Submission. The word has been given a black eye by society. When we think of submission, images of downtrodden, defeated and miserable slaves pop into our minds. Submission, to our culture that glorifies independence, sounds like defeat, like the surrender and concession of a weak or defeated person. But biblical submission is actually the very opposite. It is strength, it is the very place of power, it is the victory that comes by surrender.
In this two-part series, we’re looking at the theme of authority and submission. In Part 1, we dealt with biblical authority. We saw that God, being the final authority has set this world up to be run with authority. Human authority, be it in the home, in the church or in society at large, is to be a channel of God’s authority.
We then saw how people often mess up the role of God-given authority by their selfishness. People tend to either become abusive leaders, ruling with excessive control, force and cruelty, or become abdicating leaders, passively letting their responsibilities go without any effort to rule. Both are self-pleasers.
We saw that a God-pleasing leader is two things. Firstly, it’s someone who rules in the fear of God, meaning he understands that his leadership is delegated, and he is in submission to a greater authority: God. He must represent that authority in word and deed. We saw also that a God-pleasing leader sacrifices to meet the needs of those he leads.
Now, even God-pleasing authority will make no sense if there is no submission to that authority. Leaders become redundant if no one is following. The direction God seeks to give to the world through His ordained leadership will be unseen if people refuse to follow that leadership. For authority to have any impact in our world, there must needs be submission.
But what is submission, and how does it work? Do we always have to submit? What about when the authority is abusive or ungodly? What’s the idea behind it anyway? Now, the truth is, humans suspect authority, and therefore are wary of submission. We are always suspicious and wary of authority, and society tells us that no one should ultimately lead.
Authority is downplayed in our culture. Leaders are no longer leaders, they are representatives. Parents are not leaders, they are guides. You do not speak of leadership in the home any more. Church leaders are not leaders; they are simply organisers. All over, we have a suspicion that leadership – one ruling and one following – is somehow a weak, dangerous or simply unworkable idea. Why do we think this way?
It comes down to the human heart. Satan knew this when he tempted Eve. His one tactic was to make her suspect authority. He said to her: “Then the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. 5 For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil” (Genesis 3:4-5). What was Satan doing?
He was suggesting, ‘The authority over you is abusing His power. He’s exploiting you for His own ends. God is holding you back, because He has a selfish agenda. He doesn’t want you to become a god like Him, so He’s lying to you.’ Eve bought the lie, and so did Adam. The pride that made Lucifer cry out “I will be like the Most High” (Isaiah 14:14) was reproduced in the human heart. This isn’t the submissive heart of the Son of God, which says, “Not My will but Thine be done” (Luke 22:42), but the satanic heart that cries out, “I will.”
In the human heart, our pride and selfishness regards acting under our own authority as the most natural thing to do. We want to direct, plan, and control our lives, and shape things for our own benefit. We do not want another to tell us how. We hate the idea of submitting to another’s commands when it comes to direction, decisions, or plans. The evil in our hearts resists submission, for it threatens the rule of Self, who always wants to sit on the throne.
So we must see that our natural aversion to submission is really evidence of the pride in our hearts. The self-protectiveness in us rears its head, defensively guarding the reins of its life from another. Well, how does God regard submission? Predictably, God expects it.
Therefore submit yourselves to every [a]ordinance of man for the Lord’s sake, whether to the king as supreme, or to governors, as to those who are sent by him for the punishment of evildoers and for the praise of those who do good.
1 Peter 2:13-14
That’s right – God expects submission. He expects it in the home, He expects it in the workplace, He expects it in the church, He expects it in society. Why? Because He is to be obeyed, and human authority is simply a channel of His authority.
See, in Part 1 of this series, we saw that any human leader is not a law unto himself. He is a link in the chain of God’s authority. Therefore, to the degree that a human leader is representing God’s authority, disobeying that leader is to disobey God. If God has ordained authority, and biblically, He has, then rebellion against human authority is really disobedience against the commands of God.
God is not currently here in the flesh, leading us as King, though He will one day. In the meantime, human under-rulers are to be obeyed to the degree that they channel God’s commands to us. God expects submission to human leaders because it is very often the acid test of whether we are in submission as a whole.
You see, often people claim to be obedient to God, but they are unable to submit to any human leader, anywhere, anytime. They are deceiving themselves. That’s like the man who hates his brother who he has seen, but claims to love God whom he has not seen. A pattern of rebellion to human authority is the tell-tale sign of a heart in rebellion to God.
