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Before Paul speaks to husbands, wives, parents, and children, he has a word for everyone. We must submit to one another "out of reverence for Christ." Submission is quite possibly the most unpopular command imaginable in the modern West. But what appears to be relational suicide is in fact the key that opens the door to the very relationship of love and trust for which all of us yearn.

 

No More Excuses
The Golden Key
September 26, 2010
Glenn McDonald

Ephesians 5:21

This morning, as we continue our eight-month journey through the apostle Paul’s short but extraordinary letter to the church at Ephesus, we turn the spotlight onto just one verse. Ephesians 5:21 says, “Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.” Just nine English words. But if we could wrap our lives around those nine words, our families would be changed. So would our friendships, and the time we spend with other Christians, and our relationships with people everywhere. This one verse has world-changing potential.

Unfortunately Ephesians 5:21 is routinely overlooked. That’s because readers are often in a hurry to get to the paragraphs that come right after it – the ones where Paul shoots from the hip regarding marriage, parenting, and work relationships. In our eagerness to tackle what God has to say to wives and husbands and moms and dads and employers, we roll right over this verse that happens to be addressed to everyone, and which turns out to be the golden key that unlocks the door to everything that follows.

There’s also no hiding the fact that Ephesians 5:21 has led more than one person to say, “Are you kidding me?” Submission in any century has never seemed easy or fun. In his book Celebration of Discipline, Richard Foster suggests that submission may rank as the most abused practice in the history of Christianity.

He writes, “Somehow the human species has an extraordinary knack for taking the best teaching and turning it to the worst ends. Nothing can put people into bondage like religion, and nothing in religion has done more to manipulate and destroy people than a deficient teaching on submission. Therefore we must work our way through this discipline with great care and discernment in order to ensure that we are the ministers of life, not death.”

Now that’s a serious warning. If we warp the ways that we talk about submission with each other, we can become ministers of death. From the get-go a number of people are offended even by the notion that we should submit to each other. Submission implies a weak and passive life that feels like relational suicide. It suggests a negative self-image, and a dangerous yielding of personal control and free will. Is Paul saying that Christian children must submit to abusive parents and to playground bullies; that citizens are obligated to do whatever their government might ask; and that we have to say yes to an employer who tells us to do wrong? How do we make sense of Ephesians 5:21?

Let’s begin with the word “submit.” The Greek verb hypotasso literally means “to arrange under.” Someone who submits intentionally arranges his or her life under the banner, authority, or interests of another person. Slaves, who made up about one third of the population of ancient Ephesus, were required to live in absolute submission to their masters.

No slave ever woke up in the morning and asked, “I wonder what I should do for fun today?” By law and social contract, slaves lived submissively. That is, they arranged their lives according to their master’s agenda and timetable. Therefore every day a slave essentially had two options: Submit or be punished. Sometimes the punishment was death.

So what in the world is Paul asking of us in this text? He is calling people who follow Jesus to intentionally arrange their lives around the interests of other people. Philippians 2:3-4 is a great example: “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.”

Paul isn’t saying that we should squelch or ignore our own legitimate needs, but that we should voluntarily become the willing servants of other people. How can I arrange my thoughts, my plans, and my actions today so that I can help advance your interests? A slave may have had no options other than submit or be punished. But a follower of Jesus may choose to live submissively, blessing others just as he or she has been blessed by the Lord.

Richard Foster says it well: Submission is the freedom to lay down the burden of always needing to get our own way. We can spend weeks and even years fretting and stewing because something didn’t go according to our personal wishes. Turning our attention to someone else’s needs is a strong and free act of the will to express love for that person, and is a direct strike against our own self-centeredness.

In the Great Exhibition of 1851, the Crystal Palace in London was filled with exhibits that represented the wonders of the emerging modern age. One of the crowd-pleasers was the model of a train that laid down its own tracks. It could go anywhere it wanted because it wasn’t limited by pre-existing boundaries. This became the symbol of what it meant to be a modern person. It was essentially the forerunner of the SUV. We should all self-determine where we’re going next, and nobody should get in our way.

Paul wrote Ephesians 5:21 to stop that train right in its own tracks. “Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.” This is not a recommendation. This is the word of the Lord. God calls us to reject self-centeredness and to work consciously for the good of other people. Think how many fights occur in family rooms and in church families because we don’t feel as if we have the freedom to give in to each other. We simply have to win. We have to be right. We have to get in the last word because we’re sure we’re fighting for truth, justice, and purity.

Sometimes we really are fighting for God’s ideals. But more often than not what we care about is rather petty and our motives are self-absorbed. We’re afraid to lose face. We’ve been hurt and we want to make sure that our rights are not trampled. The revolutionary thing about submission is that it allows us to walk away from such emotional issues and to support each other instead – not because we’re weak, but because we’re strong in the Lord.

We choose to do this because this is how Jesus chose to live. He totally inverted the world’s understanding of what makes someone great. Jesus said, “Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted” (Matthew 23:12), and, “If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me” (Mark 8:34).

