Theology 101 — Enabling Power

There is something intriguing and even mysterious about the term “power.” In the natural or physical realm, for example, we encounter “atomic power,” “nuclear power,” “military power” or “political power.” Sometimes we have occasion to speak or read of the power of tornadoes or hurricanes, as well as floods or undertows.

Jesus spoke of another kind of power in the closing words of the Gospel of Matthew, in a passage we commonly refer to as the Great Commission.

Great Commission

Christ’s commission is for His followers to take the gospel into all the world to make disciples, then teach them all He commanded. The preface to this climactic commission is the comprehensive claim of Christ that “all power” or “all authority” has been given to Him “in heaven and on earth” (28:18).

Later, based on years of experience, Paul declared, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me” (Phil. 4:13).

One aspect of the power of Christ is “enabling power.”

Human plans or strategies alone are not sufficient.

Disciples who would make other disciples must be enabled by divine or supernatural power.

To that end, Christ left followers in every generation the promise of the Holy Spirit. His departing promise to His earliest disciples was, “You shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth” (Acts 1:8).

Transforming power

Christ’s enabling power also is transforming. It made Paul, the self-confessed chief of sinners, into a proclaimer of the gospel, a founder of churches and a writer of Holy Scripture.

Christ’s power took ordinary humans and made them into extraordinary gospel servants. Only eternity will reveal the extent to which Christ’s enabling power has through the centuries taken ordinary or even unlikely people and made them His winsome and fruitful witnesses.

Christ’s enabling power also is cleansing and sanctifying. Ephesians contains the good news that “Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her, that He might sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of water by the Word, that He might present her to Himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and without blemish” (5:25–27).