The Sin of Power: The Deadliest of the 7 Deadly Sins

by Clarke Dixon

Of all the 7 deadly sins, the sin of power must be the worst. It has brought greater destruction into our world than the other seven which are listed as pride, greed, wrath, envy, lust, gluttony, and sloth. Wait, the sin of power is not one of the 7 deadly sins?! People with power must have came up with the list. That is one of the problems; people in power don’t see the sin in their power.

We often talk about the power of sin, today we are thinking about the sin of power.

In the events of Holy Week, between Palm Sunday and Good Friday, between the triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem and his crucifixion, we see the sin of power.

In the background there is a constant power struggle between Rome and the Judeans. When Jesus comes along, all the powers-that-be gang up against Jesus.

It begins with the religious leaders who want to overpower Jesus. All along they have been speaking against Jesus, trying to keep the people from following him. Jesus teaches with authority, much better than they do. Jesus does really good, helpful things, like heal people. They don’t seem to be as helpful.

Already you can imagine the jealousy. Jesus is a carpenter, what does he know compared to the educated religious elites? According to his teaching, quite a lot!

Worse, Jesus doesn’t obey the religious leaders. They say “no healing on a Sabbath.” Jesus heals on a Sabbath, and not just once.

Worst of all, Jesus goes around claiming to do what only God can do; forgive people. Who does he think he is?

This is what happens to us when we commit the sin of power, we become blinded to God. The religious leaders could not see in Jesus what many people were seeing in Jesus, namely; God is with us, or at least with Jesus, in some remarkable way.

It gets worse. As a power play to get Pilate to do their bidding, the religious leaders claim their greatest allegiance:

They cried out, “Away with him! Away with him! Crucify him!” Pilate asked them, “Shall I crucify your King?” The chief priests answered, “We have no king but the emperor.”

John 19:15 (NRSV)

This is the lowest point a leader of God’s people could sink to, shouting “we have no king but Caesar.” What happened to God’s promise of a king? What happened to the Scriptural witness that God was the true king?

That is what happens to us when we commit the sin of power, we forget God.

We may wonder, how can a Christian ever become abusive? The people of God can become abusive because power blinds us to God and makes us forget Him.

If it begins with the religious leaders, the sin of power continues with Pilate:

He took Jesus back into the headquarters again and asked him, “Where are you from?” But Jesus gave no answer. “Why don’t you talk to me?” Pilate demanded. “Don’t you realize that I have the power to release you or crucify you?”

John 19:9-10 (NLT)

Pilate is claiming to have significant power over Jesus here, the power of life and death. Jesus sets the record straight:

Then Jesus said, “You would have no power over me at all unless it were given to you from above.

John 19:11 (NLT)

This is what happens when we commit the sin of power, we overstep our God-given authority. When we overstep our God given authority we move from taking responsibility for people, to becoming abusive against them. Authority can be a beautiful, life-giving thing. It can also get ugly.

In the game of chess between the Romans and the Jews, the King becomes a pawn:

The soldiers wove a crown of thorns and put it on his head, and they put a purple robe on him. “Hail! King of the Jews!” they mocked, as they slapped him across the face.

Pilate went outside again and said to the people, “I am going to bring him out to you now, but understand clearly that I find him not guilty.” Then Jesus came out wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe. And Pilate said, “Look, here is the man!”

John 19:2-5 (NLT)

We easily get the idea that the Romans are mocking Jesus here with the crown of thorns, the purple robe, and the mock worship. What we can easily miss is how they are also mocking the Jewish people. In mocking Jesus as a most pathetic king, they are really mocking the Jewish people as a most pathetic nation. This continues through to the crucifixion with Pilate posting the charge against Jesus “the king of the Jews.” That was a slam against the Jews and the religious leaders knew it, and hated it.

This is what happens to us when we commit the sin of power, we belittle others. We mock them, we find ways of making them appear pathetic, of making ourselves look superior. We win. Of course we win, for they are losers. The sin of power puts us in that mindset, it clouds our perception of others.

Perhaps the most powerful of all are the soldiers who pull the trigger, or in this case, hammer the nails. They are the ones trained in the art of enforcing power.

They would not have carried through with their grim sin of power if it had not all begun in the minds of the Jewish religious leaders. If the religious leaders wanted to keep their power, they had better deal with their Jesus problem. The religious leaders would not have been able to carry out their sin of power without Pilate. If Pilate wanted to keep his power, he had better deal with this Jesus problem who had now become his problem. Then the soldiers carried out the sin of power when they hammered in the nails and raised the cross. If the soldiers wanted to keep their privileged positions of power, they had better deal with this Jesus problem who had now become their problem.

This is what happens to us when we commit the sin of power, we become complicit in killing.

When we commit the sin of power, we become complicit in the killing of people’s dignity, freedom, innocence, dreams, aspirations, mental health, and faith. Sometimes it really does become deadly.