God places a very high price on submission, because ultimately, salvation itself is a submission issue. Salvation is where your rebellion against God ends – you repent of living life your own way, and come under the Lordship of Jesus Christ. You go from disobedience to obedience. So submission is really foundational to the Christian life. You can make absolutely no progress into Christlikeness if you can never break, submit and follow another.
Now, just as we saw there were two kinds of unbiblical kinds of leaders in Part 1, so there are two kinds of unbiblical followers.
- The defying follower
The defiant follower pleases themself by rejecting authority outright. They assert their independence plainly and openly. Their disobedience is neither subtle, nor silent. They may mask their defiance by being an intelligent debater that picks the leader’s decisions apart – but it does not change the fact that they are defying.
They may mask their defiance by pretending to be a constructive leader, who has another idea – a better idea! However, their defiance comes out when their idea is not chosen. They may pretend that they are not defiant by quietly doing the opposite – but they are still defiant. No matter how it manifests itself, this heart throws off the bit and bridle of submission to a human leader, and gallops free into the pasture under its own authority.
From the citizen who blatantly disobeys the laws of the land to the child who openly refuses to obey their parents, from the church member who refuses the accountability of the local church to the marriage characterised by strife, there is the evidence of the human heart saying, “I will.” This heart seeks to please itself by refusing to submit at all. It completely refuses authority.
However, on the other end of the scale, we find the opposite kind of unbiblical submission.
- The deferring follower
This person defers to authority – it obeys. However, it obeys not out of the kind of heart that pleases God, it obeys because it believes obedience will get it what it wants. In other words, it is also pleasing self. This heart co-operates, it goes along with the authority God has placed, not because it is in submission to God, but because it believes by submitting, life will work better.
Jim Berg in his book Changed into His Image calls this ‘the Cooperative Rebel.’ This is the daughter who will wash the dishes, because it’s better to her than being nagged. She’ll drag her feet and slam the dishes, but she’ll do it anyway.
This is the employee who clearly drags his feet, does the bare minimum to get by, and shows a grumpy and miserable attitude to work. Oh, he’s doing his job, but only because not doing it would be worse for him. Paul told servants not to work with eyeservice – in other words, simply obeying their masters for fear of earthly consequences. Such an attitude is a fleshly, deferring follower. So he does it to please himself.
This is the church member who gets involved in ministry, not because he wants to please God, but because he dislikes the cool treatment he will get from the pastor if he does not. He is pleasing himself. This is the citizen who obeys the laws of the land only because being arrested or fined would be a bother and an inconvenience that he doesn’t want. He obeys, but only to get his own way. He is by no means submitted to God’s Spirit – he is still firmly submitted to himself. His obedience is as unto himself.
In the same way that the abusive leader and the abdicating leader please themselves through different methods, the defiant follower and the deferring follower are also alike. Both of them want their own way. The defiant follower seeks their own way by completely defying authority; the deferring follower seeks their own way by co-operating with the authority. But neither of these comes close to biblical submission. What, then, is biblical submission?
- Biblical submission is always to the Lord
The primary mark of biblical authority is that people must rule in the fear of God, as we saw in 2 Samuel 23:3. Unsurprisingly, the exact same principle applies to biblical submission: “submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of God” (Ephesians 5:21). Submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of God sounds remarkably like David’s words – ruling in the fear of God.
The one who rules in the fear of God is the one who sees their authority is as unto the Lord, and they represent God’s commands. They do not rule for themselves, but pass on God’s authority to another in word and deed. One who submits in the fear of God sees their submission as unto God, so they submit to Christ through a human leader.
Such a person is not submitting for their own benefit, like the deferring follower, but sees what they do as a clear obedience issue – the sheep following the Shepherd. The God-fearing leader tries to direct and encourage obedience to God; the God-fearing follower enacts that obedience to God.
Important to understand is that both the leader and the follower are equal in God’s sight, be it in marriage, in the home, in the church, in the workplace, or in the country. The issue of authority and submission is not remotely related to being superior and inferior. It has everything to do with promoting obedience to Christ in each other’s lives. One human is given the role of being at the front, another is given the role of following. But both are to be in the fear of God.
See, some have confused the issue by making submission to another human an end in itself. They act like submitting to another human is somehow virtuous for its own sake, as if that man or woman is superior, and rebellion to them is evil, because of their status. But that’s off-balance. Submission to a person is not an end in itself, it’s a means to an end – the end we are seeking is obeying God.
That means that my submission to human leaders is always living and breathing on the foundation of the fear of God. God is my audience – God is my first love. I seek to please Him, and the human authorities in my life provide structure, guidance and organisation to my desire to please Him. I keep Him as the chief end of my obedience, and I see the humans given the role of leading me as God’s chosen means of helping me obey.
