Operating in the delegated authority of King Jesus requires obedience and excellence.
It requires accomplishing those tasks Jesus commands in your job and performing with excellence to properly represent Him, but there is one more thing required.
I’m a trial lawyer, and Monday I had a hearing in a case on a motion I filed. One of the opposing attorneys is an excellent lawyer, but he and the truth are not very friendly.
So during the hearing he starts weaving this elaborate conspiratorial theory that I know he doesn’t even believe to keep the judge from making what should otherwise be a very simple ruling. It was enough to apparently give the judge pause and it kept him from making the right decision.
What this attorney did was unethical. He made an argument to the judge he knew was without a basis in fact or law, and in so doing he perverted justice. Fortunately it wasn’t a very important issue, but it illustrates the point. For the Kingdom to function properly, it is not enough that Christians accomplish those tasks commanded by Jesus and perform their jobs with excellence, they must also be ethical.
Ethics provide the boundaries beyond which one can be assured he has stepped outside the delegated authority of Jesus. Jesus will not act outside of His holiness, which means that one exercising His delegated authority cannot do so without and still be functioning within Jesus’ delegated authority.
Under American common law, an employer can be held liable for the negligent acts of an employee or agent acting in the course and scope of his employment. However, when the employee or agent departs from those boundaries his acts are no longer the acts of the employer, but his own. With Jesus, unethical conduct is never within the course and scope of the authority He delegates to Kingdom citizens.
Obedience, excellence and ethics: these are the essentials to exercising Jesus’ delegated authority in the workplace. They are the essentials to turning your measure of rule in the workplace into Kingdom territory. GS