The Way of the Dragon or the Way of the Lamb: Searching for Jesus’ Path of Power in a Church that Has Abandoned It

by Jamin Goggin

I had healthy intentions to be faithful and grow in Christ. But my desire for power was stronger than those intentions, and my desire came to the surface quickly.

I wanted to control reality, to create a self that would thrive in the world, while Jesus said, “Take up your cross and follow me” (Matt. 16:24 CEV). I wanted to be cutting-edge and savvy, knowing the right people and being accepted in the right circles, while Jesus said, “The last will be first, and the first last” (Matt. 20:16), and warned against imitating the Pharisees who “love the place of honor at feasts and the best seats” (Matt. 23:6).

I wanted to come up with a way to prove my value to people who doubted me, to prove my worth to people who thought I had nothing to offer, while Jesus said, “Apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:5). I wanted to do something big. I wanted to create a name and a legacy. I wanted to make a difference. In the midst of this Jesus said, “One who is faithful in a very little is also faithful in much, and one who is dishonest in a very little is also dishonest in much” (Luke 16:10).

What happens when Christians embody a worldly approach to power and try to use that to advance Christ’s kingdom? What happens when believers live their lives according to a power that is antagonistic to Christ?

This is the first temptation of power: We view the problem as “out there.” We recognize it in other churches, pastors, fellow Christians, or political and cultural leaders, but we ignore the problem in our own hearts.

We were not created to pursue power as an end in itself, but rather to pursue God, the powerful one, and abide in his power to bless the world. But because of our sin, our ability to use power is disordered and is damaging the world around us.

As with all good gifts, wisdom comes from above (James 1:17). Godly wisdom is not achieved, but is received. This way from above has descended in the person of Christ, who is the power and wisdom of God (1 Cor. 1:24). Wisdom is not essentially about making right decisions, but about living by the power of God in Christ Jesus.

The way from above is embracing God’s power and depending upon him. As we will see in the next chapter, embracing God’s power involves embracing our own weakness and abiding in Christ (John 15:1–5). Conversely, the way from below is a rejection of God’s power and a dependence upon ourselves in sinful autonomy. The way from below rejects abiding in God in favor of our own willpower, turning to the power of the self to make a difference in the world.

The way from above and the way from below are distinguished not only by the source of power, but also by the fruit or results of power. The way from above is power for love.

we can easily delude ourselves into believing that we are walking the way from above when in fact we are walking the way from below.

James warns us of this very reality. He tells us that the way from below masquerades as the way from above. This is worldliness pretending to be wisdom. False wisdom deludes us into believing it is the truth (James 3:14): “There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death”

God can move in his grace to produce kingdom fruit despite our pride, but the call for followers of Jesus is to have hearts congruent with his work. True kingdom fruit is both internal and external. God seeks to make good trees that produce good fruit. To use the language from James 3 again, we can do things in bitter jealousy and selfish ambition, and despite our motives God can still bring about good results. But this is not all that God desires. God calls us to produce fruit from the heart and to participate genuinely in his work in the world.

The road less traveled is less traveled for a reason. Our feet are trained to find paths of self-achievement and self-glorification. We use our vocations to build significance.

Because we are prone to waywardness, prone to walk the path of pride, self-sufficiency, and power, we need the church to ground us in Christ and his way. We cannot live in Christ’s way on our own. This likely sounds right, but many of us functionally doubt our need for the church.

We have no hope of pursuing the way from above apart from the church.

The Lord, we are told, “weighs the spirit” (Prov. 16:2).

In short, we are on a pilgrimage of the kingdom defined by the cross, seeking to discover what it means to walk the way from above in our world today.

These were hidden desires, tucked deep away, but they were there—desires for significance, fame, and influence. While there are many different kinds of temptations, my central one was clear: a deep and abiding desire for power. The path to obtaining power is well-worn: Work hard, leverage talents, and capitalize on relationships. Power begets power, or so I thought.

I had succumbed to one of the most primal idolatries, using God as a tool to have life on my terms.

Followers of Christ are called to embrace their weakness and not deny it. The Christian life is one that requires dependence, humility, and weakness to know strength.

For Christians, the journey into true power begins with the realization of our desire for false power.

“You should have a fifty-year plan—a vision for growth over a long period of time as you embrace your weakness.” Learning to walk the way from above takes a lifetime, and it doesn’t happen by accident.

This was a man who had embraced the way of weakness and in so doing had embraced the way of true wisdom. It became clear to me that “the LORD sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the LORD looks on the heart” (1 Sam. 16:7).

“In Corinth, perhaps more than anywhere else, social ascent was the goal, boasting and self-display the means, personal power and glory the reward.”

