ordinary mortals.

Yeah. That's right. Yeah. But I also, from the very beginning, brother, appreciated you as a thinker and a writer and a communicator.

And I think you do something very well. And I didn't bring you on here just to flatter you. I'm not flattering you.

I think you're pretty exceptional in your ability to be like a really good, down -to -earth pastor that people can relate to, while also being very intellectual.

Also being able to be very firm and convictional in your faith, while at the same time being irenic and friendly, even towards people who are out -and -out enemies of the gospel.

And I just watched you and I said, whatever ministry I have, I want it to have that kind of flavor.

Right? Because we know that different ministers and their ministries have, like MacArthur has a flavor, right?

Mark has a flavor. John Piper has a flavor. And I'm not saying I want to be 100 %

Jonathan Lehman, but observing you there pastorally and working for Nine Marks, I said, at least in part,

I want to be able to role model my ministry after what I've seen in you, man. I appreciate it. But if your ministry had a flavor of ice cream, what flavor would it be?

Best question of the interview. We don't even have to do the rest. I can tell you this is going to be the best. What's the ice cream?

Ben and Jerry's. Uh -huh. Americone Dream. Americone Dream?

Americone Dream. I don't know what that is. It's Stephen Colbert. Listen, everything about it, part of me repulses that, right?

Like Ben and Jerry's, the woke stuff, right? But listen, the beauty, the elegance is in the simplicity.

Vanilla ice cream. Okay. Salted caramel. Are people still listening? Chocolate -covered ice cream cones.

All right. Yeah, I like it. Right? Just three simple ingredients. Okay, me too. I'll say the same. And I think that really is a perfect transition into authority.

Yeah, segue. Don't you think? Yeah, that's right. From ice cream to authority. Would you say that this new book on authority, what's the subtitle again, by the way?

You're being mean now. I want to know what the subtitle is. The title is Authority. Okay. Got that. The title is several phrases that me and Crossway kind of bandied about trying to figure out what order they go in and what to say.

Something like, how godly rule protects the vulnerable. Wow. Builds community or something.

And makes society flourish or something. That's really good. So if you're looking for Jonathan's new book, type the word authority in Google and just pray that it comes up.

That's right. You've written, basically your whole career has been writing on authority. You're kind of the polity guy, which

I appreciate. But isn't polity really just a fancy word for how authority flows down through institutions?

Yeah. Polity, which refers to a form of government or governmental structures, is very much all about authority.

And in many ways, my previous books, both about the church as well as about church and state types of things, all pertain or draw on this idea of authority.

So this most recent book I've done is sort of saying, okay, we're not just going to talk about church or state, we're going to talk about the thing itself.

We're going to talk about authority. And it's out of my own experiences of being under good authorities.

You mentioned Mark a moment ago. I was under his authority. And in some ways still am at 9

Marks. But I've had good parents, a wonderful father. Your dad was a pastor or a music minister?

Minister of music, that's right. Wonderful mother, wonderful godly grandparents. I've had good teachers. I've had good pastors.

I've had good bosses along the way. So reflecting on what they did in my life, reflecting on some of my pastoral experiences with bad authorities.

My own experience with a bad authority. I once had a terrible boss when I was in journalism. I had a terrible boss.

And certainly reflecting on what scripture has to say about the topic of authority.

All of that fed into this book. So this is like the piece de resistance. Would you say this is what all of your career thus far has been?

Culminating in many ways, yeah. That's what I said in French just now. Piece de resistance.

Do you see the inflection I hit on? Keep going. Why now? Why this book now?

So that's a good sound. Yeah. Use your words, Jonathan. I have several reasons.

One, because all the stuff has been in my head. The things I want to say in this book have been in my head.

And I've been speaking them and teaching them in different contexts. People would ask me to come and speak on this topic. And I'd write stuff down.

It would show up there and so forth. And flecks of it had shown up in this article or that article.

Or this chapter or that chapter of a book. So it was all sort of there in my head. And also,

I think this particular moment, it is a live and hot topic.

Right? Especially coming out of the Me Too movement. Looking at the Church Too movement. Looking at all the charges being made about abuse of church leaders.

Scandals of this or that celebrity pastor. Growing conversations about complementarianism. And whether or not it just leads to abuse or not.

I mean, society at large has always been skeptical. Since the fall, in some ways, we could say we've been skeptical of authority.

In the West, since the Enlightenment. But I think in the last 5 to 10 years especially, there's been that growing skepticism towards authority in the church.

So when I began in the quote -unquote ministry in 2004, 5, 6, authority was kind of popular.

Complementarianism was kind of popular. Yeah. Making a comeback. It was having a little comeback. That's right. Whereas in the mid -teens, various things going on in society at large, you don't need to go through all of them, suspicions were coming up in the church as well.

Resistance to authority. You have all kinds of authority, right? Scientific authority, governmental authority, parental authority.

All of those things. Very much questioned. But also certainly pastor and church authority. So both because all this stuff had been in my head, and then also because Christians increasingly are questioning this topic.

I thought it was a good time to write about it. One last thing I would say is, there are a number of books that have come out in the last 5 years on authority, but they're all critical of it.

Oh. You know, about abusive pastors. Yeah. I'm not going to name them here.

I will. But all of them were aiming their guns at authority for many good reasons.

Sure. In the same way, I want to aim my guns at bad authority. But I also want to talk, in some ways it's easy to talk about bad authority.

The harder thing to do is to talk about good authority and help people understand it and train them in it.

And I think there's a place for Christians to do both. We got to talk about bad authority. Don't take your eye off of that.

The fall happened. But we also got to talk about good authority. Because authority in creation is good, and authority in redemption is good.

So keep one eye on that as well. So what I try to do is write a book that does both. Bad authority is bad, and good authority is good, and you got to hold them together.

Do you think there's more bad authority in the church today than there is good? I don't have surveys.

I don't have statistics. I only have personal anecdotes. My personal experience is that most pastors, meeting you and I were just in with some other guys, most pastors are good guys.

Most pastors, I think, are being faithful. But all it takes is a few bad apples to give a reputation to the whole barrel of being rotten, right?

And so you have, you know, 20 good churches in a town, and that one church or those two churches explode with the abusive or disqualified pastor, and that shows up in the newspaper, and suddenly all 20 churches come under suspicion.

And I do think there's some of that. Now that's not me wanting to downplay the badness of bad pastors.

We don't need to talk about that. But no, I think my anecdotal sense, maybe you've had a different, if you're listening, maybe you've had a different experience than mine.

If you have, I'm sorry. I'd want to hear about that. But in my own experience, most pastors are good guys.

Yeah, I think I would agree, brother. Jonathan, we're going to do something a little different for this interview than the rest of the interview.

I'm going to let you interview me on your book. You ask me questions about authority, and I'll give you the answers.

What's the subtitle? I don't know. This is going well. All right, so here's the way

I'm, listen, your book, the problem with this interview is I just, your book's not out yet. By the time this publishes, it'll probably be out.

September 12, 2023, Lord Willing. Lord Willing, published by Crossway. Get your copies on Amazon.

Get your copies on 9marks .org. That too. Yeah. It was so good.

You know how sometimes you read a book and you just end up like highlighting everything on the page?

I think when I got through with your book, the word count for stuff I wanted to talk about was like 6 ,000 words.

So that's way too much. So I'm going to just walk through some of the things that I found to be incredibly useful or insightful, or maybe even ask you some questions, and then just let you kind of riff on it.

You're the authority guy. You're the subject matter expert. So let's just dive right in.

So you start by telling us that this book is not just for pastors. Everyone has authority, right?

So here's a quote from you. You have authority. Everyone does. Even if you're a 13 -year -old, you have rule 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.

I thought that was really insightful, really useful. Because as I was trying to think through how does this apply to every single person that I shepherd in the local church, it applies all the way down even to the children.

That's right. How is it that children have authority? Well, it's hardwired into, let me use a fancy word, it's hardwired into human ontology.

When God created us in his image, he created us, this is an ontological claim.

The essence of the thing. Yeah, that's right. The essence of what the human thing is is an authority bearer.

That's what it means to be created in God's image. What does an image do? An image noun, images, verb, something, right?

So God the creator is also God the ruler. So if I'm going to mirror image

God and what he is like, that means I image him as I rule. And so sure enough, you know,

Genesis 1 .28, God creates him in their image and says, Rule, subdue, have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, the animals, every creeping thing.

Which is to say, authority goes right to the heart of human existence. You, your wife, your two daughters, were created to rule, right?

And as children, we practice that rule in small ways. Right? When you say to your daughter, clean up your room, you're training her in exercising dominion over that little bit of space that she caused.

Her little garden, her little plot. Yeah. Right? And as she proves faithful and responsible in that, you entrust her with more authority and more opportunity to rule over even a bigger territory.

Yeah. Right? Oh, here's some money. You can go do this this weekend. Here's the car. Exactly. That's right.

And so what are we all doing as human beings? We're growing up into the rule that God intends for us in creation.

Now, of course, we abuse that and bring the fall. Yeah. Which we're going to get to in a second.

But we'll get to that. You said the goal of the book is to help every husband, parent, pastor, policeman, politician, officer, and employer.

Now, you left out a lot. Or is that just meant to be a sample? Yeah, that's right. Okay. Employer, understand this good and dangerous gift of authority and then equip you to handle it with care.

Yeah. So it seems like you don't use this metaphor, but this is what comes to mind. Like a chef handling a really sharp knife.

Right? Like to be a good cook in the kitchen, you have to use this really dangerous instrument. And actually, if it's dull, it can be more dangerous.

Mm -hmm. It's a good instrument, but it's really dangerous. And you're trying to help people learn how to use it well. Yeah. Another image that comes to mind is dynamite.

I mean, dynamite's used to blow up rocks and lay train tracks. Yeah. Right? Which is a wonderful, good thing.

But dynamite's also used to blow things up that shouldn't be blown up. Right? And that's why

I call authority a good and dangerous gift. Or here's another example. Human agency.

Choice. Human choice, human agency, is a gift God has given us, which we can use for good to bless others, or we can use for harm to hurt others.

And something else I say in the book is that our authority and our choices are almost, are basically one and the same thing.

Your ability to choose is to say you have authority over some place that you've been given dominion.

And in that way, Adam's bite of the apple and Pharaoh's, you know, bloodshed are the same thing, albeit one quantitatively far worse.

Yes. And so when we say people have abused the choice that God has given, little kids say to you, why does

God let bad things happen? And you say something like, oh, well, you know, people have been given choice by God and we've abused it. Well, another way to say the same thing is to say, well, we were given authority and we abused it.

You speak of our struggle to use authority well like this. Our profoundly pharisaical post -Christian world, which has abandoned all ideas of original sin, teaches us to think like this, which is to misuse authority.

It classifies everyone as an abuser or non -abuser, oppressor or non -oppressor. Those are the only moral categories it has left.

Human beings generally have a problem with authority. Our Western problem is that we don't know what to do with it.

We hate it, but we cannot live without it. I pushed two quotes together there, but both running in the same vein.

I thought that was really insightful. I'm making a bleak reference there to things like critical race theory and so forth.

I'm making a bleak reference to, let me just say critical theory in general. I'm making reference to the categories, the moral categories that people these days, particularly on the progressive side, often use, which is they can't escape morality in general.

Even if you topple the oppressive regime, you're just going to replace it with a new oppressive regime. That's exactly what happens.

That's exactly what happens. Maybe this time, if we do it, it'll work.

They use their authority poorly, their power poorly, so give it to me. That's exactly what happens.

Finally, it's scripture and specifically a Lord of redemption who gives us a way out of that.

For fallen creatures, we will all use our authority and power wrongly. At the very beginning of the book,

I try to open up by saying, if you think I can just give you five tips on how to do it well, no, you're mistaken.

Not the right book. Finally, you need to be redeemed. You need to be converted. You need to understand that you are an abuser of authority and that it's only through repentance and faith and trusting in the

Lordship of Christ for salvation that you will learn to use authority even as the son of man came not to be served but to serve and give his life as a ransom for many.

On that note, I heard something you just now reminded me of something you said in the talk you gave to the pastors.

You want to tell us that we all misuse authority from time to time. Maybe even abuse authority.

Are we all abusers? I want to be very careful about that.

On the one hand, I want to preserve a category of abuse that is to say, let me define that as authority misused.

I want to preserve a category of abuse and oppression. The Bible uses the word oppression, for instance, very common in the prophets, for instance.

As something that is terrible and exceptional, kinda, and that requires the special attention of parents and politicians and pastors, right?

We need to set our sights against that. I want to preserve that as its own thing.

At the same time, I also want to say the seeds of that are in all of us and the potential and even in some ways, the smaller forms of that are in all of us.

In the same way that Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount says, look, if you've even lusted, you've committed adultery.

If you've even hated, you've committed a murder. I don't want to say lust and adultery or hate and murder are the same thing, but in some ways, they're connected.

That's what I'm trying to say. That may be the most helpful way I've ever heard anyone talk about that.

If I don't get anything else from this interview, I'm taking that one with me. Can I expand on that?

No, let's move on. Very briefly, what that means is I don't want you sitting around like some sort of Pharisee saying,

I've never murdered, I've never been unfaithful to my wife, I've never abused authority.

It's like, really? You've lusted, you've hated, and you know what? The way you interacted with your kids just now, the way you interacted with your church members just now, it's kind of the same.

It's created the same fabric. I want you to stop being self -righteous and pharisaical and before you take the speck out of my eye, look at the plank in your own.

That's where we all need to begin this conversation. It's tricky because on the one hand, you do want to acknowledge that, especially when you say the way you talk to your kids,

I hear that and I go, ooh, got me. The potential's there for me. I know I could be abusive if it wasn't for the

Lord's grace. On the other hand, we want to preserve this category something needs to be done about you.

Your life and ministry is typified by this pattern. Just like you might say, ethnic hostility lives in all of us.

Nevertheless, there's a big difference between someone who could have certain unconscious biases racially versus someone's life who's typified by racial animosity.

That's exactly right. I think when I sat down to write, I read a number of books first. There have been a number of books in the last five years that talk about the abuse of authority.

Many of those books say good, helpful things. I don't want to just decry them all, but all of them basically point to this problem out there of abuse.

They're looking outward. There's a place for that. When I began to write this book,

I just thought that's a posture I can't adopt. I can't just adopt the posture of you bad abusers of authority out there if I really know my own heart.

I think any sinner would need to approach it finally in the same way.

Again, not to say there's not a place for books that just talk about this particular file in the file drawer of sins called abuse.

There's a place for that. Let's open that file. Let's look at it. Yes. I needed to do it a little differently.

You think about Israel and the way that the Lord talks to them. They were oppressed.

They were enslaved. They suffered. As soon as he redeems them, he's like, and you make sure that you uphold standards of justice in your own court.

You don't privilege the poor. Because what Pharaoh did to you lives in you as well.

Exactly. As they quickly perved. Yes, it didn't take too long. You talk about there are a couple of things that I think, listen, you read a book that's 285 pages, you're not going to walk away with all of it.

Hopefully, you're just it's doing a lot of shaping and contouring and it's leaving its impression whether you realize it or not.

