We were made to rule, and we were made to rule this world, govern this world for God as His agents. This is what we are told in Genesis 1:26 as “God said, Let Us make man in Our image, after Our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the heavens, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over all the creepers creeping on the earth.” ‘Dominion’ here means rule or govern. Rulership or governorship of this world is in our fleshy DNA from Adam, the very first man.

But we lost the authority to rule in the Garden of Eden, to have it bought back for us by Jesus Christ of Nazareth, who being fully man and fully God was crucified as a propitiatory sacrifice for us. By His blood we were redeemed.

As Adam was perfect, having been made by the hands of God himself, so too was Jesus Christ His Son and in this, Jesus became the second Adam. As we carry the fleshy DNA of Adam, the first of our kind, as Christians we also carry the spiritual DNA of Jesus, the first of our kind. Jesus then returned this authority to us as Luke 10:19 tell us “Behold, I give to you authority …….. and over all the authority of the enemy. And nothing shall by any means hurt you.”

As Christians, we are called to be rulers, made to be rulers. But read Paul said in his first letter to the Corinthian church 3:3 “for you are still of the flesh. For while there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not of the flesh and behaving only in a human way?” (1 Corinthians 3:3). In the intervening years, we, the Church, have not progressed much.

When Paul was writing his letter to the Corinthians, he referred to the Church as an ekklesia. There are two meanings for that word, one in the Greek and one in the Roman. The Greeks saw an ekklesia as an assembly of people which was set apart for the purpose of government; something akin to a parliament. The Romans, on the other hand saw ekklesia in an altogether different light and this is what Paul was writing to the Greeks in Corinth to explain. The means of Roman domination (subjugation) was to send out an ekklesia – a body of people to change the society of a conquered land to talk, act and think like a Roman. The ekklesia infiltrated all parts of the conquered society, changing that society from the inside out, the government, the schools, the language, the social structure. That was what Paul was asking the Church in Corinth to do.

That is what Paul is asking us to do on behalf of the Head of the Church today.

That is the means of “discipling nations” as opposed to just willing souls for the Lord, by conquering all sections and levels of society.

But today, the Church does not appear to understand this and does not exercise its Roman ekklesia duties as Paul asked. We have the DNA and the authority to rule, we just do not have the vision or will. One problem with Authority is that if the Church does not exercise its authority in this world, the vacuum will be filled by the enemy, who is just too willing to grab back as much as he can. If he cannot reclaim it from Jesus, he will from Jesus’ delinquent Church, or at least hold on to as much as he can for as long as he can.

Jesus does not force His will on his people. He wants all to come to Him willingly and obey. Perhaps we do not put in effort because we doubt our little effort will make a difference in the overall picture. This is a lie of the enemy. Our actions count for much in the heavenlies as does our obedience. When we turn up and start to trust in the Lord, He will turn up and miracles will result. We can prophecy God’s will into action and we can pray changes into reality; all that is missing is faith.

We have been given weapons for our army, the Army of the Lord. They are spiritual and for use in the spiritual, for as Paul tells us in his second letter to the Corinthians “the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:4). For as Paul wrote in his letter to the Ephesians 6:12 “we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the world’s rulers, of the darkness of this age, against spiritual wickedness in high places.”

We were made to rule. God made us to rule, to govern the earth on His behalf as His agents. He did not give us a spirit of timidity, but of boldness, though by the way most Christians act, that is hard to tell. It seems most Christians are more than content to sit on the sidelines and let God “do His thing;” let God be sovereign, let Him rule His way at His time and in His will. But this is a dereliction of our duty, a failure of the Church and Christians to understand that we must play the role we were made to play, born to play and which our God expects us to play.

Christians need, seriously to remember the scripture our Lord has given us for this day; Revelation 20:11-12 where John “saw a great white throne, and Him sitting on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away. And a place was not found for them. And I saw the dead, the small and the great, stand before God. And books were opened, and another book was opened, which is the Book of Life. And the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works.”

Even for Christians, judgement awaits. We are not saved by our works, but we will be judged by them.

Amen and Amen.