That raises the million-dollar question: Does self-denial mean that I am supposed to treat myself with contempt? Is submission a way of saying, “My life has so little value that I’ll just be a doormat and you can walk all over me”? The very opposite is true. Submission is a powerful statement about the eternal value of every person. I can choose to submit to you because I believe that you are worth it. You’re so valuable in God’s eyes that I am doing a worthy thing by caring about your interests. I do this not because I am a loser and you are somehow the boss of me, but because I myself am deeply secure in God’s love. I’m not a cringing slave who has to submit or the axe will fall. I choose to serve you because I am free to make that choice – for your sake and for God’s sake.

When Paul writes, “Submit to each other,” he isn’t asking one group of Christians to yield to another group of Christians. He is saying that every follower of Jesus must submit to every other follower of Jesus. There are no exempt or privileged classes here. But doesn’t submission entail a dangerous loss of personal control? As we learned back in Ephesians chapter one, there’s only one Person in the universe who’s really in control. Submission and self-denial is therefore a gigantic statement of faith: “Lord, because you’re in control, I don’t have to win or get my own way in order to be a truly joyful person.”

“Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.” The word translated “reverence” is the Greek word phobos, which means fear. This is where most modern translations of Ephesians 5:21 let us down. “Reverence” is a nice word. It describes the feeling that comes over you when you know you ought to remove your hat in a mortuary, or get quiet before the start of a worship service. “Fear,” on the other hand, is a far stronger word – and we should not be hasty to subtract the element of fear from Paul’s statement, especially because of its rich Old Testament background.

According to the prophets, Psalms, and Proverbs, what is the beginning of wisdom? It is the fear of the Lord. What does that mean? In Hebrew thinking, fear-of-the-Lord was essentially one word, not four. Therefore we shouldn’t go to the dictionary and look up the word “fear,” then look up the word “Lord,” and then see how those separate parts might fit together. If we do that we will almost certainly conclude that God wants us to be terrified of him. And we do not need to be terrified of the God who has chosen us, called us, forgiven us, and adopted us into his own family through Christ – as we learned in chapters one and two of Ephesians.

Instead, fear-of-the-Lord is something more like a sense of overwhelming wonder that leaves us speechless and trembling. It’s the feeling we get when we’re in the presence of a baby who has just come into the world. We do not know what to say. Over the years, when I’ve asked people to recall the moment when God became more than just a name for them – when his reality suddenly came into focus – I’m amazed how often they say, “It’s when I witnessed the birth of one of my children.” We stand in awe of God’s creative power.

Fear-of-the-Lord, therefore, is like fear with the scary element removed. Paul is saying that we should submit to each other, root for each other, and care for each other with a sense of holy wonder because Jesus lives in you, and Jesus lives in me, and he has incredible plans for us both that we don’t yet fully comprehend. We should feel amazed and grateful because of that.

So let’s get practical. How do we actually submit to another human being? Let’s look at four significant decisions we will need to make. The first is that we must decide that we will actually obey what Ephesians 5:21 says. Back in college, on a whim, I decided it would be cool to take a course called Chemistry 500. I loved the fact that it sounded so advanced. Chemistry 500 was glassblowing. We got one hour of credit by meeting one hour every week with a glassblowing expert who would show us how to make those complex and delicate flasks that are so crucial to the working of the typical modern laboratory.

What I didn’t count on is the fact that glassblowing is not easy. The expert assured us that our skills would gradually improve. All we had to do was practice at least one hour every day, and multiple hours every weekend. Just before the middle of the semester I dropped out of Chemistry 500. I knew exactly what I was expected to do. I just didn’t want to do it.

When it comes to submitting to other people, I know exactly what God is asking me to do. But I don’t want to do that, either. It’s certainly not my natural inclination. Unfortunately, there’s nothing in Ephesians that suggests that Submission 101 is an elective that we can abandon when the going gets tough. This is not a recommendation. This is the command of God. We must resolve to obey the Lord.

Our second decision involves the heart. We must focus on the spirit in which we view other people, not just try to modify our behavior. What we actually think about others will always come shining through – or screaming through, as the case may be. Remember that Jesus said that a spirit of anger toward another person is equivalent to murder, and that an I-have-to-do-this spirit of self-pity and martyrdom counts for nothing. Therefore we must cultivate an inner attitude of love and respect for the specific human beings with whom we work, and live, and worship.

How in the world is that going to happen, especially when we so often relate to other people along a sliding scale of jealousy, irritation, and boredom? We must be honest with God. He is not calling us to fake our emotions. Instead we can make a simple, prayerful request: “Lord, please put your love into my heart so that I can love this person with whom I struggle so much. Let me see this person as you see this person.” God will bless us with grace and mercy and peace so that we can bless others with grace and mercy and peace – if we will trust him to do so.

Our third decision is to choose to be quieter in the presence of other people than we ever thought possible. Instead of speaking, we must listen. Much of the work of submission happens when we say nothing at all – when we choose not to defend ourselves, or to interpret our actions or motivations. Determine to go a whole day without excusing or justifying yourself in any way. And then do the same thing the day after that. Great wisdom is embodied in the four action words of the prison ministry called Kairos: Listen, Listen, Love, Love.