Some concepts are like, I got that and I'm going to use that often. One of them was the way you talk about our orientation to authority.

You say we all have three orientations. There's an authority above me. There's an authority beside me and an authority beneath me.

Did I say that right? If I exercise authority, I have to do it under the authority of God.

But I also, as a pastor, do it with the people. With my fellow elders. Can you just riff on that?

I think if you were to ask me to summarize in two points, what are the two most important things to take away?

One of those two would be all authority you exercise is under the authority of others.

All good human authority is always under the authority of someone else.

Without exception. President. In the U .S.

constitutional system, he's under the authority of the Constitution, certainly, and the people and their vote and other branches of government.

The Supreme Court. Under the authority of the Constitution. I'm running out of things to say now.

Even a king you would say finally is under the authority of God. A despot? Under the authority of God.

Romans 13. What does it say? I don't know. You tell me. You have no authority except what he's given.

There is no authority except what God has established. I think to be in authority, as one philosopher put it, is to be under authority.

Even Jesus Christ himself, the incarnate Son of God says, I don't speak anything or do anything that the

Father's not given me to speak or to do. Even there what you have is

Christ demonstrating all authority in heaven and on earth by submitting himself perfectly to the

Father's authority in heaven. How does that work?

To step in and to image God, we need to mimic God, image God perfectly by obeying his law.

As I obey his law, I do what he does. I demonstrate justice, righteousness, love, goodness, as God does.

Insofar as I do that, I am ruling under God, but I am also ruling with God.

I'm doing what he does. I'm mimicking him. There's a sense in which authority and submission are two sides of a coin.

To be in submission is to participate in that authority and vice versa. You think of Israel and what

God says to Israel and its kings. It says read the book of the law all the days of your life so that you would not rise up above your brothers.

It's Deuteronomy 17. Write a copy of it yourself. You're doing it and you're under it.

Again, if you get nothing out of the book, what would be the two most urgent things

I'd want you to take away? One of them is to be in authority, is to be under authority.

If you're a pastor, a father, a husband, a workplace manager, I want that reflected. That should show itself in your life in various ways.

Various concrete ways you demonstrate that. That's good, brother. Is authority avoidable?

Is anarchy a real thing? Can we ever truly just throw off the chains of authority?

I don't think so, no. Animals can, I suppose. But to be creating

God's image... They're bound by their own impulses. They're bound by their nature, but I don't know that there's any exercise of authority between animals.

Maybe with a lion's pride or something. But no, to be in God's image means it's inevitable.

It's hardwired. I use that word ontology. The essence of what it means to be human is to be made to rule.

Wherever there's a vacuum of authority, someone else will step in and fill it.

Anarchy is going to be brief and temporary until a more powerful despot steps in.

It is inevitable. In your book, you talk about how even people who don't like authority, they end up turning to some form of authority to get rid of the authority that I think has gone bad or corrupt.

What do you do when you see child abuse? You call CPS. What did minorities do in the

South when their city, local, state governments were corrupt and abusive and racist?

They contacted federal authorities. Which is to say the solution to bad authority is never no authority.

It's always good authority. That's what we all have a hope for. That's what we all have a longing for.

We have a hope and a longing for good parents, good pastors, good coaches, good teachers, good policemen, good governors.

When we see that, do we not rejoice? We do. We love it. Because good authority is life -giving.

It creates. It authors. It's a joy to behold.

You want to read the 2 Samuel scripture? Yeah, sure. Sean and I have heard many times the pastor we both shared allude to this text and it's something

I allude to multiple times in the book. In 2 Samuel 23 verse 1 sets it up as these are the last words of David.

Which is significant. The last thing the king of Israel has to say to his people before he goes. And David knows a little something about authority.

A little bit. Well used, poorly used. He says in verse 3b

When one rules justly over men, ruling in the fear of God, he dawns on them like the morning light, like the sun shining forth on a cloud this morning, like rain that makes grass sprout from the earth.

So just think about that. So you got this guy ruling justly. What does that mean? It means ruling in the fear of God.

What does that look like? It's like morning light, sun shining, rain coming.

And what does all that do? It makes grass sprout from the earth. Which is to say good authority is like the sun and the rain giving life.

Growing grass. Creating vibrant colors. Empowering, life -giving beautiful.

And authority in creation and authority in redemption are like that. Which we're going to get to.

We're going to go through your system there because it was really helpful. It's pretty amazing if you haven't...

So I grew up with a father who was absent. I never met a mom who was horrendously abusive.

And then most... When did your book come out? Mid -March. Thanks. That worked out just like we planned it.

What's the title? Rebel to Your Will. Rebel to Your Will. Yeah, that's right. Is there a subtitle?

There is. What's the subtitle? Man, don't do this to me. Rebel to Your Will.

Something something about how the gospel brings hope to abuse. I've read the book. It's awesome.

Thanks, brother. Short but good. I remember the first time

I sat under godly authority. It felt exactly like that passage. I mean,

I felt like for the first time, it felt like I had been in a room with no oxygen and someone turned the oxygen up to 100.

And I finally felt like I could breathe and I felt strong and virile and ready to go out and tackle the world. And you say that good authority authors, it creates life, it gives life, it sustains life.

Bad authority, it sucks you dry. And it wasn't until later that I heard Mark teaching on that that I realized like, oh, that's what happened there.

Somebody finally came along and gave me life. I was just barely surviving trying to make my way through this world and somebody came into my life, exercised authority well.

And it was hard because part of the authority that they exercised in my life involved disciplining me. And I did not like every second of it.

But man, it was so good. Even the hard parts were good. Well, think about what's going on. With good authority, you have somebody with a greater set of resources.

Maybe it's strength, power, wisdom. But they are employing that, those greater resources, strength, power, wisdom, money, whatever, for your good.

Which is to say, in the fall, we tend to think of authority as making us vulnerable because people are using those resources for their own good and at cost of me.

But good authority in creation and redemption, the authority figure is actually sacrificing the most.

They're making themselves vulnerable. They're absorbing that cost, employing those resources for my good.

That I can grow. I can be strong. I can run fans fast. I can dance. I can read.

I can whatever. Let's just go through it now. Your book does a really good job of saying, okay, you'll do a better job of it than me, but you walk through authority in the fall.

Creation, fall, redemption. Walk us through those. Just think about authority in creation.

What does it do? It supplies. You got God saying to Adam and Eve in the garden, let me supply you with a beautiful world.

You can eat whatever tree you want, any plant you want. This is all yours.

Now go rule and subdue and multiply. He supplies them.

It's all life -giving and good. Authority in the fall, in other words, he authorizes them. Let me define authority.

I do that by distinguishing it from power. Power is the ability to do something.

The strength to pick up a rock. I have the power to pick up a rock. I have the power to fix a leaky faucet.

I have the power to drive a car. My 15 -year -old daughter had the power to drive a car.

But she had not been authorized. She had not received a license, a moral permission slip to drive a car.

Age 16, the Maryland Department of Motor Vehicles gives her a license, an authorization.

Now she has not just power, but authority. What is authority? It's an authorization.

It's a moral permission slip, as I said. God authorized, gave authority to Adam and Eve to rule the earth.

What happens in the fall? They don't look to God's authorization. They don't look to His rules.

They listen to Satan, or the serpents. Sure, you can eat of this tree.

God said don't, but the serpent says they can. You can be like God. That appealed to them in their desire for supremacy.

So they sought out an alternative authorization through the serpent. And what results?

A lost and broken and confused world where we're using our own moral permission slips to do whatever we want.

Our own sense of our own authority, not the authority that God gives. It's one of the biggest lies ever.

We thought we would be like God by disobeying Him, and He was actually saying, no, you can be like Me, but by obeying

Me and imaging Me and doing it the way I tell you to. You're already like Me. You're already like Me, and you can be more like Me if you would just obey.

And Satan flips that. And then, of course, authority in redemption.

If authority in creation supplies and authority in redemption steals, authority in redemption steals, authority in redemption sacrifices.

So it doesn't go into a beautiful world with beautiful people.

Instead, it descends into Daniel's lion's den. It reaches down into Gomer's brothel.

It's the cross. The cross is the picture of that. Exactly. It goes into the world of the broken, the sick, the suffering, the sinful, the oppressed, the oppressor.

And it gives its life as a ransom for many. So what is authority in redemption?

Redemption is in particular accommodating itself to weakness and brokenness and sin.

It's the teacher of the special needs student who's giving the sacrificing and giving the extra time.

It's the parent of the insolent teenager. If you have teenagers and they've ever mouthed off at you and you're like,

Mmm, how dare you? You have no idea what I could do to you. You want to retaliate, but instead you absorb.

It's the pastor when the sheep bites them. All I'm trying to do is help you and love you and you're biting them. That's right, but you absorb that.

You're sacrificing yourself and the honor you feel like you deserve for their good, for their redemptive, redeeming, rescuing good.

So yeah, that's authority in redemption. And as I said, authority in creation of all good. I'm sorry, authority in creation of redemption, good.

Authority in the fall, bad. And we as Christians, we as church leaders, we as husbands and pastors, we as any

Christian need to keep our eyes on both. The section on authority in redemption,

I found particularly useful when maybe a year ago, what, go ahead.

You sent me that text. You're like, yay Tammy or something like that. Oh no, that was really good. Yeah, we'll come back to that. But I was going through a difficult situation in the church where I felt like, and I think our elders would have agreed, that we were sort of bearing the cost.

We were having to take the hit to love some church members well. And I called you and I was asking you questions.

Help me work through this. Help me think through this. And I was just so frustrated and you sent me that excerpt and you were like, yeah, this is kind of the job you signed up for.

You weren't dismissive, but it was also kind of like, you know, this is your job. And it was really useful, really helpful, brother.

And it doesn't just apply to me as a pastor, right? Anyone who's exercising authority aiming towards redemption, you say at one point in the book, you must sacrifice.

It's not like you might sacrifice. You will. You will count the cost to exercise that kind of authority. That's the job. Well, yeah, and honestly, that's the hardest thing for me.

You know, I try to lay out a number of principles of good authority, like good authority is under authority and good authority seeks wisdom and things like this.

And the chapter where I talk about good authority bears the cost, I just have to admit that is the hardest for me.

Because you don't have to do it once. If it was a one -time payment, that would be really nice. Well, and when you're like, say, misrepresented, whether from a church member or your wife says, well, you did this.

You're like, no, you want to defend yourself, right? And I want to say, you're responsible for this.

So the kids are responsible for this. But at times, of course, you do need to point things out.

There is a place to say, well, actually, what happened is this. I'm not denying that. But is there a willingness in me to be misrepresented, to be misunderstood, to bear the blame, to bear the cost, as you said?

That is really hard because it goes against my ego. And my ego is sizable, right?

And to humble myself and do that for their good at my own cost, yeah, that's just really, really hard to do.

You give an example of that through the story of Randy in the book. Oh, yeah. Good brother.

I had coffee with him one time while I was there and while I was at CHBC. And this is before he got that really big job that he had.

I don't know if we're allowed to talk about what he did. Well, he served for a number of years in the military. And he eventually became a two -star, three -star general for the

Marines. And then began to work in government and was director of the Secret Service for a season.

And now he's working still in government, but not as director. I forget his most recent position.

Sitting there talking with him, he just kept trying to pastor me for an hour. Deeply humble man. Yeah, deeply humble brother. And anyways, you tell this, you say, like, this is what it looks like to exercise authority in redemption.

And you tell the story of him taking credit and having to count the cost for something that honestly he had nothing to do with.

Right, yeah. He was out of the country. Yeah, that's right. But the Marines made some bad decisions about an airplane crash in San Diego.

Flying a plane and not doing the proper maintenance checks and then making some bad calls when an engine went out and it crashed into a home and killed a family.

A mother, her two children, and the woman's mother and the dad was at work. And the Marines botched the job.

And Randy stood up and took blame for it. He said, yep, this is on us 100%.

You have nobody to blame but us as the Marines. And Peggy Noonan, formerly speechwriter for Ronald Reagan and Wall Street Journal columnist, then wrote an article on this saying, wow, nobody ever does that.

You know, you never get CEOs of companies showing up and saying, yeah, we messed this one up.

All that pollution you see, our fault. Congressman, don't do that. And she commended

Randy in this article who you and I had the privilege to be in the same church with. I was able to serve with as an elder and was ministered to by.

So, wonderful, lovely man. I mean, that's one of the strengths of the book. You're so good at this, brother.

Illustrations, yes, but really taking abstract, sometimes difficult concepts and helping us to see them by communicating them through stories.

So, I think the first three chapters of the book, you tell three different people's experiences with authority.

One young woman who had like this amazing godly pastor father, and then another woman who was abused, and then someone else who was abused, but then who redeemed through really good use of authority.

I didn't plan it this way, but yeah, those first three chapters are wrapped around three stories. And again,

I didn't plan it this way, but it turned out to be three women in their 40s with like three kids each. Oh, I thought for sure that must have been intentional.

Exactly. The Lord gave that. At one point, I went into the office to some of the guys in the church, and I read them part of the story, and I found myself crying, and I texted you, and I was like, praise

God for Tammy. The book is not only really useful, but it's a really good read.

I just really enjoyed it. You're a clear writer. Praise the Lord. Praise the Lord. I thought this was interesting.

You say, in between Jesus' first and second coming, good and bad uses of authority remain mixed together, even among God's people, even in a single person.

That really resonated with me. You say, one day I'm the father I want to be, the next day I'm not.

Yeah. It's in all of us. I think anybody with any self -awareness knows that.

At least I hope. Yeah. Transcendence versus imminence. This is another framework that you give us to think about.

Walk us through that. If you've ever been to a

Christmas Eve service, you know those theological categories because every preacher everywhere has used it.

Jesus, God is transcendent. He's over us. He's above us. Then when he came, Immanuel, God with us.

That's why I always hear it on Christmas Eve and so forth. Transcendent over, imminent with.

There's a sense in which good authority is always a balance between those two things.

A measure of transcendence and a measure of imminence. In a sense, there's different formulas for different kinds of authority.

Think of a general. He's mostly transcendent. A lot of transcendence. He's mostly over.

He doesn't need to go chum it up. There's even a risk in being too imminent. Whereas, think of a husband.

If you're lording it over your wife like that, acting like a general, you're doing a bad job. You should be mostly imminent with her, present with her.

There's a sense in which you could almost put it on a spectrum. One end of the transcendent spectrum, you have political authority.

To some extent, you could even say whole church authority insofar as the church has given the keys of the kingdom to bind and loose on earth was bound and loosed in heaven.

There it is. There's that transcendence represented on earth. At the other end of the spectrum, you have the husband's authority and then moving a little bit more transcendent, maybe a pastor's authority.

In between, covering the gamut of the whole thing, is a parent's authority. Parents are both transcendent and imminent in different times.

I'll also say this. Part of being a parent is adjusting those ratios over time.

With your little two -year -old, three -year -old, it's high transcendence. But as they move to the 12, 13 -year -old, 17, 18 -year -old, you're kind of coming down from on high.

Hopefully, you've been doing a good job. Those lessons you've been teaching are in there, and you're moving in more with.

