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You have been conveyed out of the dark kingdom and into
the kingdom of Christ.
So act like it, Paul
says. Don't let anyone cheat you by taking you
back into the old ways, and seeking after the
old power. Seek the new power that is yours in
Him.
In previous articles of this
series, we've discussed
common misconceptions about spiritual
power, the
nature of genuine spiritual power in the
life of the Christian and the church, and the
need for spiritual power. Our anchor
verse in this series has been Colossians 1:11,
"Strengthened with all might, according to His
glorious power."
In this article we come to a
third point that every Christian needs to
understand about spiritual power: the
magnitude of genuine spiritual power — the
vastness of it.
Genuine spiritual power is not
power on a human scale, or by human
measurements. Because it is God’s power, it is
infinite power. It is limitless power. And it is
sovereign power. In other words, it is power
that God makes available to Christians according
to our need, as He alone in His perfect wisdom
knows our need. It is power that He commands,
not power that we can demand. It is power that
operates not for our selfish, fleshly interests,
but for the glory of God.
Dunamis: Inherent Power
In Colossians 1:11, the Apostle
Paul by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit uses
two different words for power. He uses one of
those words twice, in two different forms. The
phrase “strengthened with all might” uses the
Greek word dunamis twice
— once as a noun,
and once as a verb. Dunamis is an
interesting word. It’s the word from which we
get our English word dynamite. In the Greek,
it’s a word that signifies inherent power
— in other words,
the kind of power that something or someone has
because of its nature. A stick of dynamite is a
good basic example of that kind of power.
Because of the chemical makeup of the material
that is in that stick of dynamite, it has the
inherent power to act as an explosive under the
right conditions —
for example, when heat or fire is applied to it.
Paul uses this word dunamis
with good reason. It was a word that the
Colossian believers had heard often. Colosse was
a center of a particularly fanatical form of
paganism. The Colossians were a Christian
minority living among a fervently pagan
majority. Among the pagan Greeks and Romans of
New Testament times, the word dunamis was
one of the words they most often used to
describe their false deities. They would ascribe
power to Cybele as the goddess of the earth; to
Apollo as the god of health; to Athena as the
goddess of wisdom; to Zeus or Jupiter as the
ruler of the gods; to Mars as the god of war.
All of these gods, the Greeks said, had
dunamis, inherent power, in their various
realms. And so their worship of these deities
was a way of accessing or appropriating the
power, the dunamis, that these pagan deities
supposedly possessed.
We stand on firm Biblical ground
in saying that these pagan deities did possess
dunamis, inherent power
— but it was and is
demonic power, Satanic power, the power of the
kingdom of darkness. And dear friends, I believe
that we are also on firm Biblical ground in
saying that the counterfeit power that is in
operation in so many churches today is Satanic power. It is from the realm of the evil
one. It is his deception. It is his counterfeit.
Jesus said in John 8:44 that Satan is a liar and
the father of lies, and Jesus told the
unbelieving religious rulers during His days on
earth that they were of their father the devil.
It is the same with the spiritual charlatans
that we find among us today. They are of their
father the devil.
Even many sincere Christians and
churches today fall into the trap of seeking
after the wrong dunamis — the presumed
dunamis of an impressive facility; the
misleading dunamis of a large crowd; the
deceptive dunamis of emotion; the
ensaring dunamis of a leader’s personality; the
untrustworthy dunamis of human skill, competency, and
organization — the inherent power of
things that appeal to the eyes, to the flesh,
and to pride (1 John 2:15-17), things that are
passing away, things that have no inherent value
in God's economy.
In contrast, Paul says this to the
Colossian believers: My prayer is that you will
have the true dunamis, the true power of
God through Jesus Christ. Because of what Christ
has done for you on the Cross, and by His
resurrection from the dead, you have been
delivered from the power of darkness (Colossians
1:12). You have been conveyed out of that dark kingdom and into
the kingdom of Jesus Christ, the dear Son of
God.
So act like it, Paul says.
Don’t walk in the old ways.
Don’t seek after the old power. Don’t seek after
the old, fleshly wisdom. Don’t let anyone cheat
you by taking you back into the false things
that you left behind when you came to Christ. My
prayer, Paul says, is that you will be empowered
with the genuine dunamis, the power of
the one true and living God.
Kratos:
Demonstrated Power
And then Paul uses a second word
for power in Colossians 1:11. First we have, "Strengthened with all might." Those
words are two uses of dunamis. But then
we come to this: "according to His glorious
power" — literally,
"in accordance with the power of His glory." The
word for power in that phrase is the Greek word
kratos, and it means demonstrated
power. Dunamis means inherent
power. Kratos means demonstrated
power.
The stick of dynamite, sitting in
the box, has dunamis. It has inherent
power because of its nature, its makeup and
composition. But when you apply a match or a
spark to that dynamite, and the explosion
happens, you have demonstrated power. Now
you really know it was a stick of dynamite, and
not just a stick of wood that somebody painted
red and put in the box.