Jesus, in entering Jerusalem on a donkey the way he did, enters Jerusalem in a way that says “I am the rightful king here. I am the one in charge.” Publicly he has been quiet about his all along. Evil demons who knew his identity better than anyone were told to keep quiet. When Peter expressed that Jesus is the Messiah, the disciples were told to be quiet. Little wonder, when Jesus is public about his identity as the Messiah, as the rightful king, he is killed in less than a week.

Yet here he is, riding into Jerusalem on a donkey. Jesus is a different kind of king of a different kind of kingdom. And being the rightful king he took his place, not on a throne, but on a cross.

The religious leaders together with the Roman leaders committed the sin of power. Jesus was different, he broke the power of sin. 

Jesus could have overpowered all who opposed him. As a famous song points out, he could have called 10,000 angels, not just to rescue him, but to destroy his enemies.

Instead he took the nails.

Then said Jesus, Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.

Luke 23:34 (KJV)

Instead of destroying his enemies, Jesus loved them, giving them the opportunity to be reconciled. Are we learning to love our enemies the way Jesus loved his? Are we learning to love our enemies the way Jesus loves us?

Are we stuck in our all-too-human ways of committing the sin of power against others, or has the power of sin been undone by the power of God’s love?

Perhaps we might even be committing the deadliest of the deadly sins by trying to rid ourselves of God. That is a sin of power. A desire to rid ourselves of God leads to separation from God, now and especially into eternity. That is the power of sin. But we can be forgiven through Jesus, reconciled to God. We can go from enemy to family. That is the power of God’s love.

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The full sermon can be watched on its own or as part of this “online worship expression” Clarke Dixon is a pastor in Ontario, Canada.

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Today Christianity 201 begins year twelve! Thank you for joining us each day.

Reading Biblical Literature

Passage One:

^{John 13:3} Jesus knew that the Father had put all things under his power, and that he had come from God and was returning to God; ⁴ so he got up from the meal, took off his outer clothing, and wrapped a towel around his waist. ⁵ After that, he poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples’ feet, drying them with the towel that was wrapped around him.

Passage Two:

^{Mark 10:17} As Jesus started on his way, a man ran up to him and fell on his knees before him. “Good teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”

¹⁸ “Why do you call me good?” Jesus answered. “No one is good—except God alone…”

In the first passage, Jesus knows who he is, where he has come from and where he is going. He then performs an act of great humility.

In the second passage, it could be seen by some that Jesus is distancing himself from God. The Reformation Study Bible notes:

Jesus’ reply does not mean that He does not consider Himself good. He rather wants to show the man that “No one is good except God alone,” so that the man may realize that all his works do not make him good, and that he is not capable of earning eternal life.

The question is meant to challenge the rich young man in the story, but if people are looking for Biblical contradictions — and many are — they might seize on this one.  It is for that reason I titled today’s thoughts “Reading Biblical Literature.” One needs to know what they are reading at the time.

Passage one shows the servant heart of Jesus, but it places that in direct contrast to his divinity. Again, the Reformation Study Bible is helpful here:

Jesus’ humble conduct was not because He forgot His rank as incarnate God the Son. His act demonstrates that rank and privilege are not occasions for arrogance, but are higher credentials for service.

I am always drawn back to the passage in Philippians 2, which I personally render as “…although he was God, he did not think his divinity was something to be leveraged.”

There’s a simple saying in real estate that the top three things in selling a house are “Location, location, location.” Similarly in Bible interpretation, the top three things are context, context, context.

But as easy at is to resolve Passage Two above by saying, “He was simply asking a rhetorical question” or “He was simply challenging the young man” (Some simply shrug their shoulders and say, “We cannot understand it; it is mystery.”) Those are good starts, and I don’t want to eliminate the element of mystery, but I think we can also resolve this by looking at the issue of interpretation through knowing the character of Christ.

This reminds me of the time someone said to me, “I don’t know everything about the book, but I know the author.”

Don’t you love the fact that Jesus knew who he was and where he was from and where he was going, but can also look into the eyes of someone and almost playfully, humorously ask, “Why do you call me good; there is no one good except God?”

When we engage in the academic, somewhat dry process of “reading Biblical literature,” we can easily get bogged down in the weeds.

We do it best when we see that we are reading Christ.

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Dive Deeper:

This week in an exchange with a local pastor, I brought another friend into the conversation which resulted in a link to an article titled Jesus’s Humor. The article is too long to publish here, and I tried to think of a way I could incorporate some of the material devotionally. The author says,

…The entire Sermon on the Mount, in the original Greek, reads like a stand-up comedy routine. This has been translated out of the version you read in the Bible, but Jesus’s original words have all the hallmarks of humor…

I thought the phrase translated out was rather interesting and perhaps signals a systemic problem in understanding the interactions Jesus has with everyone from seekers to Pharisees.

