You can find my former articles on this topic here and here.
Like my blog post on Davidic authority vs. magistral authority, I want to once again to make a distinction between two types of authority. However, I am not merely distinguishing between two types of authorities here, but rather, two different dispensations of authority. I want to argue that the Christians has a qualitatively greater degree of authority in the New Testament than the Jew of the Old Testament. There is a difference in the administration of authority after Christ has been seated at the right hand of God.
Unfortunately, I cannot explore all the practical manifestations of my case. However, I want to begin by stating that this is the case; I will argue further from that point.
Let’s begin with the administration of authority in the Old Testament. Adam and Eve take of the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil. By doing so they claim to the authority that God has. This authority is the ability to make a judgment between good and evil. We know that this is true because Solomon asks for the same gift in ruling over the people of Israel when he becomes king.
In the old dispensation or covenant this gift was taken or grasped by mankind and so mankind lost the ability to use it properly. Adam and Eve could have learned to exercise such authority by relying on God and his word. Instead, they took the gift before it was given. This distorted the gift.
So God took one man among the nations, Abraham, and began to train Israel so that they could learn to use the wisdom of God rather than seeking to grasp wisdom themselves. God taught Israel this through laws of holiness, through sacrifices, through a set calendar. Through the institutions of Israel God sought to reform or to restore Israel to the calling he had given to Adam and Eve.
God subjects Israel to this law. The civil leaders and the kings and the emperors that God raises up he also calls to enforce this whole law (though exclusively to the land of Israel). Israel has a limited wisdom in interpreting and applying the law to their lives. Therefore God provides Israel with priests, prophets, and kings, equipped with the Spirit in order to help Israel in applying the law.
Then God sends Israel her Saviour. The priests, prophets, and kings of the Old Testament were only shadows of this Saviour. This Saviour shared his Spirit of office with his entire congregation so that every Christian now exercises the office of prophet, priest, and king.
These Christians now have the freedom to apply the law to their own lives, they don’t need a calendar or sacrificial laws or laws of holiness. Christians exercise a greater freedom and wisdom than any of the kings of the Old Testament. The moral law still bears authority because God enfleshed that law in their Lord and Saviour. Christ replaces the rest with a different order or a different dispensation. Christians may now use the law of the Old Testament as a way to freely order their lives in him. All Christians bear a responsibility to judge between good and evil.
However, Christians still have civil leaders and they have spiritual leaders. Their power is restricted just as it was in the Old Testament. God restricts the civil leader’s power to defending life and property. God restricts the Spiritual leaders’ power. They may not exclude a Christian from the church of God on the basis of regulations that are extra to the word of God. However, they still exercise moral authority on the basis of the law of the Spirit and the law of Christ.
So what’s the real difference? even in the Old Testament, the leaders had a degree of freedom to apply the law and to obey the law. Is the only difference one of quantity?
No. Christ also brought the Christians a different degree of authority. We can see this in Galatians 4. In the Covenant at Mount Sinai, Israel functioned as a child. Israel was under a tutor. God was training his son to practice the authority he would eventually call her too. She is an ambassador (a prophet, priest and king) in training. In Christ, God’s son reached maturity. She is now an ambassador of Christ. The church is no longer under a tutor, but directly under Christ and the law of Christ.