What does Matt Schmucker say? That's where I learned it from, an older brother who

I eldered with named Matt Schmucker. Who was interviewed by us. Maybe the highlight of his career,

I think. I think so, yeah. When your kids are little, you're sort of out in front of them, pulling them along.

That's the picture of transcendence. Then he said, when you get into the teenage years, you're kind of coming alongside them a little bit more and more.

You're asking them questions. You're not lecturing them. You're not saying, do this because I said. You're saying, rarely.

Sometimes you have to. But insofar as you're demonstrating responsibility with your freedom, I'm going to give you more freedom.

Insofar as you're not, I'm going to pull it back. The point is, I'm doing my best to come alongside you now and walk with you. Then, of course, when they're 18, 19, 20, moving out into the world, you're getting behind them.

And cheering them on. That's right. That's a picture of a change of transcendent imminent relationship ratio for a parent through different seasons of life.

I think those two dimensions, transcendence and imminence, are just helpful in thinking through different positions you might have.

You think about a pastor. Would you say a pastor is the perfect blend of both? I'm thinking about 1

Peter. Shepherd the flock of God that is among you. You're over them, but then you really have to be with them as you're over them.

That's exactly right. You get strong language of exhort with all authority, says

Paul. Submit to your leaders. Well, he doesn't say that to husbands. At no point is the husband instructed to exhort his wife with authority.

Never does he say submit. You wash her with the water of the word. Love her. Live with her in an understanding way.

Wash her with the water of the word. Provide, 1 Timothy 5. It's a much flatter set of commands that the husband is given to discharge with his wife, though she is told to submit to him.

Wives, submit to your husband. Which is to say, the onus is, as it were, put on her.

It's not, whereas the onus placed on him. There are you and Jesus on judgment day, and he's looking through the scriptures saying, did you obey this?

Did you obey my command to love her? Did you obey my command to live with her? That's the husband.

But then yeah, to your question, you move to the elder, and it is a little stronger. There is a little more transcendence there.

But again, it's not all the way to say what the government has. Or I would say even a parent has.

Because a parent has the ability to discipline with a rod. An elder does not. So if we were to rank it, highest level of transcendence, lowest level of eminence, government.

I think so. Then maybe manager, somebody in the workplace. Then parents.

I would say church as a whole. Church as a whole? Because the church as a whole is only going to speak rarely. True.

It speaks in bringing people in. It speaks in putting people out. But when it does, it is acting unilaterally and effectually, as it were from on high, though it's rare.

Because again, whatever you bind on earth, we bound in heaven. That's right. So let's do the rankings together.

Government, you go. No, no, no. Government, workplace.

I think so. Church, parents. I think so. Elders. Elder, elder pastor.

And then husband. Yeah, that's right. Now, I mean, workplace manager, it depends. You may be a middle manager with a certain inability to kind of carry out what you require.

Or you might be a CEO who absolutely can fire people. That's right. On the spot. Or you might be a pastor.

I'm thinking about I have guys on my staff. It's weird trying to relate to people as their pastor and their boss, because I have to have a little more transcendence as their boss sometimes than I do as their pastor.

Yeah. That's always a complicated relationship. Whenever people go to work for a church, you think about it requiring some level of maturity.

You do not want to hire somebody, whether as an associate pastor or as a church secretary, who doesn't have some level of maturity to know how to handle the complicated relationship that inevitably ensues.

Not when things are going well, but when things are going poorly, in which this man is both your pastor and your boss.

And maybe your boss has to say some things that the pastor doesn't really want to say, because he wants to be all gentle and shepherd -like.

But the boss has got to kind of lay down the law somehow. And it requires a mature person to be able to absorb that, again, whether you're an associate pastor or you're the church secretary.

So, yeah, that is a domain where you have multiple lanes at work at once that require some maturity.

Yeah, that's really helpful. Next question here. Did the U .S. government have any involvement in 9 -11?

No, that's just what it says on the paper. What do you think?

Oh, we'll talk about that later. Let's just say my own trust of authority is slightly diminished.

No, I'm just kidding, but people on the internet won't know that. So you love, ooh, you love it so much.

You love the word office, right? You want to make everything in office, right? I'm reading your book, Don't Fire Your Church Members.

I'm loving it to death. It's so useful, so helpful. I'm a Congregationalist to the hilt. You've convinced me, you've indoctrinated me, and you spend so much time trying to convince me that church member is an official office.

And you say here, I like the word office when talking about authority. It functions like an x -ray machine that helps us see the skeletal or institutional structures that define various kinds of relationships.

I gotta be honest with you, this is the one place in the book where an illustration You're like, really? I don't even think

I understood what you were doing with the illustration. So, one, explain the illustration, and then two, explain yourself.

Help me understand how I, as a husband, have the office of husband. Yeah. Okay.

Go. Well, I feel the need to excuse it because the word office sounds clunky and institutional, and people want to associate.

I like the word office. That's what you said. No, I know. I do. But you need to excuse it, nonetheless.

Well, I need to explain to people why I like it. Okay. Because I think people hear it, and they think workplace, they think bureaucracy, they think politics.

And I'm actually taking that word, and I'm locating it in what you just said.

Your relationship with your wife, or your relationship with your children, or church members. I'm saying, no, there's an office there.

Well, what is an office? Well, it's a delegation of authority. It's to say there's a set of rules that dictate what it means to be a husband.

What it means to be a dad. You can't think of a situation where someone has authority delegated to them where they don't have an office?

I'm saying that that delegation is the creation of an office. Yes. Universal.

I'm saying, and I use this illustration in the book, when we say that Michael, my brother, is

Cecilia's father, my niece, we are saying that Michael and Cecilia are not just organically connected together somehow, and they happen to live in the same house.

We're saying, no, Michael, God has given you a set of duties and responsibilities and authority to enact in Cecilia's life, and Cecilia, God has given you a set of responsibilities and duties to submit to Michael.

What do you call that? He has the office. What do you call what she has? I don't know.

Okay, all right, go ahead. But it's to say she's under the office.

The person being an office. Yeah, sure. It is to say that their relationship is not willy -nilly, utterly undefined however they like to be.

Okay. It has strictures and structures and lines of authority and jurisdiction and responsibility and mechanisms for discipline, which define the nature of Michael's relationship with Cecilia versus Michael's relationship with, say, my daughters.

Right. Michael does not have those responsibilities, duties and authorities and ability to discipline with my daughters.

He has no authorization. Authorization that he has with Cecilia. Okay. And what I'm saying is I find the language office helpful to bring some of this stuff to the surface.

Okay. And that's the x -ray machine? Yes. Helps you see through the surface.

Yes. So you can see, okay. Because, listen, we live in an anti -institutional age.

Yeah. We don't like any kind of institutional language. Yeah. So this is me contextualizing to say to a world of anti -institutionalists who don't like the idea of authority, don't like any talk of structures or jurisdictions and say, well, actually some of that's there, even in the heart of one of your most precious relationships, a parent with his or her child.

Yeah. Did you get any pushback on this in your editing process? No. Really? Really.

Okay. Not like right now. You do a really good job distinguishing between authority, power, leadership, and influence.

If you're going to write a book on authority, you've got to distinguish those things. Yeah, absolutely. Can you do that for us now? Well, like I said a moment ago, the difference between authority and power is the ability to do something versus the moral right to do something.

Power is the ability. Power is the ability. Authority is the moral right. I can pick up this rock. It's not a moral question.

It's just a capacity. It's an ability. Whereas authority is the authorization. Influence is another kind of power.

And so is leadership. For instance, in leadership, we're kind of focusing on the individual more than the office.

I remember my wife saying about a kid in her class, oh, he's a natural leader. What does that mean?

Well, what she meant was he has certain gifts of charisma and personality that other kids just follow him.

Out on the playground, he's the one saying, okay, we're going to play this game. And everybody's like, okay. Or in the classroom, in an assignment, group assignment, he's the one people listen.

He's got natural gifts of leadership. That's not to say he's been given the authority, the moral right, to do it on the playground or classroom.

Whereas if my wife, who is a first grade teacher, then says, okay, you're the line leader,

Johnny, she has now authorized him to function as the line leader, and he has authority. You might say he has the office of line leader.

You certainly could. That's exactly what it is. Yeah. That's authority, power, leadership.

Now, you know, throughout the book, you don't want to say person in position of authority every time, so I refer to the leader.

Yeah, that's good. One of the really helpful things that you say, words are hard, sorry.

You say that exercising authority teaches people what God is like. And that goes back to what we talked about earlier, right?

We image God as authority exercisers. But you really press into that in a way that I think should be convicting for every person, particularly dads and husbands, right?

Like, the way that I lead my children with my authority is going to tell them what

God is like. You're teaching theology every time you exercise authority. It is a theology instructor.

Absolutely. You're teaching true things about God, or you're teaching false things about God. Even if we try to abdicate authority, we say, oh,

I don't want that authority. Well, that's saying something as well. You're teaching heresy. You're teaching, oh, God abdicates. God is absent.

God's not present. If you lie, you teach God lies. If you pursue righteousness, you're teaching

God pursues righteousness. That's what it means to be created, to be placed in this position of image maker, or imager, rather, under an image maker, which is

God. So, this is where, to refer to Mark again, I can't tell you how many times

I heard Mark say in the context of his church to abuse authority is a particularly heinous sin, because it lies about God.

So when you are stepping into a position of authority in somebody's life, husband to a wife, parent to a child, workplace manager to a person in the workplace, you are stepping in between that person and God, and in a certain respect, representing him, and teaching whomever is under you what he is like.

That's a dangerous place to stand. And that's why throughout Scripture, the people in positions of authority are going to give a greater account.

So don't presume that, oh, wow, I want a position of authority. I could do it better than that guy. You're exposing yourself to the potential judgment of God for misrepresenting him.

So do not take it lightly. Now, Jonathan, I'm a young man listening to this, and you're giving me the heebie -jeebies, right?

Greater judgment, more potential wrath, not for the Christian, but this is scary.

Sure, it should be. I don't want to step into that. What do you say to them? I would say, on the one hand,

I want to affirm that instinct. I want you to be very slow. I remember a lot of the young men in my church, when

I was single and not yet an elder, just like, oh, yeah, I want to be an elder. I kind of want to be nominated and recognized as one of the leaders in the church.

And I think a lot of young men might have that ambition, or in the workplace. Yeah, I want to move up and be made a manager, be made boss, or something like that.

I think that's a common instinct. And in some ways, I think that instinct is good. But in other ways,

I want to say, yeah, you should be very cautious and slow about it. On the other hand, I think growing into leadership, growing into authority is what you were created for.

And you were to do it in a God -like fashion. It's not going to be, though, like you expect.

It's not going to be like, to borrow from someone, the Gentiles who lord it over others.

Rather, it's the son of man coming to be served.

Well, the classic example of that is the young guy who sees the pastor crushing it in the pulpit. Oh, he's such a powerful speaker.

People sit and hang on his every word, and they go, oh, I want to get in the ministry. I want to be a pastor. And then they get their first church, or maybe they get their first taste of ministry, and they're like, oh,

I'm spending so much of my time in prayer, in private counseling, in meetings with people mad at me. This isn't as glamorous as I thought it was going to be.

Late -night elders meetings. So true. I mean, if you're doing authority well, frankly, it's not glamorous and all of that.

You know what I mean? It's not like, oh, man, this is awesome. I love this so much. If you're doing authority well, I think often truly there are rewards.

I love seeing my daughters grow and flourish. Oh, what a privilege that is to be in that position in their lives, for instance.

But it's hard work. You used to have a full head of hair. I know. And lost it all.

Four daughters. So, yeah, if you're aspiring to a position of authority for the glamour's sake, you're not understanding it rightly.

I guess what I'm sorry, I was trying to lead you down a path of I think there are some guys who hear this, and they go, all right, well,

I don't want all of that. I just want to step back. I just want to passively make my way through life without having to take the reins, without having to lead.

And it's like, no, brother, that's the wrong instinct, too. Yes, it should scare you, but there's something in you that should go, this is scary, but because it's good,

I'm going to rise up, and I'm going to do it. I'm going to put my hand to the plow. I know it's not going to be perfect. I know I'm going to screw up.

I know God's going to have to slap my hand, and it's going to hurt, and I'm going to be embarrassed, but it's worth it because I'm going to author life in people.

Yeah, that's right. And I want our men to think like that. I don't want them to be lazy, bum, couch potato, video game -playing, porn -watching losers who don't do anything with it.

Yeah, that's right. Not that I have strong opinions about this. Well, it depends on who we're talking about. If we're talking about a husband,

I'm going to say, brother, you are the head, whether you like it or not. You're going to, you are leading, whether with your presence or your absence, with your life -encouraging words or your non -words or your correct, you are leading.

So I'm going to exhort you right now, you must get on it. Yeah, you have a job, so do it.

You have a job, so do it. Now, if a guy's like, I'm not sure I want to be a pastor, I'm not sure I want to be an elder, I don't think every man needs to be a pastor or an elder.

But I would like for every man in our church to look at the elders and go, now that's something worth giving your life to,

I want to at least consider that. Absolutely, and I want every man in the church to stop being selfish and to love their neighbor as themselves.

Now, does not being selfish and loving your neighbor as yourself mean you have to be a workplace manager? Does it mean you have to be a pastor?

Well, no. There's freedom there. But if a man's impulse to avoid leadership is one of selfishness, self -protection, lovelessness, well, that's what needs to be indicted.

Let's just say, church member X, right? Man in your church. Let's call him Joe. Let's call him

Joe. Not the social media company, X. No, right. I've heard of it.

And Joe, at his job, is pretty unambitious, and he's not in a supervisory position.

Maybe he's single, and he's not really pursuing marriage. He's in the church, and he never really steps up to lead a small group, or a

Bible study, or to even do one -on -one discipleship where he's helping people along the path of Christlikeness.

And if you look at him, and you see in every area of his life, there's no impulse, there's no desire to step up and to exercise authority,

I think you'd be kind of concerned, right? That's exactly right. I'm going to start with questions of the heart.

Who are you trying to protect? Are you fearing God, or are you fearing man? Who are you loving?

Your neighbor, and the Lord, or yourself? I'm going to start with some of those heart questions about Joe, and what's going on in his life.

I also want to push him to a picture of human dominion pursuits.

Listen, God designed you to exercise dominion over creation.

Are you doing that? But also, I think I want to raise questions of manliness.

Are you, as a man, being all that God has called you as a man to be? I do think there is an initiative -taking, and a fearlessness that should characterize men especially.

A lot of people these days say, we're not called the biblical manhood or womanhood, we're just called the Christ -likeness. I don't think that's right.

I think Christ -likeness looks a little different in men and women, and I think part of the Christ -likeness that I want to see in men, a .k

.a. manliness, looks like taking initiative, looks like putting oneself in harm's way for the protection and the good of others.

I want to see Joe doing that kind of thing. That doesn't mean he has to get married. It doesn't mean he has to be an elder or a manager.

But it should look, in a way, in his life, that is, I would say, in certain respects, manly.

