GEBible — Godless Engineer's Bible App
Matt 20:23 has Jesus admit that assigning the right- and left-hand seats in his kingdom 'is not mine to give' — that prerogative belongs to the Father. Mark 6:5 reports that in his hometown 'he could there do no mighty work' because of the people's unbelief. Then Matt 28:18, post-resurrection, has Jesus claiming 'all power is given unto me in heaven and in earth,' echoed by John 3:35. So either Jesus had real limits on his power and authority, or he had universal omnipotence — the texts assert both.
People have answered this in several ways; GEBible presents them as equal peers.
Cited passages
He said to them, “You will indeed drink my cup, and be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with, but to sit on my right hand and on my left hand is not mine to give; but it is for whom it has been prepared by my Father.”
He could do no mighty work there, except that he laid his hands on a few sick people, and healed them.
Cited passages
Jesus came to them and spoke to them, saying, “All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth.
The Father loves the Son, and has given all things into his hand.
Examining the tension
What follows is one scholar’s way of reading this disagreement — a critical-historical view that often concludes the texts genuinely disagree. It draws on the peer-reviewed sources listed below and stands as one position among the answers above, presented for transparency, not as GEBible’s position.
How critical scholarship weighs this: Genuinely disputed among scholars
This summarizes where critical scholarship tends to land on this tension — a report on the field’s center of gravity, not GEBible’s own ruling.
The texts assert two incompatible things about the scope of Jesus' power. On one side stand admissions of limit: in Matt 20:23 Jesus says assigning the right- and left-hand seats in the kingdom 'is not mine to give, but it shall be given to them for whom it is prepared of my Father,' and Mark 6:5 reports that in Nazareth 'he could there do no mighty work, save that he laid his hands upon a few sick folk.' On the other side stands universal authority: Matt 28:18, 'All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth,' echoed by John 3:35's 'the Father... hath given all things into his hand.'
The Greek of Mark 6:5 is the sharpest datum. Mark writes ouk edynato ekei poiēsai oudemian dynamin — 'he was not able to do any mighty work there.' This is a statement of incapacity, not of choice. That Mark intends genuine inability is confirmed by Matthew's reaction: editing his source, Matthew changes it to ouk epoiēsen ekei dynameis pollas — 'he did not do many mighty works there' (Matt 13:58). The shift from 'could not' to 'did not' is precisely the dogmatic softening a later evangelist with a higher Christology would make. Joel Marcus and R. T. France both flag this as one of the clearest cases of Matthean theological correction of Mark.
The classical apologetic harmonization is kenotic, drawn from Philippians 2:6-8 (Christ 'emptied himself,' ekenōsen) and systematized by writers from Charles Hodge to Wayne Grudem: in the incarnation the Son voluntarily refrained from exercising the full prerogatives of deity, exercising power only as the Father directed, and reclaimed their full public exercise at the resurrection (hence Matt 28:18's 'is given,' edothē, as an exaltation formula). On this reading Mark 6:5 describes a self-imposed restraint conditioned by unbelief, and Matt 20:23 reflects the Son's submission within the economic Trinity. This is a coherent and venerable framework, and it should be presented at full strength.
Two problems blunt it. First, Mark's ouk edynato resists the kenotic gloss: 'could not' is not the natural vocabulary of voluntary restraint, which is exactly why Matthew rewrote it. Kenosis explains Matt 13:58 better than it explains Mark 6:5, and the direction of editing shows the early church found Mark's wording problematic. Second, Matt 20:23 concerns an eschatological, heavenly prerogative — the allocation of thrones in the kingdom — not a limitation of Jesus' earthly human nature, which is what kenosis is built to explain. If, as John 10:30 has it, the Son and the Father are functionally one, the deferral of so heavenly a decision to the Father sits awkwardly with the unitive Christology of the Fourth Gospel. Bart Ehrman's How Jesus Became God lays out the developmental trajectory in which Jesus' authority is progressively exalted across the sources, while Larry Hurtado, arguing for early high devotion, shows the diversity of the data the harmonization must integrate. The most economical reading is that Mark, Matthew, and John operate with different Christologies, and the canon preserves all three without flattening them into a single doctrine of power.
Where the critical reading lands: harmonizable by kenotic theology at the systematic level, but Mark's 'was not able' and the heavenly nature of the Matt 20:23 prerogative show the texts themselves reflect divergent, developing Christologies.
Sources for this reading