Wives, Submit!

Alright, I have your attention.

I’ve been thinking a lot about submission lately. In a recent sermon on transformed relationships, submission came up as an important part of the way we treat each other in the Kingdom of God, and it’s been circling around my head ever since. It comes from the book of Ephesians, just before Paul tells wives to submit to their husbands and husbands to love their wives. In fact, I think it really informs the later command to wives by showing what true relationships are.

Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.  Ephesians 5:21

Submission is an interesting thing. I think that we automatically think of submission as a point of weakness where we are forced by a greater power to compromise our own freedom for theirs. It is in that sense that many see women submitting to their husbands, who can hold “authority” over them.

What I’m marinating on is the idea that we offer submission to one another radically as the body of Christ; not in weakness, but in strength. In the same way that when Jesus calls us to “turn the other cheek” to another, He is not asking us to become a victim; submission isn’t about authority at all, but about humility among brothers and sisters of the Kingdom.

The cool thing about mutual submission is that it takes hierarchy completely out of the ministry of the church. If two of us with opposing ideas can submit to each other humbly, there is no more power struggle. Instead, we have to find the good in each other’s perspective and seek consensus through the Holy Spirit together.

Now this may seem tough. It is. In fact, if we are be serious about submission, I think we first have to learn to submit to God in our everyday lives. This is a concept that we are losing today. While many are interested in spirituality, love, forgiveness, and service; the idea of submitting ourselves to the wisdom and will of God is not popular. We each seem to think we know better for our lives than the One who gave life to us to begin with.

But what if we took submission to Christ seriously? I’ve been wrestling with the call to submit to God’s will in all the areas of my life this past few weeks. That means that each day as I wake I have to say with conviction, “Jesus, this day is Yours and I’m open to what you want from me.”  It means that going into a meeting I don’t feel like going to, I submit not only my attitude but that meeting to God’s desire instead of mine.

Do you know what submission has done to me? It changes my perspective. It’s crazy that things I really don’t want to do can be made sacred by offering myself to Jesus for those things and the ways He intends to use me. I’m not there yet, but I’m seeking to be a person of submission; to God and to His people. Now, I submit this idea to you. What do you think?