Dominion, Authority and Stewardship

AUTHORITY, DOMINION AND STEWARDSHIP

                “Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image according to Our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth. And God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.” Gen. 1:26, 27

                God created Adam and Eve in His own image and then He breathed His own Spirit into them and man became a living soul. In other words, when God formed Adam out of the dust, he lay there on the ground inert and lifeless. He was a dead body and a dead soul until God breathed His life, His Spirit into Adam and then Adam became a living soul, or a living being, created in God’s image.

                So as a being created in God’s image and containing the very life-giving Spirit of God Adam was given dominion over the entire earth and everything in it. And as long as Adam had the Spirit of God in him, he also had the dominion, the authority and the stewardship over this planet.

                Adam and Eve were a king and a queen over the works of God’s hands and yet, because of Satan’s lies, they handed that dominion over to this fallen rebel. In that same hour, the Spirit of God departed from Adam and with that departure, Adam lost his dominion, his authority and his stewardship and he became a slave… a victim of all that God had created rather than its master.

                God’s judgment upon Adam was: “By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground because from it you were taken; for you are dust and to dust you shall return.” Gen 3:19.

                Now John told us in 1 John 3: 8 that Jesus came to destroy the works of the devil. And in Luke 9:1, 2 it says” And He (Jesus) called the twelve together and gave them POWER and AUTHORITY over all the demons, and to heal DISEASES. And He sent them out to proclaim the KINGDOM OF GOD and to perform healing.”

                In Luke 12:42-44 the Lord said: Who then is the faithful and sensible STEWARD, whom his master put in charge of his servants to give them their rations at the proper time? Blessed is that slave whom his master finds so doing when he comes. Truly I say to you, that he will put him in charge of all his possessions.”

                We need to understand that when Jesus came to earth as a man, he did so as the second Adam to destroy the works of the devil, to reverse the curse and to restore to mankind the authority, the dominion and the stewardship that Adam lost in the fall and He does that by putting His Spirit back into us just as Adam had it before the fall. It is only as spiritual beings that we have authority.

                What is implied in Luke 12:42-44 is that if we will be faithful stewards over what God has given us in our own small domain, then He will someday restore to us the dominion over all of the works of His hands, even as Adam had authority at the beginning.

                So when we are born again and God places His Spirit in us, He places within us the potential to rule over all of the works of His hands. I say that it is potential, because even though we have received His Spirit, we must learn through experience how to live by that Spirit. We have immediate territory over which God gives us authority, dominion and stewardship and if we will learn how to exercise that authority, dominion and stewardship over our own small domain then when He returns He will give us authority over all of the works of His hands and this is what is meant by our reigning with Jesus Christ as kings and priests.

                So in other words, if we, as born again Christians, find ourselves with our lives in chaos, our bodies in ruin and being harassed and dominated by the devil, what does this tell us about our stewardship, our dominion and our authority. What have we done with what God has given us? Are we learning to take authority over demons? Have we become faithful stewards of our bodies? Do we have dominion over our small piece of the world, or is it all in a shambles?

                We as Christians have grossly misunderstood our authority, our dominion and our stewardship and having misunderstood it, we live lives that are often out of control in one way or the other. An example of misapplied stewardship for instance would be this: “I believe God for my healing, so I am just going to live on jelly donuts and trust God to heal me when my body is in ruin.”

                You see, that is really false faith and it is a grossly misapplied sense of stewardship. 1Thess 5:22, 23 says: “Abstain from every form of evil. Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you entirely; and may your spirit and soul and body be preserved complete without blame at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. This then is the full work of the Spirit in us, that we would be preserved spirit, soul and body at the coming of the Lord.

                We as Christians often live chaotic and uncontrolled lives because we don’t seem to catch on to the fact that God wants to preserve us in all aspects of our being. The Spirit controlled life will come under the authority of the Holy Spirit in every aspect of life, for as born again children of God we have been given authority, dominion and stewardship over that which God has placed in our hands.

                We forget that one of the fruits of the Spirit is self- control, or temperance and so while we claim faith and spiritual authority over the works of the devil, we let our lives become chaotic, addictive, flesh controlled rather than Spirit controlled. We exercise no authority over our tongues in training them to speak only in agreement with God. We fail to take authority over our flesh so as to bring it into line with healthful living, we continue to be dominated by the world and its ways and we live as though we are still a part of Satan’s fallen kingdom rather than in the kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

                The Gospel that Jesus said must be preached to the entire world before the end can come is a Gospel that is not at all understood, or demonstrated by many Christians. The Gospel of the kingdom, is a Gospel of authority over all of the works of the devil… it is authority over demons, it is authority over sickness it is authority over the flesh, for God has restored in us the Spirit that Adam lost in the fall.

                We like to talk big as Christians about our God given authority and some Christians even believe that we are to take authority over the earth now before Jesus comes… but how can we assume authority over the world and over the works of God’s hands if we don’t even have authority over our household, or our lives, or our flesh or over our tongues, or our families or anything else that God has given us in our own little domain?

                This is a tough lesson, but in truth many Christians serve as poor examples of what Jesus has restored to us by His blood and sacrifice.  We go on living as slaves of everything over which God has given us authority.

                Now, this is such a hard teaching that I feel it necessary to spend the rest of it encouraging us to enter into a new level of faith in God. The truth is if we live by His Spirit we will not carry out the deeds of the flesh. (Romans 8:5-8) He will give us the victory. He will restore to us the dominion, authority and stewardship that we have lost over our lives.  He will sanctify us entirely spirit, soul and body if we will ask Him to make us into faithful stewards over what He has given us.

