We usually ask whether the right people hold power. Scripture asks a more dangerous question: what has power learned to love?
That question reaches far beyond Parliament. It belongs in municipal offices, boardrooms, church councils and family homes. Authority always moves toward someone. It can gather privilege around itself, or it can spend itself for the good of another. The title matters less than the direction.
ScriptureJesus does not pretend authority is unreal. He overturns its direction. Greatness among his people is measured by service, because the Son of Man gives his life rather than using others to preserve it.
Mark 10:42–45
This is not sentimental leadership advice. Christ places power beneath the cross. He exposes domination as more than bad technique: it is a refusal of the neighbour God has placed within our responsibility. Power forgets its purpose when people become scenery for a leader’s story.
The first test of power is not whether it can win, but whom it is willing to carry.
South Africa has good reason to scrutinise public authority. But Christian witness cannot stop at pointing towards distant offices. We must also ask how we use the smaller powers entrusted to us: the power to hire, to exclude, to speak, to spend, to forgive, to tell the truth when silence would be convenient.
Effectiveness is therefore not enough. A decision may be lawful, popular and efficient while teaching people that those with less influence are disposable. Christian judgment asks not only whether authority achieved its objective, but whether the means honoured the image of God in those required to live with the result.
Repentance begins when we stop treating power as proof of our importance. Jesus Christ is Lord, which means every lesser authority is borrowed, accountable and temporary. The Christian response is therefore neither worship nor cynicism. It is sober obedience: honour what is just, resist what dehumanises, serve the person in front of us, and remember that no office can carry the weight of salvation.
Power has not become faithful because it carries our preferred name. It becomes faithful when it remembers the neighbour—and bows before Christ.