Yeah. A mother, is that an office? She has authority over the children? Yes. Is it delegated authority from the husband in the same way that deacon?

No, I think it comes from the Lord. From the Lord. Okay. I think a mother's authority would come from the Lord. Doesn't a deacon's authority come from the

Lord, too? I think it does. But it's delegated out through the elders. I don't understand the deacon's authority to be a delegation from the elders.

I don't think. Maybe that's for another conversation. I think it comes from the Lord. Does it have to be either or?

Well, I mean, there are forms. I'd have to think through the office of deacon a little bit further.

I thought you were the church guy. You don't know anything. Well, no, I've not thought about. I'm just kidding. I do think there are certain offices that are, as it were, simultaneous.

So, on the one hand, what does Paul say to the elders in Acts 20?

He says, the Holy Spirit has made you overseers. So, clearly, an elder's authorization comes from God.

Right. At the same time, we also recognize that Paul commands

Titus to stay in Crete in order to appoint elders in all the churches, and then they do something similar with Barnabas in Acts 14 -23.

So, I also understand that a congregation will be involved in the appointing. God will use a congregation to appoint elders.

You could say the same thing about civil government. On the one hand, I think civil government's authority comes from God.

The authorization comes from God. God gives the moral license, Romans 13.

On the other hand, insofar as we have democratic elections, the historical processes, the means that God will use in this or that circumstance will come from the people, and I think that's legitimate as well.

Deacons, no, I don't understand that to be a delegation from the elders. I understand it to be something that God has established.

Now, how is it actually transacted in your particular congregation? That might vary a little bit from case to case.

Okay. So, mothers. Office? Yes. Exercising authority over children.

Yes. Do you think a woman listening to this... Children, obey your parents. Amen. In the

Lord, which includes the mother. Why do you think it's so hard for... Well, I don't want to get off in the weeds.

I was about to get way off in the weeds. Do you think someone reading your book or listening to this interview will feel like the women have been left out of the authority conversation?

Well, I use multiple illustrations of women both under authority and exercising authority. Particularly in the exercising authority.

So, maybe not. Again, I give several illustrations of women exercising authority, and they need to do it well.

Finally, this is a human thing. Not a man thing. This is a human thing, because we are all creating

God's image, and we are all commanded to rule. Is it weighted more towards men? That's a good question.

I think men and women exercise it differently, and I think if you're saying, is it weighted towards men,

I do say that husbands possess a kind of authority that wives do not.

I do think that elders in the church should be men, and exclusively elders, pastors, should be men, and exclusively men.

I think all of us are to be in authority and under authority. From the incarnate

Son on down. Good.

Do you want to make the case that it's weighted towards men rather than women? Do I want to make the case? No. I think it is.

Whether you're a broad or a narrow complementarian, I think that might move you in that direction.

Well, I mean, I think of that remarkable and strange verse, 1

Corinthians 15, where you have, speaking of the relationship between the

Father and the incarnate Son, 1 Corinthians 15, verse 27.

For God has put all things in subjection under His feet. But when it says, all things are put in subjection, it is plain that He has accepted who put all things in subjection under Him.

When all things are subjected to Him, God the Father, then the

Son Himself will also be subjected to Him who put all things in subjection under Him that God may be all and in all.

What's going on there? Easiest verse in the Bible, but why don't you tell us? Well, you have the incarnate

Son showing up, putting Himself in subjection to the

Divine Father, which is to say obeying His law completely. And insofar as He's obeying the

Divine Father completely, He is demonstrating what true humanity, not madness, humanity should look like, which is to say all human beings too should be under completely the law of God, and insofar as they are under the law of God, they are also in the law of God.

They are ruling as He rules so that when it says, all things are put in subjection under Him, God the

Father, that God may be all and in all. There is a sense in which the saints, fellow kings with Christ, because we all reign together with Christ.

Literally the language in 1 Timothy and in Revelation says we will reign together, we will be kings with Him.

That's men and women. When we are being kings with Him so that God may be all and in all, 1

Corinthians 15, it's as if we're all in and under and with the

Father in His rule over all things. On the last day. Yes.

In the meantime. That is remarkable. I agree, praise God. We are all aspiring and moving through our covenantal union with Christ.

That. Now, in the earth, here and now, in the already not yet, does

God give certain forms of rule to men that He doesn't give to women?

Yes. But we're all called to rule and be ruled. In that sense, there's no difference, and I say this at one point in the book, between the leader and the follower for a human.

And that's not even connected to the gender conversation. Right. Because we're all in and under at the same time. So, are you asking me if I'm a thick complementarian?

Yes. Do I think that a certain kind of authority is reserved for men? Yes. Do I think we're all called to rule and be under rule?

Yes. Do you think that extends beyond the home and the church? I think that yes, as a matter of wisdom, but not as a matter of moral necessity.

Which is to say, I think that in creation, God gave men certain capacities and resources and women certain capacities and resources that is hardwired into our natures.

Right. And then, in the home and the church, He placed offices over those capacities and resources that make sense of them.

So, He makes, for instance, husbands the head of the home. And that makes sense of the capacities and resources that men have relative to their strength, relative to their role in procreation, and so forth, and the call to protect and provide in ways that I think are more endemic to men than to women.

And those offices in church and home reflect that. The offices placed on top of natural law, placed on top of natural resources, divine design and creation.

Right? Okay. Well, in the home and the church, by establishing those offices,

He establishes certain moral norms. Which is to say, I think that when

Paul says, I do not permit a woman to teach or have authority over a man, for a woman to teach or have authority over a man in the church, she is sinning.

Because there's a moral norm there, so she's sinning by doing that. When you move out to non -church, non -home locations, the workplace, those same moral norms are not in play.

But, the same divine design is in play. Which is to say, it becomes a matter of wisdom more than it is a matter of law.

Which is to say, there may be a moment where, okay, which is to say, ordinarily, I think men in the workplace should be aspiring and moving towards a kind of leadership.

I think that is good for if I have sons, for me to coach them and disciple them in that kind of direction.

In a way, I would do differently with a daughter. But that's not to say that if you have a set of circumstances where a woman is in a position of authority, she is sinning.

I don't think she is. Necessarily. Now, it might be unwise. She might be sinning for this or that reason, but by virtue of taking the position,

I don't think, say, Margaret Thatcher, Prime Minister of England, is necessarily sinning by taking that position.

Or a woman is the CEO of an organization. Now, it might be wise. It might reflect the fact that things in society aren't as they should be.

Deborah judges. Right. But I think that it is, again, we're dealing in the realm of prudence slash wisdom, rather than the realm of necessary moral principles as such.

That was kind of a long explanation. No, that's good, man. But that's how I understand it. You see, the title of our podcast is

Room for Nuance. That's what I'm offering. I'm happy for you to push back on any of that.

No, brother, I'm just happy for you. I mean, I think you think very well about questions of gender and the faith.

I'm tempted to ask you just a very direct question, but I don't know.

I don't want this to become a conversation about complementarianism, although it does bear on authority. In some ways,

I'll be honest with you. I thought a lot about whether or not to include the chapter on husband in the book.

Oh. Because... You have to. It's an office. Well, yes.

That's what I finally concluded. Because at the same time, I want everybody, whether or not they would count themselves as a complementarian at this moment, to recognize that authority is a good gift.

I want to say to any egalitarians out there, hey, listen, your tendency in my experience is just to sort of poo -poo authority in general.

I guess I'd encourage you, even if you don't agree with me on the complementarian -egalitarian conversation,

I'd encourage you to consider what the Bible says about authority, because I think there's a lot of good things there for you. I think it might even prompt you to reconsider your egalitarianism.

But even if it doesn't, I want you to start. Step one is just to see that this is a good gift.

So I thought about when writing the book whether or not I should just kind of aim at that more apologetic posture and kind of leave out some of the tougher bits that'll be for people.

Just for our viewers, apologetic not meaning sorrowful. Repentant. Apologetic meaning...

Persuasive. That's right. To persuade the unpersuaded. Yeah, there you go. Um... Sorry.

But in the final analysis, I thought no, a part of the apologetic needs to be not just for authority, but for the office of husband.

I'm so glad you include... I'm so glad. I was just thinking about the husbands in our church who I want... I got done with that chapter, and I thought, oh yeah,

I got like five guys that we're going to read this together. At five guys. We're going to get a burger.

We're going to read this. Now let me ask you... Now do you get why that's funny? That's hilarious. Five guys reading at five guys?

Okay, go ahead. Do you do that a lot? No. Now, I'm curious.

Were you thinking about the husbands that were abdicating or abusing their authority?

By God's grace in our church, I don't really see abuse. We've had one or two situations where guys gotten close, but in general,

I'm just thinking like, this is... I mean, really, every man in our church could read that chapter and benefit from it.

I think... But that's the two tendencies, right? You can abdicate or abuse. And I hope that chapter is helpful for both.

Yeah, I mean, any guy who picks that book up and reads that chapter is going to be a better husband for it if their heart is humble before the

Lord. Please, Lord. I really appreciated how you talked about authority protecting what we love and value, right?

Authority is something that God gives us to protect the good, the true, and the beautiful. Can you elaborate on that?

Well, that's why it exists, I say, in that particular section. In other words, if you have a universe, imagine, you know, what the scientific naturalists say the universal is, which is just a big bang.

A conglomeration of dust. It has no meaning. It has no value. Morality doesn't exist.

Value doesn't exist. Well, in that universe, yeah, there's no argument for authority. Like, sure, I can shoot you in the head, you can shoot me, whatever, who cares?

Consent says who. It's just, but why does authority exist?

This is me kind of acting as philosopher here for a second. So why does authority, what purpose does it serve? Well, because there are things of goodness and beauty and value that we want to protect and preserve.

And therefore, we're going to put a security guard at the door to protect the diamonds in the diamond store.

Therefore, we're going to put a morality around the marriage bed and say sex belongs exclusively in the marriage bed.

Because what goes on in the marriage bed is valuable and beautiful and wonderful. And we need to protect it with both rules and authority to enforce those rules, you know, in the

Lord and so forth. So yeah, the very purpose of authority is to preserve the good, the true, the beautiful. Minus the good, true, the beautiful, then yeah, sure,

I understand why our society today wants to dispense with all authority. How much of modern art is exactly that?

The authority of the realistic figure, the authority of the line, the authority of beautiful things.

So what is modern art? It's a rebellion against the true, the good, the beautiful.

And so modern art is just like, huh? What? You lost me on the art part.

In a world that believes in authority, in a world that believes in the true, the good, the beautiful, you're going to want to paint things that are true, good, and beautiful.

Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel. In a world that rejects the true, the good, the beautiful, and rejects authority, you're going to want to transgress everything.

And so you're going to do Piss Christ. Ah, yes. You're going to want to do just a big black canvas of nothingness.

Just for our listeners and viewers, Piss Christ is not something you just made up. It's a work of transgressive art.

It's a sadly famous piece of art. I love art. I love Monet. Do you like Monet?

I spend it all the time. Are you going to tell the pumpkin head joke as well?

That's not a joke. That's just a story about a friend of mine. Maybe some other time. Hey, so if authority is meant to protect, that assumes that there must be something to protect from.

But authority is something that it seems like was given before the fall, where there was anything evil or bad to be protected from.

So what's up with that? Authority is meant to protect, but before the fall there was nothing to protect from, and yet authority was there.

What's the phrase? Adam was... able to sin.

Which is to say, even before creation... Oh, you're doing able to sin. Yeah.

Augustine's thing. Not able to not sin. Right. Able to not sin.

But back in the fall, he was able to sin. Which is to say there was always the threat, and that's why

God laid down a law. Don't eat from this tree. Any tree you can, but not this tree.

And in that very command, God was installing himself as the supreme suzerain, as the

Old Testament scholars like to say, as the supreme lord. And Adam was to be an under -king, an under -lord, a priest -king, a priest -lord, mediating

God's supreme rule. And that one command, don't eat from this tree, was a way of demonstrating that.

Which is to say, there was something to protect, absolutely. Definition of spiritual abuse.

Really important. I really appreciated the simplicity of your definition. You say, spiritual abuse is using the

Bible, or the name of God, to justify your abuses, whatever they are.

Can you give us some examples? When a father strikes a child, that's sinful abuse.

And he's lying about God by striking the child. I don't assume you'd be talking about the godly exercise of the rod.

Like, you idiot. That's abuse. This lies about God. Yet, when the father invokes the

Bible, or the name of God, to justify his actions, he compounds his crime by committing spiritual abuse as well.

So simple. So helpful. Because I think a lot of conversation is happening right now about what actually is spiritual abuse.

So first you actually have to define what abuse is. And then it's just whenever someone tries to use What's that additional layer of spiritual?

Well, that means you're doing it in the name of God. In the name of Scripture. To justify your abuse.

And that's, as it were, doubly terrible. And the example I give of Frederick Douglass.

Talking about when his master converted, quote unquote converted, became an even worse slave driver.

Even worse slave abuser. Because now he pointed to the Bible to justify his whippings of his slaves.

Okay, well, insofar as he was pointing to the Bible to justify his whipping of the slave, that became a form of spiritual abuse as well.

And a really bad reading of the Bible. A bad reading of the Bible, and just terribly wicked. Yeah. In contrast to being an abuser, a spiritual abuser, right?

We're called to be servant leaders. You have a really interesting section in your book, Authority, the story of something something that does something something for something something.

I have no idea what you're talking about. That's the subtitle of your book. You say that we should be servant leaders, right?

That's Jesus, right? Don't be like the Gentiles, rule it over them, come to serve. But you say we shouldn't be a servant servant.

Well, let me tell you a little story. No, that's a direct quote. No, well, that's a direct quote.

I was at a meeting in a local city with a bunch of pastors and this guy was introduced as the head servant of the church.

So I thought, oh, this guy's a deacon. Not a deacon. He's a lead pastor of the church. Because the word deacon in scripture can be translated servant.

That's right, yeah. But he so wanted to emphasize the servant nature of his leadership that he eliminated the leadership aspect.

Gave himself that title. Yeah, so what's the difference between a servant leader and a servant servant?

Yeah, my discussion there emerges from the same sort of experience as you just described, which is kind of growing up around churches in the 80s and 90s and early 2000s and emphasis.

You know, kind of think promise keepers and they're trying to present a more beautiful picture of men as husbands and fathers and pastors.

And so this phrase was often used, servant leader. What troubled me about that,

I appreciated the impulse and the purpose there, but what troubled me about it is it seemed to operate simultaneously with a diminishment of good authority.

Good leadership. And so, yeah, in the book I asked the question, okay, well, what's the difference between a servant leader and a servant servant?

I mean, is there something unique that a leader does? Because in all the conversation, honestly, if you go look up servant leader in any number of books, they won't quite tell you what the leader does that makes the leader a leader.

Leader, yeah. And so that's what I'm trying to understand. Well, here's what you say. You say, we need to get our heads around this.

Jesus submitted and sacrificed himself as an act of authority. Yeah. His service was an authoritative service.

He demonstrated his kingness by descending to death on behalf of his people and conquering sin and death, paying the ransom, paying the penalty we deserved, propitiating the wrath of God, and winning people to himself.