                The Gospel of the kingdom is a Gospel of authority, dominion and stewardship over the works of God’s hands. God is in the process of restoring everything that Adam lost in the fall, but we don’t receive all authority at once. We don’t have authority over this world. We are not ready for that yet. We are in training to rule and reign with Christ and that entails learning to live by the Spirit rather than by the flesh. We receive authority only as we learn to use it as Jesus did with all humility and longsuffering. We are in training to rule and reign with Christ.

                We need to face the fact that many of us who claim to have the full Gospel, do not have the full Gospel and our lives are out of control and we are often physical, mental and spiritual wrecks because while we understand the Gospel of salvation, we do not understand the Gospel of the kingdom in which the authority of Adam is being restored to us in increments as we learn by faith to walk in all that God is restoring to us.

                This principle is brought forward in the qualifications of an overseer in 1 Tim. 3:1-5 where it says: “It is a trustworthy statement; if any man aspires to the office of overseer, it is a fine work he desires to do. An overseer, then, must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, temperate, prudent, respectable, hospitable and able to teach, not addicted to wine, or pugnacious, but gentle, uncontentious, free from the love of money. He must be one who manages his own household well, keeping his children under control with all dignity, (but if this man does not know how to manage his own household, how will he take care of the church of God?)” In other words, a church leader must be one who can demonstrate dominion, authority and stewardship over his own life and household as he lives by the Spirit and not by the flesh.

                With these thoughts in mind then let us re-read Romans 8:8-14. Here Paul is getting right to the heart of what it means to be led by the Spirit rather than by the flesh:

                “…and those who are in the flesh cannot please God. However you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. But if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ he does not belong to Him. And if Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, yet the spirit is alive because of righteousness. But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who indwells you. So then brethren we are under obligation not to the flesh to live according to the flesh – for if you are living according to the flesh you must die; but if by the Spirit you are putting to death the deeds of the body, you will live. For all who are being led by the Spirit of God, these are the sons of God.”

                In every area of our lives God is restoring dominion, authority and stewardship. We have not truly understood this, but I am telling you that as we move into the final days of the harvest, the Gospel of the Kingdom is being restored and we must learn how to take back the dominion, the authority and the stewardship of our own lives before God will give us dominion over all of the works of His hands.

                The blunt truth is that if we are to live by the Spirit then we will often have to say “No” to the flesh, for the flesh is against the Spirit and the Spirit is against the flesh. IN fact, Paul bemoans the fact that He could not speak to the Corinthians as spiritual men, but as to men of flesh, as to babes in Christ.  1 Cor. 3:1, 2. If we are the final generation, should we not be moving into maturity? If we are aspiring to be the remnant sons of God, should we not be moving on to an unprecedented  new level of maturity?

                Now you may think by this that I am calling us to some sort of legalism, or self-imposed strictness. No, I am not. What I am saying is that we need to understand what Jesus is restoring to us through the Gospel of the kingdom. We also need to understand that we can do none of it in the flesh, for it is all done by His Spirit who dwells in us.

                But we do need to realize that if our lives are out of control and in chaos spiritually, mentally and physically, then we have not learned to be led by the Spirit as we should. Everything that God has called us to do; He has called us to do in a state of peace and rest. It is not by struggle and the sweat of our brow that God wants to restore us. That is what Adam faced after He lost his dominion. No, Jesus is calling us to a place of rest and that rest is found when we learn to live by His Spirit rather than by the flesh and as far is being restored and sanctified spirit, soul and body at the coming of our Lord 1 Thess. 5:24 says:

                “Faithful is He who calls you and He also will bring it to pass.”

                The Gospel of the Kingdom is a Gospel for the entire being and this is why Jesus went everywhere preaching the Gospel of the Kingdom and demonstrating its power, its authority and its stewardship, for indeed He was reversing the curse and restoring to mankind the authority that Adam lost in the fall.

                In the Christian world today, we have those who are all into health, but ignore the Spirit. We see others that are all into the intellectual scholarship but disdain the Spirit. There are others that live by the Spirit, while ignoring the physical and intellectual implications of the Gospel.

                I believe that God wants to bring all of the aspects of the Gospel of the kingdom together so that His Remnant people can demonstrate to the world the fullness of the sons of God. After all, the entire creation is waiting in eager anticipation for the revealing of the sons of God and if creation is still waiting, then we, the last generation need to find out what we have been missing in terms of the Gospel of the Kingdom and we need to put it in place by God’s grace, so that authority, dominion and stewardship can be restored to our lives, our homes and our churches.

                “For the anxious longing of the creation waits for the revealing of the sons of God, for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but because of Him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now. And not only this, but also we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our body…And in the same way the Spirit also helps our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we should, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groaning too deep for words; and He who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because He intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.” Romans 8:19-23, 26, 27.

                We will not be set completely free of corruption as long as we live in this fallen kingdom, but Christ came to restore our authority, dominion and stewardship and it is for these that we are in training so that when He comes we will be found as faithful stews of what He has given us by His Grace.

                In farming we see how faith and stewardship work together. God gives the sun, the air, the soil, the rain and the seed, but there will be no crop unless the farmer does his part… for the nature of judgment is whatever we sow, that will we also reap. A farmer is given stewardship over what God has supplied and as he does what farmers do, he reaps a harvest according to what he has planted. Faith does not change or replace these principles. Instead, faith leads us into cooperation with God and in doing so we are restored to dominion, authority and stewardship. We are in training to rule and reign with Christ.