I need this sweatshirt.
I heard a great challenge to this cliché saying today from my friend Jesse Splan.
So does Absolute Power Corrupt Absolutely?
The only one with absolute power is God. No human can have “absolute” power. Even if a man took over the whole world, he would still be in the power of death. As Ecclesiastes 8:8 says, “No man has power to retain the spirit, or power over the day of death”. And also, this man would be under the power of God (note that scripture says that the man who says there is no God is corrupt (Ps. 14:1)). So God is the only one with absolute power. But God is perfect and holy, not corrupt.
Jesse said his mom pointed out that a better saying is “Power reveals Character”. Now that I know is true!
If God has absolute power, His character should be absolutely revealed. So what did God do with His power? Let’s see… He created everything, including the earth and us. He then gave us life and the good things of life to make it enjoyable. And we rejected Him by loving the stuff He gave us more than Him. But God did not use His absolute power to destroy us, but rather He demonstrated His loving character by sending His Son to take the penalty that our sins earned us. As the popular verse says:
16 “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. (John 3:16)
and elsewhere John writes:
8 Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. 10 In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. (1 John 4:8-10)
God is clearly someone who should have the absolute power!