It was an act of rule in his act of servitude. Right there. No, when we say servant leader,

I think what we're getting at is both a purpose and a posture. Your purpose is to serve and love others. Your posture is one of humility and self -sacrifice.

But you're still acting as a leader. Are you not really a servant? Well, again, what do you mean?

Does that mean you're not giving orders? Because a servant doesn't give orders. A servant takes orders. And ask yourself, does

Jesus ever take orders anywhere in the Gospels? He doesn't. Kind of with his mom, but even then he says, my time hasn't come, woman.

He gives orders. He tells the demons to go into the pigs. He says, we're going to this city. He tells us to go into the city and get the donkey that's tied up and bring it back.

He tells them what he's acting as a leader. He's acting with authority. But he does so with a certain posture and a certain purpose, which is to serve others.

And so that's where the phrase servant leader is fine if we're getting at a purpose and posture. I think it's maybe can be less than helpful if you're not simultaneously saying, well, this is what you're doing as a leader.

This is what a leader does. You just want to add an adjective to the office title. It's an important adjective, but you can't abandon the office.

You're a leader. You can't abandon the noun. Servant leader. Fine is an adjective to characterize the kind of leadership you're doing, but the noun is still leader.

You don't want to swap them. No, you don't. You don't want to be the head servant. And that's where I think the pastor who you said did that, called himself the lead servant.

I appreciate. I'm sure he meant all the right things by that, but I think he's potentially fomenting some confusion and even weakness in the leaders in his church and in the homes.

Yeah, so this is something that I see kind of throughout your book. There's a delicate balance to be maintained in exercising authority in redemption, right?

You're trying to be a leader, but lead as a servant. You don't want to go too far in one direction.

You also talk about having to accommodate two sets of demand. The demands of truth and justice on the one hand, as well as the demands of mercy and compassion on the other hand.

Man, I felt that in my soul, brother. And you talk about how this is the wisdom of domain, right? Excuse me, the domain of wisdom.

Words are hard and we've been talking a lot. When do I need to go into the room, tell my daughter, what you deserve is a spanking, but I love you.

We're going to go get ice cream. I'm going to show mercy. Yeah, I'm going to give you, right? And when do I say no, if it would actually be unloving of me to not dole out the justice that you so righteously deserve?

Can you just elaborate more on that? Or did I just pretty much nail it? I kind of think you did.

In some ways, this goes back to transcendence eminence. You have a position of authority in a child's life or in the workplace or wherever the case is, and is now a time to assert transcendence by disciplining or is now a time to move in and demonstrate a kind of withness and say, let's go get the ice cream.

I'm going to show you mercy, as you just said. And the thing is, there is no algebraic formula, no logarithm to tell you or algorithm, sorry, no algorithm to tell you exactly when you do what.

And that does require deep wisdom. And so the one question you're asking is, okay, is my decision to show mercy to my daughter now going to actually help her grow and trust me more and obey better in the future?

Or is she going to kind of increase in her sense of entitlement and actually be worse in the future?

That requires me to know her and her tendencies and to study her and make a few predictions about the future, my best guesses.

Because in fact, you know what, if I let her go, I told her she wasn't going to be able to go to the friend's house this weekend because she's grounded, but then she comes on Saturday night, she's like, it's all my friends are there.

If I say, yes, you can go even though you're grounded, it's actually going to make her worse in the future. It's not going to be for her good.

Right. She's going to think, oh, God says that I can't do this, but if I do it, it's going to be okay.

Exactly. So I'm making a judgment call in the moment about whether to apply justice or to apply mercy.

And when you're in a position of authority, you should always be as it were, when questions of discipline arise especially, you're always asking yourself that question.

A bad authority and the more common error I think of most parents these days is to abdicate and to not discipline their children.

They told them three times not to pick up that bottle of juice, they pick it up, they go what did I just, and that's it.

And then that's it. And what do you have? You have an entitled spoiled easily triggered, incorrectable generation.

Snowflake, may I say, generation of people who don't know how to be contradicted. Why? Because their parents never loved them enough to discipline them and to correct them and enforce their discipline.

I think that's probably the more common error today. I don't think abusive authorities Now, sometimes people abdicate, abdicate and then they lurch over to abuse because they're so angry.

Now that happens too. You've got to watch for that. Like a father with his children letting them slide, slide, slide until finally he erupts when they do the same thing.

Which is, you have a section in there about consistency. You say like consistency and discipline is super loving and important, right?

Because it's going to confuse the child. If I let you slide on something four times and the fifth time you do it I freak out and start tearing the kitchen apart.

The kindness of consistency with your children is that it makes your actions predictable.

They know that if they cross this line these things will result.

These consequences will result. Whereas it's unkind in a certain respect to be unpredictable as an authority figure.

This might happen, this might not happen. It just depends on what mood dad is in. Is dad in a bad mood? Well then it's going to be bad.

Dad is going to be fine. So here's an example. I remember when we were, my wife and I had told our girls to be ready at the car at 7 a .m.

because that's when we leave for school. And we'd let it slide 7 to 2, 7 to 3, 7 to 5, 7 to 7.

And then one day I kind of blew up. I'm like, guys, come on. We have told you again and again. You've got to be at 7 o 'clock.

Well that was my failure to not enforce 7 o 'clock from the beginning.

Consistently every day in a calm, quiet, measured manner. And so finally it got to a point where they're showing up at like 7 -7, 7 -10 and I get angry.

That was my failure, not their failure. My failure led to their failure, I guess you could say.

Yeah, that's right. I can't believe how much more there is for us to talk about.

Are you ready to keep going? I don't think anybody's listening anymore. Yeah, you're right. Dude, listen.

We have a faithful dozen that keep us going. Dozens! There are dozens of us.

You have a section on how submitting to authority actually is the pathway to greater exercise of authority.

And that's what we see in the incarnate Christ. But you've got to let me finish. Sorry. You give the story of Joseph. He submitted to Potiphar and ended up ruling his house.

He submitted to the jailer and ended up ruling the prison. He submitted to Pharaoh and ended up ruling a kingdom.

In God's design, submission is the pathway to authority. I think

I said earlier, authority and submission are two sides of the same coin.

When I come into your life and I demonstrate to you, hey, listen, I will live under your rule. I will submit to you.

What am I demonstrating to you? I'm demonstrating to you that I get you, I'm with you, you can trust me.

If you leave me in charge, I'm going to do what you do. You see? In that sense, submission is the pathway to rule.

Whereas if I'm the ruler or the leader in any given domain and you come in and you're just continually pushing against me and not doing those things that I, in my leadership, in my authority, think are wise and right,

I'm not going to trust you. I'm not going to leave you in charge. Right? Even if I have the best intent in your life, it's just like, okay, well,

Eshaun keeps making bad decisions and doing unhelpful things and kind of thinking for himself or for his own sake.

I think in Joseph's example and then, of course, supremely in the incarnate

Christ's example, who only did what the Father told him to do, only spoke what the Father told him to speak, and so won for himself, as it were, all authority in heaven on earth.

So submission is the pathway to rule, and that's something I learned in my own life. Can you tell the story you tell in the book?

Because I thought it was really, really impactful. It's where I was in a church and the single pastor put up five men to be voted on as elders, and I voted for three and against two in the first vote, and all five ended up losing.

Not one of the five men that he had nominated as elders reached the required 75 % threshold.

And so he went away and thought about it for a while, and he came back a few weeks later and said, you know, listen, I'm the one elder in your church, and I'm bringing up the same five guys.

And I just thought, oh my gosh, I cannot believe that. That is crazy. We're a Congregationalist church.

The congregation has spoken. You're a tyrant. What's wrong with you? I'm going to protest vote against all five.

And he said, well, listen, if you have questions, I'm going to do a little meeting and tell you why I'm doing this, and please come to the meeting.

And so I went, and as I said, I was planning on protesting vote against five and kind of give him a what for in this particular meeting.

But in this particular meeting, he said, listen, as the one elder in your church, the one pastor you've acknowledged by virtue of being a member of this church,

I'm saying to you, as I'm trying to be faithful before God, there's just not another set of men I can put in front of you. It was actually his humility that led him to do that.

He just couldn't, yeah, good conscience. I think that's right. Now, it's possible it was his pride. It's possible.

I don't know his heart, finally. At this point. At this point, I'm thinking, well, for me, it was sort of a rich young ruler's moment.

It was Jesus saying, okay, sell everything and follow me. But in my case, it was

I want you to submit to him and so follow me. Because I had an opinion, a high opinion of myself.

I didn't have a lot of money, but a lot of opinions about myself. It was just Jesus saying, no,

I want you to submit to him and in so doing, follow me. The Holy Spirit kind of convicted me to follow this guy.

By God's grace, unlike the rich young ruler, I did. I submitted to him and I ended up voting for all five. Yeah, I do think for him, it was an aspect of authority.

God has put me here. I'm trying to be faithful and as I stand before God, these are the only guys I can put in front of you. So I voted for him.

What was interesting is what a remarkable change that affected in my own life. Something switched.

I went from kind of the non -conformist always with a kind of snarky comment and stump the pastor question posture to one of submission and following and trying to be helpful and asking questions that would help the room.

Hey, what can I do here to help? Posture. Little by little, as a result, sure enough, more and more authority in the church began to come to me.

Hey, why don't you teach this Sunday school class? Hey, why don't you lead this small group Bible study?

Would you consider being a deacon? Eventually, that church sent me off to seminary. I remember

I kind of got to the end of that chain of events and looked back on it and thought, submission was the pathway to growth, remarkable growth in my life, and it was the pathway to more authority.

Wow. This is something people never talk about and think about. Which is not to say that you can't seize authority apart from submission.

You can. Certainly you can. But if you want to get the authority and be equipped to use it well. I think that's ordinarily.

Ordinarily, yeah. Yes, I think that's right. It's hard for people to trust that process, brother. In some ways, it was, oh absolutely.

Because so often it's poorly used. You say here that what's interesting in the Bible is how closely related the ideas of submission and faith are.

The ability to submit yourself to that man's leadership was an act of faith towards God. Yes, that's right.

That's exactly right. That's coming very much from the story of the Roman centurion who goes to Jesus and says, hey look,

I too am a man of authority with people under me and I say to go to that one, go. And he goes and that one come and he comes.

What is he doing in that moment? He's acknowledging Jesus' authority and he says, so if you say the word to my servant, he will be healed.

And Jesus responds to that by saying, I've not seen anyone in Israel with such great submission to faith, even though he's acting in submission.

So there's a kind of equation, or at least one thing leading to another thing between submission and faith occurring in that moment that Jesus rewards and it calls faith, as I said.

So yeah, no, I think submission requires a kind of faith, not just in the people

God has placed over us, but more fundamentally in God himself. In some ways, the seeds for my writing this book were in that moment, realizing, oh my gosh, my submission to the pastor was a source of huge growth in my life.

And having grown up in and around evangelical churches, I don't think many evangelicals get this.

This is worth talking about. Jonathan, you say Sean, what do

I say? You say, I love you, Sean. You're my best friend. I enjoy spending time with you.

You're not at all a nuisance to me. That's what you say to me. You say that there are three limits on our call to submit to God -given authority figures.

The first one and the third one, you kind of do this, first and third, you say are pretty explicitly grounded in the text.

The second one, you can't really point to a proof text for. Well, kind of. You say you can't in the book.

No, but then I kind of try to contradict myself a little bit. Walk us through those three. The first one, of course, is any time an authority figure asks you to sin.

The classic example being in the Sanhedrin, where they say, stop preaching in this name to Peter and John.

They're like, yeah, we can listen to you or listen to God. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, worshiping

Yahweh, Daniel, the Lion's Den, same sort of thing. If an authority figure, even though it's a

God -established authority figure, if it asks you to sin, you don't. Civil disobedience. Your husband says, let's watch pornography together.

You say no. I wish that that was a funny ha -ha thing, but it's not.

It's a real -life example. The second thing is any time, and this is the harder one,

I admit, in my I'm doing a little theological inference here, as much as I'm just saying here's one particular proof text.

Any time an authority figure steps outside of its jurisdiction and asks you to do something that that authority figure has not been authorized to ask you to do or require you to do.

If the policeman says, you must marry my son.

It's like, you don't have authority to do that or say that, so I'm going to disobey.

I think that'd be an easy example. Or if you're required to wear a piece of clothing, a

Muslim woman in a Muslim culture, can the Taliban require women to wear hijabs?

What's the word? Don't mess this up. I think you're going to obey insofar as you don't want to be punished, but do they have the moral right?

Do they have the authority to require you to wear a certain piece of clothing? I'm not sure they do. If you cannot get punished and get away with not doing it,

I think you're free to do that. Are there examples of this in Scripture? Arguably, when

Jesus and his disciples are going to the field, they're picking heads of grain, and the

Pharisees are saying, that's unlawful. You guys don't have the authority to restrict this. Or King Saul forbids his son to make an oath.

Anybody who eats before this day is over is in trouble. Jonathan does eat honeycomb.

Did Saul really have the authority to forbid that? I don't think he did. We could go on example after example in Scripture.

I think there are a few examples like that. The larger theological point is a person is authorized to require only what

God authorizes them to require. For them to move outside of that jurisdiction is to say they are self -authorizing.

They are their own self -created authorities. I don't think any of us want to say that. When I read this,

I immediately thought of people who have a sort of very flattened view of Romans 13. Maybe not flattened.

No, that's a perfect example. Keep going. No, you take it from there, brother. The government says we've got to submit.

There's no authority except what God has established. We've got to submit. That's not an infinite authority.

That's not to say they have absolute, comprehensive, totalitarian control over all of our lives. Only God has that.

No, God has authorized the government to do certain things. Yes, not other things.

All that verse is trying to say is the authorities that exist God has established. I'm trying to say it as comprehensive, absolute authority.

What exists God has established. That's all it's saying. Don't make it say what it's not saying. I think that's a common example.

There are places to say the government either A, point one, you're asking me to sin. I won't do it.

Potentially B, though, as well. I don't think you have the authority to require this of me, so no, I'm not going to submit.

And C? C, anything that causes wrongful harm.

We have a right to self -defense. Is that not the same thing as number one or A? Well, no, because in a situation of harm, being harmed, you're not asking me to sin.

You're just asking me to endure your sin. Oh, yeah, okay. A father smacking, punching his child.

Does the child need to submit to the father's punch? You'll submit to me.

I'm your dad. Well, yeah, I am called to submit to you. You're my dad, but I'm not called to submit to you to the point of you physically harming me in a wrongful way.

So I'm going to duck and run and trust that when I give an account to Jesus on the last day, he's going to say, yes, you were right to duck and run.

Well, let's take this and put it through the lens of a pastoral situation that you and I are both slightly familiar with at a distance.

A woman's married to a man. The man has been church hopping for 20 years.

Do you know which situation I'm talking about? I think so. The man's been church hopping for 20 years.

They join a church. They're there for two years. He's ready to leave again.

And he's got bad, dumb reasons for it. It's sinful reasons. It's a pattern that needs to be discerned, but at this point, the pattern is pretty clearly discerned.