The pagans also used this word
kratos, demonstrated power. In secular Greek
literature we find this term being used to
describe the power of earthly rulers. At the
time of the book of Colossians it was a term
that was used especially to denote the power of
the Roman Empire and the Roman emperor. But the
thing that the pagans did not understand was
that any power that earthly rulers have is only
theirs because God has given it to them. Christ
is the One who governs all thrones, and
dominions, and principalities, and powers
(Colossians 1:16). He is the One who sets up one
earthly ruler, and puts down another. The power
that is above and behind the temporal powers
that we see here on earth is spiritual power,
the glorious power of God in Christ.
Genuine spiritual power, God’s
power, is the kratos kind of power. It is
demonstrated power. It’s not something that we
can only talk about in the abstract. It is not
just theoretical power. It is actual power. It
is demonstrated power. It is power at work. It
is "the power of His glory" – the power that is
inherent in the glory of God, the power that is
demonstrated in His glorious acts.
The
Magnitude of Spiritual Power
The power that is available to
believers to live the Christian life, and to the
church to carry out its Christ-ordained mission, is God’s glorious
power. It is demonstrated power. I want to
mention three things that we find in God’s Word
that tell us about the magnitude, the vastness,
of that power.
First of all, the power of God
that is available to believers for living the
Christian life is the power that created and
sustains the universe. "You are worthy, O Lord,
to receive glory and honor and power; for You
created all things, and by Your will they exist
and were created" (Revelation 4:11). "In the
beginning was the Word [Jesus Christ], and the
Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was
in the beginning with God. All things were made
by Him, and without Him nothing was made that
was made (John 1:1-2).
Paul also speaks of it in the following verses
of Colossians chapter one: "He
[Jesus Christ] is the image of the invisible
God, the firstborn over all creation. For by Him
all things were created that are in heaven and
that are on earth, visible and invisible,
whether thrones or dominions or principalities
or powers. All things were created by Him and
for Him. And He is before all things, and by Him
all things consist" (Colossians 1:15-17).
Literally, by Christ all things "hang together"
— the creation, the
principalities and powers, the laws that govern
the operation of the realms both seen and unseen
— all of it. The
power of God that is available to believers for
living the Christian life is the power that
created and sustains the universe.
Secondly, the power of God that
is available to believers for living the
Christian life, and to His church for carrying
out its mission, is the power that raised Jesus
Christ from the dead. "God both raised up the
Lord [Jesus Christ] and will also raise us up by
His power" or dunamis (1 Corinthians
6:14) Jesus was "declared to be the Son of God
with power [dunamis] according to the
Spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the
dead" (Romans 1:4). Colossians 2:15 tells us
that in being nailed to the cross Jesus
"disarmed principalities and powers, He made a
public spectacle of them, triumphing over them
in it" (the cross and in the resurrection). The
power of God that is available to believers and
the church is the power that raised Jesus Christ
from the dead.
Thirdly, the power of God that is
available to individual believers and to the
church as a body is the same power that will
raise us from the dead at the Last Day. "God
will redeem my soul from the power of the grave,
for He shall receive me" (Psalm 49:15). Paul
prays for the Ephesian believers, in chapter one
of that epistle, in much the same way that he
prays for the Colossians:
"That you may know [oida,
experiential, empirical knowledge, not merely
theoretical] what is the hope of His calling,
what are the riches of the glory of His
inheritance in the saints, and what is the
exceeding greatness of His power [dunamis,
inherent power] toward us who believe, according
to the working of His mighty power [kratos,
demonstrated power] which He worked in Christ
when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him
at His right hand in the heavenly places, far
above all principality and power and might and
dominion, and every name that is named, not only
in this age but also in that which is to come"
(Ephesians 1:18-21).
The power of God that is
available to believers for living the Christian
life here and now, and for the church to do its
two-fold work of proclaiming the Gospel to the
world and building up the saints in sound
doctrine, is the same power that will raise us
from the dead to enter into a glorious
inheritance at the Last Day.
Are You Still Relying on the Old Power?
Are you, or your church, still seeking after and
relying upon the old power — the power of the
flesh, the power of the kingdom of darkness? Or,
are you and your church thinking and living as
God commands you to — as those who have been
conveyed out of the kingdom of darkness, and
into the kingdom of the Son of the Father's
love, who possesses all power, and who has been
given all authority in heaven and on earth
(Matthew 28:18)?
Paul exhorts us, "Be strong [endunamo, be
endued with inherent strength] in the Lord, and
in the power [kratos, demonstrated power]
of His might [ischus, His personal,
forceful ability]" (Ephesians 6:10). We must heed the words of the
Lord through the prophet Jeremiah:
"Thus says the Lord: 'Cursed is the man who
trusts in man and makes flesh his strength,
whose heart departs from the Lord.
"For he shall be like a shrub in the desert, and
shall not see when good comes, but shall inhabit
the parched places in the wilderness, in a salt
land which is not inhabited.
"Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, and
whose hope is the Lord.
"For he shall be like a tree planted by the
waters, which spreads out its roots by the
river, and will not fear when heat comes; but
its leaf will be green, and will not be anxious
in the year of drought, nor will cease from
yielding fruit.
"The heart is deceitful above all things, and
desperately wicked; who can know it?
"I, the Lord, search the heart, I test the mind,
even to give every man according to his ways,
according to the fruit of his doings.' "
(Jeremiah 17:5-10).
Next: The Purpose of Spiritual Power
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