Authority
Human authority is exercised on the body and mind of subjects and subordinates, but it has no real power over the spirit and the heart. No peace, no joy, no happiness, no luminous or true behavior can originate or can be inspired by any form of authority or imposition. Only man's state of intellectual, spiritual, existential inferiority, only the minority state, which is present throughout all of man's lifetime, forces man to continously seek new alliances with authority and the power capable of compensating for his lack of inner authority. This quest for alliances carried out by men who are without mental and spiritual authority generates the compulsive urge to belong, at whatever price, to some form of authority and power, be it military or political alliances, social associations, political or religious hierarchies, industrial unions, corporations, or more or less secret sects. In order to reinforce itself due to its lack of interior authority, in the context of this proliferation of alliances, humanity, continuously divides and subdivides gettting weaker and weaker and leaving room for slavery and domination. That is why authority does not and never will have any power to inspire the evangelical metànoia, the inner change, the spiritual evolution. Using authority to inspire people to change is always demeaning; it is degrading both for those who exercise it and for those who undergo it. In that situation, the authorities of that time, the chief priests, the scribes, the biblical scholars, the elderly people's leaders, accuse Jesus of abuse of power, they accuse Him of carrying out actions based on a kind of authority unknown to them, which they cannot control and do not agree with but, by doing so, without meaning to, they underline Jesus' non-human origin.
Jesus does not answer them for three specific reasons: first, nothing creates authority but silence; second, inner authority does not need explanations or words, it simply is; and third, Jesus is well aware that in the face of human stupidity a reasonable time for a rational comparison tends to be quite long.
Jesus' authority does not procede from God, it would be useless. Jesus' authority derives from the love he has for the Father and which his Father has for Him, and which he and the Father live in the Holy Spirit. Authority does not need love, love does not need authority.