The wife says, I'm really torn. He's the leader. I want to submit to him. On the other hand, he may be doing number three here.

He may be asking me to do something that's going to harm me. Or maybe he might even be asking me to sin by going against the covenant that I made with his church, because there's really no good reason.

Now, that one's a little less clear, but either way, do you think one of these three things applies to that woman in that situation?

The wife? I remember when our mutual friend raised this, and I admit it's a really tough one.

It's a gray area to me. And I can see arguments being made on both sides.

I think in the final analysis, I leaned in the particular direction of her, number one, reproaching her husband and saying, look, this is wrong, and I love you.

I think you're being foolish. I think you're probably sinning. And there's more details, but the way the brother described it raises the question of is this guy even a

Christian? And I think that would be a reasonable question for a wife to ask. You're not acting like a

Christian in the way you've been doing this. But in the final analysis,

I am going to submit to you and go with you to another church. You think of 1 Peter 3, the wife there submitting to the unjust husband, or the non -Christian husband, and commending her gospel,

Jesus says, or Peter says in that context. I maybe lean slightly in that situation towards the wife doing the same thing here and submitting and going.

If the wife came to me as the pastor and said, look, I'm going to stay at this church because I think he's calling me to sin,

I'd probably get behind her there too, honestly. We talked about it.

No, go ahead. I'm just having fun now. We talked about it. I leaned heavily towards her probably staying, not giving in to her husband's sinful pattern that would harm her.

But even, this is interesting, right? Two brothers who are in basic complete agreement in all things theology and philosophy and ministry, all the principles, but the wisdom, you lean one way,

I lean, one of my other guys on staff leaned the other way. My sister pastor, he was like, I think she should submit to her husband.

And frankly, that's why you want a plurality of elders. You want to be able to have these kind of conversations. We agree on all the principles. We might have different judgments in any given situation.

This is the other thing I was going to say, just following on that then, is in a lot of these scenarios where you have, you're in a gray area, maybe you have two contradictory authorities.

You have the government saying one thing and the church saying another thing. The parents saying one thing and the pastor saying another thing.

There's a sense in which we need to remember that no authority on earth is absolute and final.

None. Only God's authority is absolute and final. And in any given moment, you are called to exercise wisdom about whether or not you should submit or not.

And you're going to give an account to Jesus on the last day about whether or not that was the right thing to do.

So, for instance, sometimes when I'm teaching some of these things in my seminary class, I'll say to the class, who has final authority in a child's life?

The government or the parent? And they all quickly say, oh, the parent. I'll say, well, what if the parent's beating the child?

Oh, okay. Well, then the government. Okay, but what if the government is forbidding the parents from evangelizing the child or discipline the child?

Oh, well then the parent. What's the moral of the story? No authority on earth is absolute and final.

It's all relative to context. And in these moments of uncertainty, pray, seek the counsel of your elders, make the best judgment you can, preparing for your own account on judgment day about whether or not now's the time to rebel or now's the time to submit.

And so it is with that wife. That wife finally is going to give an account to Jesus. And that's what she needs to prepare for.

And is her best judgment in that moment finally to submit to her husband or submit and stay at the church?

Yeah. I pray that God gives her wisdom. Do you think the Lord gives an extra measure of grace to pastors thinking through these really thorny issues?

Well, I mean, James 1 says if we need wisdom to ask

God for it, so I certainly think that's true. We all have that prerogative. Does he give extra grace to pastors?

I don't know. What do you think? I don't know. I hope he does. I ask because the weight of having to make decisions that impact people's lives and potentially their eternities weighs heavy on you.

And this could be the difference between a family staying together or not. A church splitting up, closing its doors or not.

Maybe not always that extreme, but it's heavy. And sometimes I think pastors walk out of an elders meeting thinking,

I really think we made the right decision there, but I'm not, I mean, I think we did, but I'm not really sure.

It was so hard, so thorny, so in the gray, not so black and white. Lord, just have mercy on me if we got it wrong.

Amen. Those are some of the hardest. I mean, conceptually, intellectually, spiritually, emotionally, the hardest situations

I often find myself in are as a father or as a pastor in these gray areas.

I think I just go back to blessed are the poor in spirit, blessed are the meek.

Knowing that if I'm exercising my authority as a father or as a pastor in a posture of poverty of spirit, in a posture of meekness,

I can trust the Lord's going to bless me and bless those I'm leading. Yeah, that's good, brother. Really good.

You have a section where, well, let me just read this to you. I think it's really beautiful.

Leadership is not about running after all your dreams and ambitions. It's often about getting on your hands and knees and making your life a stage on which those you love can pursue their ambitions, hopes, and ministries.

It's about building up as much as it's about moving up. It's about equipping and enabling and empowering.

You have this other really nice section where you basically just talk about leadership as a platform,

What a revolutionary view of leadership and authority that Jesus gave us.

I was running around Disney World with three little girls sweating like a dog, carrying one on my back, one on my front, the other by the hand, desperately trying to get to the princesses.

Miserable. The stinking princesses, which are these people in costumes, but my little girls were so excited to see the princesses.

Right? Yeah. Here I am, sweating like a dog, pouring myself out in the hot Florida sun to serve them.

As I was holding them up, my wife got a photo of me holding all three girls when they were little.

That's kind of when some of the thinking that informed that section came to me. You're a platform.

You are existing to serve others. I thought about God. God is our rock.

The psalmist says over and over. He will make my arms as a bow of bronze.

That's true of you. As far as I can tell. I just thought, yeah.

Authority is not just a top -down thing. It's a bottom -up thing. Being a support and a buttress for those we are calling to lead.

There's a really great meme of a dad with his son. His whole self is pictured as blocks.

His son, at every stage of development, he's just pulling more blocks out of himself and giving them to his son.

At the end, he's an old man. There's not really much left there. His son is strong and vibrant. Same thing as a pastor.

Same thing as a boss. If you're a good boss, you're spending a lot of time cultivating people around you.

Helping them to grow up into the best leaders that they can be. Amen. Right on. I got that from you.

Blocks out of the body? No. Everything good that I said. If your growth in humility doesn't keep up with your growth in authority,

Satan will find it much easier to trip you off the mountain into the yawning canyon below. You talk about as we grow in our capacity to exercise authority, that has to be accompanied by growth in humility.

Which is tough. It's paradoxical because the way the world works is the more authority you have, the less reason you have to be humble.

I wrote that reflecting on people as they age and are successful.

In thinking specific, I was thinking of various ministry leaders and pastors who had been very successful and received the world's praise and had managed to create for themselves as they aged empires, quote unquote, of accomplishment and in the process became unteachable, incorrectable, proud, living in a world entirely of their own making surrounded by people who only agreed with them.

Thinking of a few ministry leaders in particular, all of that preceded a crash.

That became very public. It occurred to me in many ways, growing old does humble you.

It should anyway. I think it often naturally does. You realize you're not all that.

You don't even have to be a Christian to grow old and realize I'm not the stuff that I thought I was as a college student or whatever.

In many ways, age humbles you. In other ways, especially if you're doing well, age can tempt you to new forms of pride where if you've been successful and the young people are just dumb and immature, you're growing wiser and you're realizing, okay, those people don't know what they're talking about.

I've done this. I've accomplished this. I know how this works. You can grow proud. You think of that passage in Chronicles where it's talking about Uzziah.

Uzziah was greatly helped. He succeeded. He did a great job as king and then as he got old, he began to become proud, it says.

What a tragic end note on his life. Oh, I know. It ends terribly.

It occurred to me as we grow old and especially if God has given us any measure of outward success in our leadership, yeah, we need to double down on the desire and the prayer for and the pursuit of humility lest we be tripped up in our old age.

What a tragedy. David's life. How does David's life? Solomon. I know. Absalom.

Solomon, yes, but the David too. Basically, Absalom and he abdicated effectively and he had a revolution.

He had a vision of his own family. He doesn't discipline his son for Taman for Amnon for raping his half -sister

Tamar and then Absalom comes in and usurps the kingdom and divides the... It's just terrible because David doesn't exercise authority in that situation.

He's not growing in humility. How much do... And Solomon being another example.

How much do we want to grow in humility as we grow old? Yeah. Let's talk a little bit about discipline.

You say that discipline is what gives authority its teeth. Yeah. Makes sense, right?

If I tell my kids to do something or to not do something and they do or don't do it anyways, then it's my ability to discipline them that actually corrects that behavior, right?

Correct. Not that all discipline has to be negative or of the rod.

But you say that our discipline volumes can be turned down to a one or up to a ten.

Can you talk a little bit about that? Yeah. I mean,

I think in general you want to implement as much discipline as is as necessary to accomplish the intended effect and in a way that doesn't crush those you are leading.

Now, there's exceptions to that, right? Excommunication. We're putting you out of the church.

Firing somebody. We're putting you out of the organization. Capital punishment. Putting a person in prison for...

So there are forms of extreme all the way up to ten discipline where yeah, I'm not trying to accommodate for weakness.

I just need to remove you from this organization, from this church, from this community. So there is that.

Nonetheless, in most situations of discipleship with my children, my church members, with my employees, the people

I'm managing, I'm only going to discipline as much as I need to teach the lesson to help them do better next time.

So yeah, that's where I want to get my fingers on the knob between a one and a ten trying to figure out how much is necessary.

And again, as I said before, I think the temptation for a lot of us is to abdicate. That's where the David, Tamar, Absalom, Amnon story would best be told.

He just failed to discipline in that situation. A terrible abdication that led to great destruction in his family and his kingdom.

But at the same time, again, fathers, do not exasperate your children. You can do too much.

Right. So the parent who... I actually saw this at Chipotle not long ago. This mom kept saying, hey, honey, don't touch that.

And then the kid would touch it. And she'd go, no, no, don't touch it. And the kid would touch it. And then the kid picked it up and dropped it on the floor.

And she goes, no, I told you not to touch that. Put it back. The kid does it again. She doesn't do anything. This lasted for 10 minutes until they left.

Right? No discipline. What is she teaching that kid? Yeah. My authority means nothing.

That's right. In contrast, I think we've also seen like the mom or the dad or both who like they're just on their kid.

Maybe it's usually the first kid, right? The kid that we really feel like, I can't screw this up, man. I've got to do everything right.

That poor first kid. Yeah. I mean, just they look in the wrong direction. Hey, what did I tell you? And that can be oppressive.

That's right. Somewhere in the middle. Lord, give us wisdom. Depending on the situation.

Yeah. Lord, give us wisdom. Again, that goes back to the transcendence eminence kind of ratio thing.

I need to know enough to teach you that there are good, precious things that I want to protect in your life and train you to be an authority figure in yourself, but you need to learn to submit to me.

So, yes, I'm going to enforce this for your good. Yeah. At the same time, I don't want to undermine your sense of agency and your worth and just crush you in the process.

Yeah. God, give us wisdom. Yeah. If we ask him for it, he will. Amen. You said that there are different kinds of authority that have different textures?

What's that about? Yeah, that's where I begin to think specifically about the authority of command versus the authority of counsel.

Ooh la la. Is that what you want to talk about? Is that what textures is about? Well, textures means things have different feels.

You got a silky feel, you got a burlap sack feel. Yeah. And going back to office, right, a father's authority and the way he exercises authority with his son has a different texture, different feel than the workplace manager or the policeman's authority.

The policeman's authority with you on the street, if you're punking around, that should feel different than a father's with his sons or his daughters or a husband with his wife or a pastor with a church member.

You need to pay attention to pay very close attention to the kind of imperatives and commands and instructions that are used in Scripture to moderate, calibrate, adjust your exercise of authority in that person's life so that matches with those imperatives, commands, you know, instructions given in Scripture.

Whereas when men will sometimes say, oh, the father is the king of his own little castle.

Well, the language that's used for the civil government or the king has a different texture than a father.

It's sword -bearing. It's sword -bearing. It's different than a father is what a father is called to do.

It should feel different, a different texture. That's what I'm getting at. Alright, so let's talk about command and counsel.

This is I think one of the most helpful concepts that I've heard you talk about over the years, not just from this book.

What's at the heart of the difference? Because this is highly conceptual. It sounds a little more egghead -y.

Elbow patches on my... What is authority of command? Give us the essence of the difference.

Two different kinds of authority. Authority of command and authority of counsel. Both of them are a legitimate, biblically given authority in which

I have the moral right to make commands that you must obey.

The difference between the two is entirely in the question of enforcement. Do I have the right to enforce my authority, to discipline accordingly?

So, I tell my daughter you need to take the trash out. She says no.

Your six -year -old daughter. Yeah. She says no. I make her take the trash out. Yes.

You have the right to enforce that. I say, hey babe, would you mind taking the trash out?

And she goes, actually no, blah blah blah. And then I come and I spank her. No, can't do that.

My wife. Oh, you didn't say wife. What did I say? You didn't say. I asked my wife, babe, will you take the trash out?

She says no. I come back and I spank her. No, I can't do that.

Because I have the authority of counsel. You have no enforcement mechanism. Now she's, it's a real authority because she's under obligation from God to submit to you.

Trash must be taken out. Wives, obey your husbands. What's the next phrase?

As under the Lord. In everything. Children, obey your parents. As under the Lord. Wives, obey your husbands in everything.

So across the dominion of life, being fruitful and bringing all of life, your wife is to submit to you, but you don't have an enforcement mechanism.

So think about those authorities that do have enforcement mechanisms. The state has the power of the sword. The parent has the power of the rod.

The church has the power of the keys. Husbands and pastors or elders, they don't have one.

They don't have an enforcement mechanism that I'm aware of, that I can think of. Thinking through the Bible in my head,

The shepherd's crook. That's not really, that's a metaphor.

That's not actually in any meaningful sense given to elders or pastors.

I don't think I even know of any scripture that actually does that. Right. You have the shepherd.

Psalm 23, sure. At no point in the New Testament are elders given the right to actually hit people on the head with a rod or staff.

They don't have the right to excommunicate people. The whole church does. They have the keys. The elder by himself does not, or the elders together do not.

And the fact that a husband and elder have an authority of counsel, no enforcement mechanism, dramatically changes the way they exercise that authority.

They do not exercise authority with ever threats. The way a policeman, or by force, the way a parent can with a young child.

You can enforce by threat, by enforcement. A husband, an elder cannot, should not.

Which means they're to exercise their authority with great patience, with great winsomeness. They're to live with their wives in an understanding way.

They're to teach with great patience. They're to woo. Right? They're to use a song of Solomon, like attractiveness and seeking to draw my wife towards the unity that scripture commends of us.

And so with an elder. He is to appeal to the congregation.

And it also speaks to the fact that our wives, or our church members, are in a certain respect equal to us.

Positionally equal to us. Nonetheless, the Lord has given me a job as a husband, and me a job as a pastor to draw them, to point, hey wife, church, we're to go this way.

I want you to come with me. Now let me draw you with my kindness and my love and my patience and my long -sufferingness in that direction as the leader that God calls us to go.

Even as Jesus goes to the disciples and says you know, leave your nuts and follow me.

That's what we're to do too, right? With wives and church members. But it's a different kind of authority.

It's an evangelistic authority, you might even say. And it relates to the word, right?

