The New Testament has the authority to teach us and tell us how to live our lives. Authority is the intrinsic right something has to govern and make demands of us, and our duty to obey it. No one likes to be bossed around, but as members of the church of Christ, we need to realize that the New Testament has every right to do just that.
The authority of Jesus
The New Testament is given authority by Jesus Christ. He came to Earth with divine authority, because He is God in the flesh. John 1:1 says, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” And in John 10:30, Jesus said, “I and the Father are one.”
People understood that Jesus was not speaking to them as a mere teacher; he possessed authority. At the end of the Sermon on the Mount “the crowds were astonished at his teaching, for he was teaching them as one who had authority, and not as their scribes” (Matthew 7:28-29). Jesus did not appeal to other authorities or try to prove the veracity of his words through other arguments; he said “I say to you.” he was the authority in himself.
Jesus was declared the son of God and showed his power over death in the resurrection; that proves his claims to authority. And because Jesus had authority, so does the New Testament.
The authority of the apostles
Jesus didn’t write the New Testament, but he vested power in his apostles, to give them the authority to preach and teach on his behalf.
He first gave them authority over sickness and demons. In Matthew 10:1, he “called to him his twelve disciples and gave them authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal every disease and every affliction.” Later he gave them the keys of Heaven and the powers of binding and loosing (Matthew 18:18). Binding means to restrict, and loosing means to permit. The apostles were given the power to make decisions in alignment with God’s will. They were not dictating morality to God, but verbalizing and acting in accordance with God’s decrees. And in John 20:23, Jesus gave them the ability to forgive sins, based on the will of God and the special insight they’d been granted. In short, the apostles became ambassadors of Christ.
In the New Testament, there is no material difference between the word of Jesus and the word of his apostles.
When we reject Peter or Paul’s teachings, we’re rejecting the authority of Christ. And the New Testament’s authority permeates through other men who were not apostles but were imbued with the Holy Spirit and given the gift of prophecy, like Luke, Mark, and Jude. Jesus is the cornerstone of the church, and the apostles are the foundation.
What this means for us
We don’t have to guess how God wants us to live our lives; the New Testament is our objective, authoritative truth. It has the authority to tell us our mission, the seeking of souls. It has the authority to tell us how to worship. It has authority on morality. Jesus Christ is our Lord and Savior, and his authority reaches us through the New Testament, through his and the apostles’ words.
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