The article is long, but it might be the best thing you read this week! I find approaches like this really make the Gospels come alive.

Jesus: His Glory and His Greatness

Clarke Dixon, who normally occupies this space on Thursdays, suggested today that we use the sermon notes from the person who replaced him on a recent Sunday. I agreed; this is great material to review.

by Blake Tufford

Part One: The Glorious Person of our Lord Jesus Christ

What do we learn about Him in this passage from Hebrews chapter 1?

First, He’s greater than all the prophets. In the past god has spoken through them many times, and in many different ways. He has spoken miraculously through a prophet like Elijah. Elijah stood up bravely against wicked King Ahab and all the false prophets of Baal. Through his prayer God sent down fire to consume a water drenched sacrifice, and then sent rain to end a four year drought. But Jesus is greater than Elijah! God has also spoken through Isaiah. He’s the one who wrote of Christ’s suffering 500 years before it happened. Isaiah predicted He would be “wounded for our transgressions, bruised for our iniquities, that the chastisement of our sins would be placed on Him, and that through His stripes we would be healed”. But Christ is greater than Isaiah! God also spoke miraculously through Jeremiah.

Again, centuries before Christ’s birth he wrote: “Behold the days are coming declares the Lord, when I will raise up for David a righteous branch, and He shall reign as King and deal wisely, and shall execute justice and judgement…. And this is the name by which he shall be called, The Lord our righteousness”! And our Jesus is greater than Jeremiah, and greater than all the other prophets. It is He who has spoken in these last days. We read in the first chapter of John’s gospel, ‘In the beginning was the word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God…. And the word became flesh and dwelt among us”. Jesus is God’s final word and we do well to hear Him. God is speaking to us in these last days through Jesus.

Second, He is greater than the angels. In fact it is He whom the angels worship. (v.6), and it is He who sends out the angels (v.7). Angels are associated with all the great events in the old and new testaments. It was an angel who came to Mary with the astonishing news, troubling news for her, that she was to give birth to the son of God. It was angels who met the shepherds with good news of great joy. And it will be angels who will join with all creation in singing His praises in heaven. Rev. 5:12, myriads of them, thousands and thousands singing “worthy is the Lamb who was slain to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might, and honor and glory and blessing.” But Jesus is far greater than angels.

Third, He is the one through whom the world was created (v2). That truth is also repeated in John 1, “All things were made through him, and without Him nothing was made that was made.” He was with God from the beginning when the world was created. He is the great creator.

Next, His person He radiates the glory of God (v3). He is “the radiation of the glory of god, and the exact image of his nature.” It is no surprise to us then that He Himself said, “He that has seen Me has seen the Father”(John 14:9) He is God the Son, second person in the trinity, fully God and fully man.

Finally, He is altogether lovely. And as He is indeed altogether lovely, He is also altogether loving. His nature is love. Rom. 5:8 says “In this He has manifested his love in that while we were yet sinners,(even His open enemies), He gave Himself for us.  And we read in Galatians that having once loved his people, He loved them to the end. Jesus is love personified. Jesus is glorious in every way.

The greatness of His person: The one who is greater than the prophets, greater than the angels, the great creator, the one who radiates God’s presence, and reflects His love. He is God’s final word. It is no wonder then that we read in Phil. 2 that there is a coming day when every eye will see Him, every ear will hear His voice, and every knee will bow before him.

Let’s be sure we are those who hear Him now.

Part Two: The Greatness of His Work

We’re thinking now of what He has done, what He is doing now, and what He will yet do. Jesus holds the offices of Prophet, Priest and King. As our Prophet He fulfills all the promises we find in scripture to shed light on our path, to guide us on the way, and to direct our lives. As our Priest He fulfills all the promises found in scripture concerning pardon, forgiveness, peace with God. As our king he fulfills all scriptural promises concerning defence from our enemies, protection in danger, deliverance from evil.

I want us to think more specifically about His priestly role, all He has done to secure our salvation. It is important we do so because He is not one of several ways to God, He is the only way. “Neither is there salvation in any other for there is no other name under heaven given among men whereby we may be saved,” (Acts 4:12)

First,  He is our mediator. “For there is one God and one mediator between God and man, the Man Christ Jesus.”(1Tim 2:5) We can’t come through our church, we can’t come through His mother Mary, nor through any of the saints. No, we come through Christ alone. “He only can unlock the gates of heaven and let us in.

Second, He is our substitute, our sin bearer. I’m going to the Old Testament book of Isaiah again to read these familiar words. “He was wounded for our transgression, He was bruised for our iniquity, the punishment that brought us peace was upon Him, the Lord has lain on Him the iniquity of us all.” Think of the wonder of that; He endured the punishment our sins deserved. “All my iniquity on him was laid. All my indebtedness by him was paid”.