Because authority of counsel is still binding because the wife's under moral obligation to obey, and Jesus will enforce it.

Well, I guess what I mean is as a pastor, I'm sitting down with a church member, I'm exhorting you to some particular action or to abstain from You should not date him.

He is not a Christian. Sure. And I point to the word. And I go, I can't make you not marry this guy.

Right. But I'm pointing to this authority that's over both of us and I'm saying, you say you're a Christian, I'm saying we're a

Christian. Here's what Christ says, so let's follow this together, right? I have the authority to bind your conscience by counseling you with the word.

That's right. And I would say an application of the word. That's right. So as a husband, there's going to be a couple of steps of implication there sometimes like, should we move to this city?

Well, I might not be able to point to something in the Bible. Well, with the husband, I don't think it's so much the word you're binding them by the way that an elder does.

Well, it can be. Well, it can be. But it's a dominion in all of life wisdom domain area, right?

Like, should we put us in our kids' this school or that school? Should we spend the money on this vacation or not?

Should we move to this city or not? So I think that is wisdom, but I guess I would just argue that all of those conversations should eventually end up back at the word, right?

Like, why are we making the decision for this school or that school? Sometimes it's just like, this one's closer to our house.

But most of the time, the educational decisions that couples are having to think through together are because one person hasn't really thought very clearly about what

Scripture has to say about education, or should I take this job? Well, one spouse might just be thinking, you know, better money, better retirement, closer to family, may not be considering spiritual things.

So I think more often than not, at least in my experience, even in the spousal domain, it does require at some point for us to, like, look at the

Word together. Oh, sure. And try to let the Word lead us down this wisdom path. Well, I think that's true, but here's what

I'm guarding against. I'm guarding against a kind of pharisaical use of Scripture in ways that Scripture doesn't intend, so that I can come to you and say, well, listen, you know, the

Bible says this, and clearly that means we should do what I think on this schooling decision. It's like, you're just manipulating

Scripture at this point to get what you want. That can be a kind of spiritual abuse. You have a great quote in here, and I'm trying to find it.

Go ahead. That can be a kind of spiritual abuse where you're misusing Scripture for your own ends.

I think it would be better to say, look, I'm trying to bring spiritual wisdom to bear. I'm thinking this school over that school for these reasons, you know, that I get from the

Bible. I think, you know, insofar as we're called to point them to God and raise up according to various moral principles, as we learn from Scripture, I think this school will do a better job of it.

But that's not to say that my opinion on this one is necessarily the biblical opinion. Absolutely. You say it like this.

Legalism or self -justification is native to all human beings. Becoming a Christian means repenting of such self -justification and seeking our justification in Christ, yet the old sin nature still shows up in camouflage.

Even as Christians, we still like to make rules, feel good about ourselves because we keep the rules because of the rules we make up.

And then we put ourselves over others because they don't keep our rules. Only now, we fool ourselves into thinking we have the warrant of Scripture behind us because we're able to make some tenuous connection from our rule to the

Bible. On the one hand, pastors should be the first to stand up for biblical truth when it's clear. On the other hand, pastors, husbands as well, right, should be the first to stand up for Christian freedom when a matter is not clear so that our unity is built around Scripture, not the wisdom of man.

Yeah, yeah. You want husbands to say, no matter what we're talking about, let's look at God's word to see if it has something to say on this.

On the other hand, let me not pretend that every decision I want to make in the family is backed by God. Exactly.

Yeah. Yeah, that's right. I think I could have written this book. Probably.

You talk about God exercising his authority through covenants, right?

Authority flows through ... God structures his relationships with humanity through covenants.

Or a word that might be a little more familiar to Americans, at least, listeners, he constitutionalizes the nature of our relationships with him through covenants.

Using constitution and covenants. Yeah. So what does the constitution do? It's an ancient Caesarian treaty.

A vassal treaty. See, exactly. When Bible scholars start to ... That's what they do. I'm just like, yeah, that's not helpful.

Oh, in our church, we have a pocket -sized definition for covenant. A relationship grounded in a promise.

There you go. I know Bruce Watke probably wouldn't be happy with that, but I think it works. No, I think that's good. But it's funny, you switch out covenant for constitutionalize, which in my mind ...

The constitution gives structure to the nature of the American Republic. It doesn't give you all the laws, but it gives you the laws about making the laws.

It doesn't say you have to drive this fast. It doesn't say homeowners must do this or that, but it establishes the overall structures of a society by which we make those kinds of laws.

In the same way, the covenant of creation doesn't give us all the laws. The covenant with Sinai, the covenant with the New Covenant doesn't give us all the laws, but it establishes the basic structures by which we then do govern ourselves in the myriad decisions that we have to make on a daily basis.

And so what's crucial when you're interpreting Scripture asking, okay, who's authorized to do what?

What institutions, what offices exist that are binding on me? The command not to eat of that tree of knowledge of good and evil, does that bind us?

Well, no, of course not. That's a different moment in redemptive history. What about the laws given to Israel? Do they bind us?

Well, no, that's a different covenantal moment. Okay, well, what must the church do?

Does the church submit to the state in these matters or in those matters?

You know, does the state have the right to enforce all Ten Commandments? You know, worship no other gods except for me?

Or not? Well, we have to look at the moment of redemptive history, of covenantal history that we exist within in order to answer those questions.

What Constitution, what covenant is in play at this moment?

And interpret the Bible accordingly. That's what I'm trying to say. Are you a theonomist?

No. Are you? No. Depends on what you mean, but no.

Depends on what the meaning of is. Stop. You just wrote a quick little segue.

Essentially, you edited a journal that is a very thick, dense book.

Called A New Christian Authoritarianism? Asking the question of whether or not the growth in Christian nationalism and theonomy in this moment is a biblical or a new kind of authoritarianism, and the journal is saying the latter.

It's very good, very useful. You can't read the whole thing. Maybe someone can.

I think you should just go through the table of contents and look at the titles that are most relevant to whatever theonomy issue you're dealing with.

And I'd be surprised if you're not, to some extent, dealing with it. Some churches aren't.

I guess what I mean to say is I'm surprised at how many churches are. That's right. I really appreciated your treatment of Genesis 9, which is a foundational text.

Speaking of, theonomy. Exactly. One segue right into another. You say it's kind of the

Great Commission text. For churches. For churches? For governments.

So you are a theonomist. That would be the Noahic covenant. For governmental authority, and without getting into asking you to rehash everything that you say there, what

I find really helpful... I think sometimes you could say, wow, you're basing your whole...

I guess not all of it, but you're basing a big part of your view of governmental authority on this one text.

These two verses. Yeah. Which is further elucidated later in the Bible. There actually is so much there.

You have this section where you say, whoever wrongly sheds the blood...

Yeah, but you focus on the whoever. This text operates like a boomerang, right?

Whoever means even the state. If the state wrongly sheds blood, then the sword should come to bear against them.

Is Hitler under that verse or not? Of course he is. So if he's wrongly shedding the blood of man, he should be assassinated.

Speaking of theonomy and the enforcement of the law, I thought this paragraph was very helpful.

For God made man in his own image, and that's the basis for the shedding of the blood, but it doesn't authorize, it being

Genesis 9, 5 -6, it doesn't authorize us to enforce that basis. The trigger for action is harm to humans, blood being shed, not harm to God.

After all, how do you measure or establish parity for an offense against God? To say nothing of the fact that we cannot harm him.

As such, the verse doesn't authorize us, us there, I think, being the government particularly, to prosecute crimes against God like blasphemy or idolatry if there is no quantifiable harm done to a human person.

Yeah, honestly, I think what you have there in the text is the original authorization given to use of coercive force, right?

So I think government in one sense is pre -fall, right? So even in a pre -fall, unfallen world, you have to decide whether or not you're going to drive on the right side of the road or the left side of the road.

Simply coordinating human activity requires some level of government. But the introduction of sin into the world in Genesis 3 requires a punitive, corrective...

No sword before the fall, sword after the fall. Right. A form of one human...

Organizational before the fall. This side of the road, not that side. Well, I think if, you know, let's suppose in some imaginary world,

Adam and Eve and their kids had continued, they built cities and roads, they would have had to decide, do we drive on this side or that side?

It's part of exercising dominion. Yes. So government is pre -fall.

Coercive government with the sword, corrective coercive government is post -fall.

That's how... Where does that begin? It begins in Genesis 9. Well, you get a form of authorization in Genesis 4 with Cain, but then it's universalized post -Noah or post the flood in Genesis 9.

And yeah, I think it's given, the government has given a narrow protective lane.

Not a broad perfectionist lane. So the government...

Protectionist versus perfectionist. Perfectionist is the church. Israel. Okay.

And then the church. The covenant community. Yes. So the government's called to establish justice.

Check. Yes. Is it a protective preserve your life justice or is it a perfectionist be perfect as your heavenly father is perfect justice.

Israel was called to a perfectionist and this moment of redemptive history, the church is called to enforce a kind of, and teach a kind of perfectionist justice, right?

The state, the sword holder is not, as I understand it, called to enforce a perfectionist your entire life.

They can't. Be perfect as your heavenly father is perfect justice. The nations, the government, Nebuchadnezzar, Sennacherib, Pharaoh, Pilate are not called to enforce a perfectionist justice.

And we get that, I think, beginning in Genesis 9. As you said, a great commission text.

You know, so what is the authority of the church? Well, we start in some ways in the great commission text,

Matthew 28. Is that all there is to say of the church? No. We look to a lot of other churches. But it's a foundational text and we need to start there.

Likewise, I think Genesis 9 is playing that role for the authority of governments. Yeah. I think some people in the theonomy camp would say that in Israel they're like, you know, capital punishment for blasphemy.

Deuteronomy 13. But what's interesting, Russell showed this to me earlier from some of the early

Puritan writers, that even that capital punishment in Israel was not because there was a parody for sin against God and execution, death penalty, the shedding of their blood.

That was actually done for a protectionist purpose as well, to protect the people of Israel from the wrath of God that would rain down on them if they were blasphemers.

I see. I just thought that was interesting. Does that make sense? Well, I think theonomists and Christian nationalists and magisterial

Protestant types will often argue that we would enforce blasphemy laws because it's good for society as a whole.

So, I have friends of mine who say, well, you know, what if the person's blaspheming and it starts a riot, right?

Should we not then penalize blasphemy? And what's interesting about that argument, which is fairly common, is it's actually moving the goalposts.

So, if somebody's starting a riot, yeah, you should stop it. But are they starting a riot because Jesus, they're saying, somebody's saying

Jesus is Lord or Satan is Lord or, you know, cucumbers are green. I don't care.

If they're starting a riot, that's what we're to penalize. So, if harm is coming into the community, that's the trigger for acting.

Whereas, if harm is not, if blood is not being shed, yeah,

I don't think there's that same trigger. Yeah, well, causing harm to the community is essentially blood being, people's blood could be shed in the riot.

I guess I just thought it was interesting. I think we would say, okay, we're not going to shed people's blood for for harm to God, right?

Like blaspheming His name, right? But we would say, oh, maybe they did that in Israel, but we don't do that today.

But they didn't even really do it in Israel. They didn't equate punishing the blasphemer with protecting

God from harm. They still saw it as a protectionist impulse to protect the community of Israel from God's wrath coming down on them for their blasphemy.

Yeah, that may be. Yeah, no, that's right. That's right. That makes sense. So you talk about the reasons why the authority in the government exists, and you say there are basically three reasons why the authority for government exists.

Fulfill the dominion mandate, help secure basic conditions. Oh, no. Wait, is that right?

Was there three reasons? I think so. You're like, what are your notes saying? Number one, to to to to protect against harm.

Yep. Number two, to carry out the dominion mandate. And number three? To facilitate the conditions for the dominion mandate.

Okay, that's important. Life is fulfilling. You and me right now, you know, the brothers who are helping to film this are fulfilling the dominion mandate.

They're not doing the work of government. But the government has secured the conditions necessary for us to do this. Right. We have safety.

We have roads that we are able to drive to that are policed. You know, taxes were paid so that we have a standing army that protects us from various forms of harm and so forth so that we can get on with doing our business.

And where I get that from is the fact that Genesis 9, 5, and 6, which you alluded to a moment ago, whoever sheds the blood of man by man shall his blood be shed, for man was made in God's own image, is set in between Genesis 9, 1 and 9, 7.

It's bookended by be fruitful and multiply. All right.

So 5 and 6, authority to government, facilitates very concretely, textually facilitates verses 1 and verses 7.

Sandwiched by them in the text. So why does government exist? One, to punish crime.

But two, to facilitate people's ability to fulfill the dominion mandate. Now we're going to have disagreements and arguments about how expansive that is.

Fine. Let's have those arguments. But let's at least say there's a principle here at play that needs to be acknowledged. And then finally number three,

I say government exists to provide a platform for the work of redemption to ensue.

So Genesis 9 comes before Genesis 12, the call to Abraham for a reason.

And... You say it like this, you say common grace sets the stage for special grace, like teaching people to read so that they can read the

Bible. Yeah. Yeah, that's exactly right. And I think you see that very clearly in a couple of New Testament texts, for instance.

So first I think of Acts 19.

No, not Acts 19. Help me out. I don't know. I was busy looking at my notes.

Why can I not? Oh, this is really embarrassing for you. Oh, this is terrible. Dozens of people are going to watch this.

Oh, Acts 17, that's what it is. Acts 17 where he's there in the

Areopagus and he addresses them and he says in verse 26

And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and boundaries of their dwelling place.

So the boundaries, national borders, allotted periods, the duration of those nations. Why? Verse 27

That they should seek God and perhaps find their way toward Him.

Right? So he established boundaries, durations, nations, civilization and those structures that people could find their way to God.

A very similar principle and maybe even in some ways clearer occurs in 1

Timothy Do you want this? Of course. Just insofar as this is helpful and instructive for people listening.

But I'm getting a little sleepy so try to ratchet up the intensity a little bit. First of all, I heard that!

Supplications, prayers, intercessions, thanksgivings be made for all people. For kings and all lower and high positions. That, okay, why?

Why should we pray for kings? That we may live a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified every way.

Okay, so I want kings to exist and I should pray for them so that we can live peaceful and quiet lives, godly and dignified.

That's what they do. They help us live peaceful and quiet, protected, safe lives, godly and dignified.

Common grace. This common grace. This is good and it is pleasing in the sight of God our

Savior who desires, here's kind of another so that, who desires all people to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth.

Okay, so I want to pray for kings, not that they can act as missionaries and bring people to knowledge and truth.

Rather, there's two steps there. I want to pray for kings that we can live peaceful and quiet lives. So that we can send out missionaries.

So that we're safe and can send out missionaries so that people may find God and know

Him. So there's two steps there. You say it like this, the government's job is to clear the path, smooth the road.

You say it better than that. You didn't stumble. The government's job is to clear the path, smooth the road, set the stage, build a platform.

A clear path and a smooth road pleases God and should please us for salvation's sake.

Yeah, that's right. So ultimately governments exist to serve the purpose of redemption. Not directly, but as a preliminary step.

