Today, Donald Trump was sworn in as the 47th President under the U.S. Constitution. Will we view him as having taken office or as holding office? Is that difference just a matter of semantics? I think not. It goes to the core of what legitimates the authority of those in public office, which is a fundamental issue bubbling under our nation’s civil unrest and electoral mood swings.
The difference is explained in the story of Moses recounted by the first Christian martyr, Stephen. Moses was, like Trump will be, the leader of a nation.
As we will see, Stephen, by the guidance of the Holy Spirit, supplements the revelation about legitimate authority found in Exodus with the “riches” of the “wisdom and knowledge” that rest in his “acknowledgement of the mystery of God, and of the Father, and of Christ” (Colossians 2:2-4, all quotations from the KJV).
Stephen tells his audience that Moses “was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians” and was “mighty in words and deeds.” At age 40, he goes to the Hebrew encampment and finds an Egyptian treating one of the Hebrew slaves badly. He looks around and decides to defend his brother by killing the Egyptian.
What Stephen adds to the revelation in Exodus is that Moses “supposed his brethren would have understood how that God, by his hand, would deliver them.” But “they understood not.” We will find out that Moses didn’t understand legitimate authority either.
The next day, Moses runs into them again “as they strove, and he would have set them at one again saying, ‘Sirs, your brethren, why do you wrong one another?’” But the Hebrew in the wrong “thrust him away saying, ‘Who made thee a ruler and a judge over us? Wilt thou kill me as thou didst the Egyptian yesterday?’” (Acts 7:26-28).
The fundamental element of the story that Stephen adds to the revelation in Exodus is that Moses “fled at this saying” (Acts 7:29). He didn’t flee just out of fear that his murderous act might be known, as recounted in Exodus.
What is Stephen getting at that God must now be revealing in Christ?
I submit it is this: Christ and the exercise of his mediatory offices of prophet, priest, and king is the complete and final revelation about the nature of authority and power, and by that kind of power and authority even the promised “new heavens and a new earth” could be ushered in (Isaiah 65:17, 66:22). “In Christ, . . . old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new” (2 Corinthians 5:17). That is authority and power!
Let’s apply this proposition in the context we’re considering.
Moses, before his desert experience, seemed to think that deliverance comes about by the wisdom of the Egyptians and by mighty words and mighty power. That was how he had seen power and authority work. The power of the sword. That would deliver his brethren.
But on the next day, the Hebrew Moses had saved effectively says to him, “Who put you over us? And upon the principle of the sword I saw you apply, how do I know you won’t apply it to me, too?” What this Hebrew said to him shook Moses to his core, and he took off.
Stephen continues. “And when 40 years were expired,” God comes to Moses in the burning bush (Acts 7: 30). Notice what God says and who the dominate actor is, “I have seen in the affliction of my people, which is in Egypt, and I have heard their groaning and (I) am come down to deliver them. And now come, I will send thee into Egypt.”
Forty years is important. Moses spent 40 years being steeped in the wisdom of the Egyptians. The means by which they waged war to conquer others would be the means by which he would deliver his people. I suspect it took 40 years for God to work that wisdom out of him so that he would appreciate the difference between taking an office by human power and exercising it, and holding an office to which he had been sent by God and exercising it in His way.
If Christians think that power gives legitimacy to our leaders, by that power they act, and by that power our nation will be delivered from its turmoil and unrest, our nation may need few more decades of unraveling for God to work that kind of thinking out of His people. Such thinking says offices are things to be taken, not things to be held as from God through Christ.
I submit that the only legitimacy of any office is to be found in Christ and in acknowledging, by faith, the providential administration of His offices through those God sends us.