Third, He is our propitiation. This is one of my favourite words! John 2:2 “He is the propitiation for our sins.” Other versions say atoning sacrifice. He is the one who took God’s anger. He removed it. We often hear “God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life”. But how often do we hear “God is angry with the sinner every day.” (Psalm7:11, KJV) In His holiness god cannot abide sin, but the wonderful news is that Christ propitiates that anger. He removed it by being punished in our place.

Fourth, He is our redeemer, the one who buys us back from slavery to sin .”In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of god’s grace.” (Eph. 1:7) That word redeemed brings before our minds the picture of a slave being bought back and set free.

Redeemed how I love to proclaim it,
redeemed by the blood of the Lamb,
redeemed through His infinite mercy,
His child and forever I am.
Redeemed, redeemed, redeemed by the blood of the lamb.

Fifth, He is also our justification. This is a legal term confirming the believer has been declared righteous. “Those He called , them he also justified”. (Rom. 8:20) Imagine for a moment the terror of standing in god’s presence, clothed in our own righteousness, our own goodness. (We could say our own lack of goodness.) But we don’t need to, we can stand in His presence justified, because you see, the believer is covered in Christ’s righteousness.

Sixth, He is also our keeper. He enables us to persevere. When He was here, the Lord Jesus said, “My sheep listen to my voice . I know them and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish. No one can snatch them out of my hand.” If our salvation depended on ourselves, on anything we can do, then we would have every reason to fear. But since it is Christ’s hand holding us we may rest secure. We often see in films or on TV, someone falling and hanging over a roof edge or a cliff by one hand. They’re dangling desperate for help. Sometimes they’re pulled to safety, sometimes they fall to their death. But our Savior will never let go.

Lastly, He is a coming King, but He is reigning right now as King of kings and Lord of lords. This of course was predicted long ago. We read about it in Isaiah 9, a verse usually read at Christmas, “Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders.” He entered Jerusalem as king, and was rejected. But He was raised from the dead, and we read in Eph. 1 that He is now seated at God’s right hand in the heavenly realms, that He has all authority, dominion and power, that God has placed all things under his feet, and appointed Him head over everything.

The glorious work of Christ: We have seen him as our mediator, substitute, propitiation, redeemer, justifier and keeper. He is reigning now and will return one day in glory and power.

What is He saying to us?

I believe He’s saying, “Look unto me and be saved all the ends of the earth, for I am God and there is no other.”

Reading Biblical Literature

Passage One:

^{John 13:3} Jesus knew that the Father had put all things under his power, and that he had come from God and was returning to God; ⁴ so he got up from the meal, took off his outer clothing, and wrapped a towel around his waist. ⁵ After that, he poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples’ feet, drying them with the towel that was wrapped around him.

Passage Two:

^{Mark 10:17} As Jesus started on his way, a man ran up to him and fell on his knees before him. “Good teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”

¹⁸ “Why do you call me good?” Jesus answered. “No one is good—except God alone…”

In the first passage, Jesus knows who he is, where he has come from and where he is going. He then performs an act of great humility.

In the second passage, it could be seen by some that Jesus is distancing himself from God. The Reformation Study Bible notes:

Jesus’ reply does not mean that He does not consider Himself good. He rather wants to show the man that “No one is good except God alone,” so that the man may realize that all his works do not make him good, and that he is not capable of earning eternal life.

The question is meant to challenge the rich young man in the story, but if people are looking for Biblical contradictions — and many are — they might seize on this one.  It is for that reason I titled today’s thoughts “Reading Biblical Literature.” One needs to know what they are reading at the time.

Passage one shows the servant heart of Jesus, but it places that in direct contrast to his divinity. Again, the Reformation Study Bible is helpful here:

Jesus’ humble conduct was not because He forgot His rank as incarnate God the Son. His act demonstrates that rank and privilege are not occasions for arrogance, but are higher credentials for service.

I am always drawn back to the passage in Philippians 2, which I personally render as “…although he was God, he did not think his divinity was something to be leveraged.”

There’s a simple saying in real estate that the top three things in selling a house are “Location, location, location.” Similarly in Bible interpretation, the top three things are context, context, context.

But as easy at is to resolve Passage Two above by saying, “He was simply asking a rhetorical question” or “He was simply challenging the young man” (Some simply shrug their shoulders and say, “We cannot understand it; it is mystery.”) Those are good starts, and I don’t want to eliminate the element of mystery, but I think we can also resolve this by looking at the issue of interpretation through knowing the character of Christ.

Don’t you love the fact that he knew who he was and where he was from and where he was going, but can also look into the eyes of someone and almost playfully, humorously ask, “Why do you call me good; there is no one good except God?”

When we engage in the academic, somewhat dry process of “reading Biblical literature,” we do it best when we are reading Christ.