Again, like teaching people to read so that they can read the Bible. You also say like this, you might say that the

Bible approaches governments like parents do, a babysitter. You don't expect the babysitter to train your children up in the highest levels of education and religion.

You basically just want them to not poke each other's eyeballs out. Keep them from running into traffic.

Yeah, right. And that's what you want the government to do. Just keep us alive so we can do the work of the gospel. Exactly.

Going back to that Acts 17 text, you have a really interesting section in there where you talk about how

God raises up leaders for a time and then takes them out once they're in justice, once they begin to drift into too severe of an injustice.

Can you riff on that a little bit? Or do you remember even what you said there? Admittedly, that's a little bit speculative.

There does seem to be a pattern though. Think of Habakkuk, where Habakkuk is like, why are these unjust governments that you're allowing?

And he says, well, don't you worry about it. I'm going to take them out too. And you get the same thing with Pharaoh.

God comes along and says, I raised you up so that I can display my glory. And so far as these governments are,

Pharaoh is committing great injustice, I'm going to take him out. You see that in Isaiah and the prophets, these governments that become unjust,

God eventually takes them out. Think of Isaiah 10, for instance. With a rod, he's eventually going to bring punishment on that rod that he used to discipline

Israel. Yeah, that's right. Throughout Scripture, what you have is you have basically two kinds of governments.

Those that protect God's people and those that destroy God's people. Pharaoh at the time of Joseph protected

God's people. Pharaoh at the time of Moses devoured God's people. And you can think about different moments of redemptive history doing one or the other.

Protecting God's people and devouring. Judges, kings in Israel. Devouring God's people. It seems to me that that's redemptive history.

Do we see the same thing in natural history? Augustine's city of God in many ways is asking that question.

Why did Rome fall? Christians were like, we thought Rome was blessed and chosen by God.

And Augustine writes in his city of God to say, well, actually it was terribly unjust. And so God has every right to take

Rome out, which he's done with these barbarian hordes. So yeah, when a government for a season proves, as it were, inescapably unjust,

I think God's going to take it out. He does that. It's really interesting to note as you just kind of, in your brain, just scan the timeline of history.

No totally wicked state or whatever has been able to persist.

It's allowed to endure that long. That's right. I don't want to wrap up before talking about managerial authority.

I think for pastors in particular, this may be one of the most helpful parts of the book. Hey, you should read this.

You're a boss, and I want you to go out there and represent the authority of Christ well in your workplace.

So can you talk to us about managerial authority? That was a hard one to write, because there is so little in Scripture that seems to relate directly to us, because what you have in the ancient worlds is economies that are structured very differently than our own.

So if you go into the Old Testament, you have the patriarchal structure where you have a patriarch like Abraham, and then you have both his children and his slaves all working together in that household, and employment works through that kind of patriarchal structure.

In Old and New Testament, you're dealing with slavery, and much of the quote -unquote economy is structured by slavery.

And how does all of that? And so what does Scripture address? Scripture addresses the economies that were and gives instructions in those contexts.

So now I'm trying to translate that into the present volunteer employment economic structure society.

But with a subject like slavery, you can misstep and it won't be that big of a deal. You say something wrong about slavery, you're probably going to be very controversial.

No, you're going to get in big trouble in the past. I appreciate your sarcasm. You have clear instructions both to those under whether a commanding officer, you have that in the

Bible too of course, or those under a master to work as under Christ. You're seeking to do that and you're seeking to bring glory and honor to Christ.

How you should function as a worker. But then also you have very clear instructions given to the slave master.

He says there is no partiality with God. So he doesn't favor you over your slaves by any stretch of the imagination.

So you need to treat them with fairness and kindness or equals even. Right? So I think there is clear instruction in Scripture.

You need to work through some of those contextual differences to get there. I attempt to do that in the chapter.

I think you did a masterful job of it. I think it's a good example of the sufficiency of Scripture. I think sometimes people don't trust in the sufficiency of Scripture because the answers aren't immediately obvious on the surface of things.

The sufficiency of Scripture doesn't mean that we don't have to dig and think hard and pray for God to illuminate.

But we also don't need to be afraid of it. I think pastors are afraid of those slavery texts. It's embarrassing at first glance.

It's like, no, pastor, you don't need to be afraid of it. A, there are good explanations. B, there are actually things we can learn from them and that God intends for our good in them.

If everyone has managed to get this far in the interview, they will now be rewarded by some of my favorite questions starting now.

This one I think will reveal most. I think this question reveals more. One word answer?

Short answers? You can wax eloquent if you please. This one is a character revealer.

What is your least favorite candy? You're serious?

I'm serious. Black licorice? Yes. It has to be black licorice, right?

I mean, I smell it and I feel like I'm going to throw up. Your most favorite candy?

It could be sweet. Like, it's dessert night. You're like, I'm going to town. Candy or dessert? It's very different.

Let's do both then. This is what our people really want. Candy is probably going to be

Reese's Peanut Butter Cup. Any Reese's variety? Reese's Peanut Butter Cup. I mean,

I like Reese's Pieces too, but I prefer Reese's Peanut Butter Cup. Have you tried a Reese's Outrageous? No, never heard of it.

It's the height of decadence. It's the stuff that's inside of a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup in a log, covered by caramel, overlaid with chocolate, embedded with Reese's Pieces.

You take it out of the wrapper, You know what that is? That is outrageous. It's outrageous. Put it in the freezer?

Do you put your Reese's cups in the freezer? No, I don't. Do you put them in the fridge? No. Do you poke your finger through the middle and pretend like it's a ring?

No. Really? So you just don't have any fun? A whole Reese's cup in the mouth?

Sure, I'll usually do it in two bites. Really? But I'm able to, and occasionally we'll put the whole thing in.

It depends if it's hot and it's kind of messy, and I don't want all that chocolate on my fingers, then I'll just stick the whole thing in my mouth. I'm not even going to do that.

I'm going to put it in the freezer, come back to it later. Nutty bars, you know what those are? Boy, people are glad they stuck around for this.

You know the nutty bars, the chocolate ones with the peanut butter layers in between? They come in packs of two

Little Debbies? No. You guys know what I'm talking about. They're chocolate. Little Debbies?

I've heard of them, never had them. Okay, fine. Everything's fine. I'm not upset.

Okay, good. Favorite movie? Lord of the

Rings. One, two, and three. Easy. Hands down. Worst movies ever made.

Unwatchable. So boring. Can't make it through them. I don't know.

I started a movie the other day, my wife and I did, and we stopped watching it midway through.

Just to watch Lord of the Rings? It was both poorly produced and crass, so we stopped. So there are movies we stopped.

But Lord of the Rings? Oh my gosh, it's epic. Do you like the books as well? Yeah. But you like the movies more?

You know, here's the thing, people always say, oh, the movie's better than the book. You can never create in your imagination in a movie what you do in the book.

Oh, so they say the book's better than the movie. Okay, I meant the book. People say you can never create in a movie screen what's in your imagination when you read the book.

Actually, when I watched Lord of the Rings, I'm like, yeah, that was better than what was in my head when I read the book. So the books are great.

They're okay. I think the movies are just spectacular. I did The Hobbit on Audible, narrated by Andy Serkis, the guy who does

Gollum's voice. Gollum? Absolutely amazing. It blew me away. I couldn't believe how amazing it was.

That's good. Have you done The Hobbit? I read it. Do you do audiobooks? That's almost the only reading

I do now, outside of work reading. Because you have to read so much at work? A, because I read a lot at work.

B, because I just have a hard time with my schedule these days, finding time just to sit down and read a book.

So most of my reading now is done on the go. Right. So useful. I'm trying to encourage more people.

So many of the Nine Marks titles are free if you have an Audible Plus membership. You can just go through, and they're actually narrated fairly well.

The problem with a lot of theology books on Audible is that they're narrated by people who don't know what they're talking about.

It's horrendous. It's horrendous. I really wish that you would talk to Crossway about letting you...

I was reading the book, and I was thinking, I would like to hear Jonathan read this book. Honestly, on this

Authority one, I kind of wanted to, but then I found out they said, oh, we've already assigned it, and it's already being produced. I'm like, okay, that's fine.

I did an audio recording of an article I wrote that was a long article, like 10 ,000 word article, and it took me an hour and a half, and I'm like, this is miserable.

I hate this. We just recorded my audio book, the Prosperity Gospel one. It's so boring. It was eight hours of me just reading my own stuff.

In that sense, I'm like, I'm happy for somebody else to do it. Anyway. That Prosperity Gospel book, you stayed on me for like six years to get that thing written.

Good for me. It wasn't even that good. It was good. I'm very, very grateful for it, and I think a lot of people are benefiting from it.

Which one do you think has sold more, my Prosperity Gospel book or Purpose Driven Life? Do you know

Purpose Driven Life? I've heard of it. Whose do you think sold more? You can say international if you want to.

I haven't checked the stats on that recently. Okay. What are you reading right now?

I'm reading a novel by Cormac McCarthy. Blood Meridian. That's correct.

Did you not want me to say that? I don't know. Well, it's out there now. Who is your favorite fiction writer?

You're a big fiction guy. Different authors are good at different things. We were driving here, and you mentioned

Tolstoy and the Russians. Tolstoy and Dostoevsky are just amazing at describing the human condition almost like nobody else's business.

But when it comes to things that are more relatable to this world in the here and the now, it's going to be more

American authors that I find. I'm not a...

I'm just like, meh, when I read him. I mean, he obviously is gifted with a pen, but I just...

I find that kind of mid -20th century existentialism so barren and unimaginative in a way.

It's like you guys just all bought into this existentialist worldview, and you don't really have a lot of interesting things to say.

You behold the beauty of humanity. So, you know, thinking of Hemingway's...

For Whom the Bell Tolls? No, the... The Sun Also Rises? I forget which one.

The Italian War. Call to Arms? Farewell to Arms.

Spanish Civil War? You know, okay, you have this glorious scene at the end of him beholding the death of the one he loves.

And it's just... It's so eloquent and so beautiful, but then he walks out and just kind of the rain comes and washes it all away, and that's it.

And it's like, really? That's all you got? Just rain washes everything away. And in his worldview, yeah, it does.

And it's just like, life is so much better and richer. So, yes, you are a glorious novelist.

I appreciate that. But finally, if all you can give me is nihilism, I'm not that interested.

It's not that imaginative. Which is part of the reason why you appreciated the writing... So when you say Hemingway, I'm just like, meh.

Yeah. You appreciated the writing in Stoner, but the end of his thing was like, my ultimate satisfaction in life comes from the joy of having pursued something great in academia.

Yeah, no, that's right. It's just finally empty. So anti -Christian worldviews are finally not that interesting or imaginative.

You know what I mean? Yeah. No matter how well they craft it. And they can craft it. Now, okay, let me say this.

There's another contemporary novelist. I'm not going to say the novel, because I wouldn't necessarily encourage people to read it, because it's got problems with it.

Nonetheless, this particular author's ability to describe the human condition — this is a living author —

I happened to read it one evening, and then I got home. I was reading it through the evening, and then

I climbed into bed, and I was staying at my parents' house at the time, and they had a little John Piper book sitting on the bed stand, and I picked it up, and I read a few pages.

It was interesting to me that the Piper book, as any book of theology will do, described all the right principles, said all the right things.

It was good. Yet compared to this novelist's ability to sort of describe the human, the

Piper book, for as good as it was, almost felt a little two -dimensional next to this novelist, and that's not me knocking

Piper at all. Genuinely, he writes wonderful things, and it is a once -in -a -generation gift to the

Church, so deeply grateful for his writing. Nonetheless, the craft of this novelist was this

I think finely hedonistic, godless novelist.

It was amazing, his ability to do that. So, you know, we plunder the

Egyptians, as Calvin said, for the good that they have. I think Exodus says that.

I think that phrase, plundering the Egyptians, I guess it is in Exodus, sure.

But as Calvin talked about plundering the Egyptians for the literary knowledge and the scientific knowledge that they give us, yes, we should certainly do.

But in the end, I'm just never overwhelmed, like, oh, that's amazing! It's like, okay, yeah, you're being a non -Christian.

Extremely gifted, brilliant non -Christian, but finally everything you're doing is a little predictable. Outside of your books, what theology books would you like to see more popular?

Would you like to get into the hands of more Church members? People listening to this, maybe if they haven't read it, buy it, read it.

Well, I think what I'm often, I mean, I'm going to say the other nine marks books, if I could say that, but okay, excepting nine marks books,

I would say your book on prosperity gospel. That's a nine marks book. Oh, okay. I'm often pushing people towards biblical theologies.

Brian Morales? Wait, Brian Morales? No. Well, that's the one that you

Michael Morales on Leviticus. I have not actually read that.

Who Shall Us in the Mountain of the Lord? But I do push people towards biblical theologies because it helps them put their

Bible together. I think that's crucial. Recently, right now I'm reading a book with a couple of brothers in the church, just the classic

Ed Welch book when people are big and God is small. I think that's a crucial one, especially for men to read.

I think it's helpful for them. I think that's it.

Do you have any questions for me? What's your next book? My next book that I'm going to read?

That I'm going to write. After this one I've said no more. In order to write a book, you should really have something to say.

I think the reason why I'm doing this podcast is because I don't really have much to say other than when I get up in the pulpit and I've spent all week staring at the

Bible, then my heart is full of good things to say. And you say it. Amen. Huh? And then you say what you say from the

Bible. Amen. That's right. And then people are helped, but it's really God's word. And the purpose of this podcast is you're trying to get others to say things.

People who have thought really well about things who really need to say something. Well, what I appreciate about you is you're a good increasingly you remind me of a squirrel.

Thanks, man. I get chipmunked more often because of my cheeks, but let's spin this out a little bit. You are constantly scavenging for good acorns, good nuts, and you're kind of drawing them in and then you're taking them apart and consuming them and also then sharing them with others.

Unlike a squirrel. That's really you know, my kids found a squirrel.

We raised him for a little while. His name was Scrappy. Seriously? Yeah, that can be my nickname, Scrappy. Okay.

Before we go, maybe the most important part of the show. Do you know where the general keeps his armies?

No. In his sleevies? Now, see, that's a dad joke. That is. But here's just a factoid that I think you'll appreciate.

I was reading in the Wall Street Journal the other day that one in four babies born on Earth is

Chinese. Did you hear this? No. Yeah. It's just I went home and I told Amber, I was like, wow,

I'm really relieved that when our daughter was born, she wasn't Chinese. Because you think, like, what are the odds?

Like, one in four. Yeah, I don't even feel like I should.

Should I acknowledge that? I mean, this is kind of an awkward moment. I'm not really sure how to respond to that.

How do we even end this show? Probably with prayer. You started us with prayer. I'll close with prayer. Thank you, brother.

This has been really good. Lord Jesus, thank you so much for loving us and demonstrating that love for us in your son,

Jesus Christ, and his finished work on the cross, and even his ministry now at your right hand, ever pleading our innocence.

Thank you for the gift of friends, the gift of joy and mirth, even as we consider serious things.

Lord, we pray that those who have watched and listened to this episode will be edified by it and that they will be resolved in their hearts to exercise authority and to submit to authority to the glory of your name with more faith than ever.