The totality of Paul’s weaknesses had become unpalatable to them. The Corinthians wanted a super-apostle, not an apostle of weakness.

This is not merely a question of what leadership “style” you like, but a question of whether you embrace the way of Jesus.

Paul did not anchor his life as a follower of Jesus in his ability, talent, gifting, résumé, or strength, but in the grace of God alone.

“For Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the gospel, and not with words of eloquent wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power” (1 Cor. 1:17).

The way of life to which followers of Jesus are called entails discovering that power is found in weakness. As an apostle, Paul modeled what the Christian life should look like.

We are those who gain our lives only when we lose them for Christ’s sake (Matt. 16:25). We are called not to rely upon ourselves, “but on God who raises the dead” (2 Cor. 1:9). Power is found in dependence upon God in light of our weakness.

In all of this we are called to humbly acknowledge the totality of our weakness and rely wholly upon God for strength. Thus, confessing our weaknesses is not merely about pointing to our failure, but rather about magnifying God’s power.

I wanted long-term fruit through short-term effort.

we want to have a voice that powerfully proclaims truth without first learning to be “slow to speak” (James 1:19).

He showed us that flourishing is not the absence of weakness, nor the absence of dependence or need, but that a genuinely human existence is discovered in relying fully on Christ.

To understand what it means to flourish as a person, we first and foremost look to Jesus.

We are created in the image of God. He is the eternally begotten divine Son, and we are the adopted children, received by grace. We read in Colossians 1:15, “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.” We do, therefore, look to the firstborn of creation to discover the truth of the good life, but the firstborn is not Adam, but Christ.

Human flourishing is not about self-actualization, but about discovering our life in Christ. Flourishing entails discovering our insufficiency and coming to rest in the sufficiency of his grace. The flourishing self is the abiding self, not the actualized self. It is the self wholly dependent upon Jesus. This is what a genuinely human existence really looks like.

When we grasp for control of our identity to generate value and significance, we shrink our identity.

When we come to see the Christian existence as a deepening of our spirits—making our deepest spiritual selves more substantial—then the way of the world seems to fade away.

As James and Rita pressed into frailty and disability, they were shifting their identity and value more and more onto Jesus. This is not an ability that just comes to us. They were able to see the end of life as an opportunity because they had lived lives of dependence.

They were weighty souls who were able to embrace the end as a gift of love.

When we as Christians embrace the way from below, we reject not only the way of Christ but also the truth of ourselves. We are warping our souls and rewiring our hearts to a world that isn’t real.

Perhaps things like self-sufficiency and control have become such a part of the status quo that we don’t recognize how devastating they are to the body of Christ. Or maybe the faint concern we do have about such things is swiftly mollified by the “successes” we observe in the church. We ignore narcissism, self-glorification, and domination as long as the number of conversions is up and more baptisms are happening.

Yet when we minimize the way from below in our own lives or within the church, we effectively embolden the powers. When we let down our guard and fail to take seriously the real powers at work in our world, we can easily get caught up in their path of destruction.

“When this happens we become a tool of the principalities and powers which are in direct opposition to God and his kingdom. Where churches should be the servants of the gospel, they are instead the proprietors of the powers.”4

The scary truth is that we can become a tool of the powers, even in our zeal to do the right thing (maybe especially there). We can’t assume that the church is abiding in the way from above simply because it is the church.

Somehow we can work our way through the stories of Jesus’ life and ministry, exploring his teaching and miracles, and avoid discussing spiritual warfare. Yet this warfare is everywhere we look in Jesus’ ministry. As we read the New Testament, we are consistently confronted with the powers and principalities.

Capitulation to the powers is seen in how we talk about money, sex, and power. These three are the currency our culture trades in. They represent another threefold prism of sorts, as three of the key inroads to seducing the flesh toward the way from below. Their insidious grip on our lives is easily ignored or excused. Living your life with the sole focus of accumulating more money is viewed as honorable as long as it doesn’t result in stealing. Subtle forms of control and manipulation are fine as long as we don’t explicitly abuse another person. Lust and pornography may be somewhat passé in certain quarters, but by and large they are excused as long as they don’t result in outright adultery.

It is hard to admit, but we all have watered down the nature of immorality to make it more user-friendly.

Nonviolent protests arouse “the dozing conscience,”7 King proclaimed, and awaken shame and guilt in the oppressor.8 King recognized that the powers at work in culture wreak havoc upon both the oppressed and the oppressor. This is why King was focused on standing against the system and not attacking a particular person. If he attempted to attack and undermine a person, he would lose the ability to befriend him. Befriending the oppressor, of course, is central to the way of love (Matt. 5:44).