He taught them on the sabbath,
and they were astonished at his teaching
because he spoke with authority.
and they were astonished at his teaching
because he spoke with authority.
They were not used to the way in which Jesus spoke. Other teachers would have peppered their doctrine with references to previous interpretive traditions in order to substantiate their own points of view. Jesus did reference the Scriptures in what he taught. For instance, he later asked the Pharisees, "Have you not heard what David did ... ?" (see Matthew 12:3). But although these quotations did help to establish and validate his own claim, their usage was new and unexpected. They were not rooted in any tradition of authority, and made sense only if he himself was an authoritative interpreter of God's word. Similarly, his moral teachings referred to core truths that did exist in the Scriptures. But when he presented these teachings in the Sermon on the Mount they took shapes that no one would have previously guessed. It was necessary for him to go beyond what Moses had said to fully bring God's moral law to light. He demonstrated an authority that transcended even that of Moses, who was the greatest of the Lord's prophets, and of the law itself, the most concrete and comprehensive revelation of God's will for mankind. He did not use his authority to upend or abolish the law, but rather to bring it to its true fulfillment (see Matthew 5:17).
The reason Jesus was able to speak with such authoritative clarity about God's Word and his will for mankind was because the Spirit of God "knows what pertains to God", and Jesus was filled beyond measure with that Spirit (see John 3:34). He did not need to defer to merely human interpretations which were always somewhat tainted by the merely "human wisdom" of the "natural man" who "does not accept what pertains to the Spirit" since "to him it is foolishness, and he cannot understand it". The natural man responds to spiritual things like the unclean demon responds to Jesus in today's Gospel, assuming that God is out to get us, that his will means that the party is over.
Unlike all other teachers Jesus was so spiritual that he could "judge everything" and was "not subject to judgment by anyone". He didn't have to prove anything or impress anyone. His confidence was rooted in his Father, not the unstable opinions of the crowds. One who was merely excessively certain of himself would quickly be revealed as a fool. One who tried to appeal to others for popularity would find popularity to be a fickle master. But one who was truly rooted in God was unshakable in a way that the crowds to whom Jesus spoke were able to recognize.
For “who has known the mind of the Lord, so as to counsel him?”
But we have the mind of Christ.
Surprisingly, the spirituality of Jesus that gave him the authority he possessed was not to be reserved to him alone. Since we share the Spirit which motivated his life we too come to possess the same "mind of Christ" that was proper to Jesus himself. Clearly, none of us possess this mind to the constant and perfect degree that Jesus did. But we are meant to do so more and more through the renewal of our minds that Paul enjoined on the Romans (see Romans 12:2). The more we experience this transformation the less we will be bothered by the judgments of those whose minds are still limited to the merely natural and human. We can say, as Paul later will to the Corinthians, that "with me it is a very small thing that I should be judged by you or by any human court. In fact, I do not even judge myself" (see First Corinthians 4:3).
The mind of Christ isn't just something that is a nice way to enhance our subjective experience of life. It is necessary if we are to do our own part in the struggle against the dark powers that hold sway in our world. When our words our shaped by his mind they become powerful, and the world is changed as a consequence.
“What is there about his word?
For with authority and power he commands the unclean spirits,
and they come out.”