Fourth, submission means making an intentional decision to think about the dreams and plans of other people. As Paul says in Philippians, “Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.” This takes practice. I find that I have to coach myself silently during every conversation: Ask what she is really feeling. Wait for his answer. Don’t rush into my own list of interesting stories that I want to share.

The next time you’re in a conversation, imagine what it would be like to read a written transcript of that exchange. Would most of the words on the page be yours? Did you give the other person sufficient space to describe their interests and needs, or did you try to manage how that conversation went? When they were speaking, were you revving your own engine – thinking ahead to what you were going to say next? Submission means taking our own issues and “arranging them under” someone else’s issues. That’s what Jesus did. What we learn, with time, is that it is far more fulfilling to bring joy to someone else than to try to grab our own fulfillment by foisting our personal agenda upon them.

Submitting to others out of reverence or holy fear for Christ is a beautiful thing. But there are limits. We are called to be submissive to others until such submission becomes destructive. 

Must a boy submit to his father when he instructs him to shoplift? Is a teenage girl morally obligated to her parents when they tell her to become a prostitute to help support the family? The answer is absolutely not. Nor does Ephesians 5:21 tell us to yield to the supervisor who demands that we falsify the company’s quarterly reports. The first disciples made it clear to the authorities in Jerusalem that their submission to the government had limits. They would not obey the command to stop preaching Jesus. “We must obey God rather than men!” (Acts 5:29)

What about the issue that an estimated one out of seven school children are forced to face every day – dealing with a bully? Last week the father of a Florida girl who is physically challenged, and who had been mercilessly taunted by her peers, came aboard her school bus and exploded in rage. He later apologized publicly for losing his cool – but not for standing up for his daughter, whom he was determined to protect. That incident shines light on the narrow line we must sometimes walk. We are called to be submissive to others, but not when submission becomes destructive. Likewise an assertive response must never become destructive of others.

Pastor and author Eugene Peterson recalls that when he was an elementary school kid in rural Montana he was terrorized by Garrison Johns, the school bully, for nearly seven months. Every day he recited to himself a couple of verses he had learned in Sunday School: “Bless those who persecute you,” and, “Turn the other cheek.” But one spring day he had had enough. Peterson writes, “Something snapped within me. Totally uncalculated. Totally out of character. For just a moment the Bible verses disappeared from my consciousness and I grabbed Garrison. To my surprise, and his, I realized that I was stronger than he.”

As a cheering crowd gathered, Peterson wrestled the bully to the ground, hit him as hard as he could, and demanded that he say “Uncle.” Garrison refused. “I hit him again… More cheering… And then my Christian training reasserted itself. I said, ‘Say, “I believe in Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior.”’ And he said it. Garrison Johns was my first Christian convert.” 

Not every story has such a memorable ending. We are called to be submissive to others. But we’re not called to live with a submission that becomes destructive. In a fallen world that can be very hard to discern. What exactly rises to the level of “destructive” when we find ourselves walking through the gray areas of life? Should an employee who deserves a promotion and needs that extra money for her family be submissive to the employer who plays favorites by giving the raise to someone else? Should one partner in a marriage submit to the vocational dreams of the other, knowing it will mean the surrender of his or her own lifelong hopes and dreams?

This is where we’re tempted to ask, “Where’s the verse in the Bible that tells me exactly how to respond to a bully, or an overbearing relative, or an insensitive neighbor?” There are no such verses. God didn’t give us a recipe or a playbook. What he gave us is the supernatural resource of the Holy Spirit. As Scott Shelton shared with us last weekend, every follower of Jesus is indwelt by God’s Holy Spirit – and we are called to seek regular re-fillings of his presence and power. We all wrestle with how to be submissive in a world that values anger and force to get things done. Trusting that the Spirit is always at work in us, we have to learn how to walk with each other in a submissive spirit. And in that spirit of waiting and listening, God’s light will certainly break through, even though we are never going to be able to trust him perfectly. 

The French Cathedral at Chartres, which was built more than 800 years ago, is one of the finest examples of medieval Gothic architecture. It is most famous for its 175 magnificent stained glass windows. In the thirteenth century applying color to glass was an inexact science. Raw pigments were sandwiched between sheets of crude, unevenly blown, bubbly glass. The artists had no idea how much color would shine through. On top of that, the technology to cut the glass left many pieces distorted. Thus the windows at Chartres were, from the beginning, unusually streaked, stained, curled, and scarred.

Within a century the artists of Europe figured out how to correct all those mistakes. They learned how to make perfectly colored, perfectly trimmed pieces of glass. But Gothic windows made with all those perfect pieces have turned out to be rather boring. Remarkably, it is the Cathedral at Chartres that is thought to have the most beautiful windows in the world. Its imperfections scatter the light in every imaginable direction as the sun slowly moves overhead every day.  

God doesn’t need perfect people to filter the light of his presence and power. God will do beautiful things even through our faltering attempts to obey him. Ephesians 5:21 is not a recommendation. It is the word of the Lord. We don’t have to be perfect. But we do have to be obedient. What is God asking of us today? Just as he has done the utmost to bless each of us, let’s now look to the Spirit and make the bold choice to bless each other – in the holy fear of Christ.