Just as Paul emphasises to the leaders that they have a Leader themselves they must submit to, he emphasises to followers that their obedience stretches way beyond any mere human. Ephesians 5 keeps telling us to submit “as unto the Lord.” Children, obey your parents in the Lord. Servants are told “with good will doing service, as to the Lord, and not to men.”
Submission is to the rule of God. Humans are mere conductors, caretakers and superintendents of God’s laws. He is the One we submit to, in our submission to human authority. Well, that immediately raises the question – what do we do when the human authority does not represent God’s authority? If they are a means to an end – that is, obeying God – surely our obedience to them is limited to their own obedience to God?
Well, generally speaking, that is true. If a human authority defies God’s authority, they have, by definition, forfeited their authority. When a human leader does this, we should not think of it as rebelling against them, we should see it as continuing to submit to God in spite of the human authority.
Peter and the apostles are an example of this. When the God-given authorities commanded them to stop speaking about Jesus, they knew that they were in rebellion to God. God Himself in the flesh had told them to tell the whole world about Jesus. Their quiet and meek reply was, “We ought to obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29).
See, they did not picket, vandalise the synagogue, or start a forum for removing the Pharisees. They simply saw that, at this point, the authorities were not obeying God, and so obedience to Christ superseded the authorities’ demands. God-fearing submission rejoices in submission. It can say to a leader who’s not obeying God, ‘I long for your leadership. I long for you to lead me in a God-pleasing way. When you do that, I’ll jump at the chance of following you, because I delight to follow Christ. But for now, sadly, you are not obeying God, and I must obey God first.’
What a far cry that is from the defiant follower who sees the leader’s failures as the chance to ‘throw off the shackles of submission.’ What a far cry that is from the deferring follower who will even submit to unbiblical commands, simply to keep the peace, because they don’t want problems.
No, God-fearing submission longs to submit. It groans when a leader refuses to follow God, and urges him in a spirit of meekness to take his place as a God-fearing, sacrificial leader. It does not seek to oust him from his place, or to usurp his place; it longs to push and provoke him to where God wants him to be.
Ideally, authority will represent Christ and treat you as you ought to be treated. But take note, the command to submit in Scripture is not a conditional statement. It does not hinge on the authority treating you right. It’s a non-negotiable command to submit under the power of the Holy Spirit.
But let’s also add, we must differentiate between the unreasonable and the unbiblical. A leader may come up with an unreasonable request. If it is not unbiblical, then submission to that leader is still called for. God still expects obedience as unto Him, in that unreasonable request. He is building character and righteousness through that situation which He has permitted.
Remember, God can remove any leader at any time. God still expects us to submit when leaders are unreasonable. The apostles were certainly under the unreasonable rule of Rome. Yet their epistles are strangely lacking in calls to rebel against the Romans. It was only when the unreasonable became unbiblical, that their obedience to Christ had to continue, in spite of the unbiblical law.
For instance, the pastor of the church I’m involved in may declare, ‘Sunday morning service will be at 5am from now on.’ Now, that would be unreasonable. However, is there any biblical command or principle that is specifically violated by having a service at 5am? No. It is unwise, pretty insensitive and will empty the church in about a week, but guess what? I’m still called to submit to that.
I’d no doubt pull him aside and suggest to him that it’s not a great idea, but as my leader, I’m called to obey Christ in the situation. God has ordained this leader for me, and this leader is making an unreasonable request. So believe it or not, I can see the unreasonable request a part of God’s will for me at this time. I see it as God’s choice to teach me certain things – most notably, in this case, going to bed early!
But if the pastor announced, for example, that we would no longer use the Bible as our final authority, then I would be authorised to obey Christ in spite of that pastor. He would have forfeited his authority by asking something unbiblical. So we must make a clear distinction between the unbiblical and the unreasonable. However, you’ll find the majority of things which rub you the wrong way in submission situations are usually unreasonable, but not unbiblical.
There are not that many situations where following a leader will lead you into direct conflict with God’s Word. Yes, they do come up, but mostly, it is the leader behaving in an un-Christlike way which makes us feel they are unfit to lead. Or it is unreasonable requests that make us chafe. Mostly, though, we can continue to submit to Christ, even in the face of poor examples and unreasonable requests.
- Biblical submission is loving
Since submission is unto Christ, biblical submission is loving. John ties up obeying and loving as Siamese twins in his epistle – you cannot separate them. You love because you obey, you obey because you love, you love to obey, and you obey to love. Obedience, directed at Christ, must be loving. It must have sweetness and cheerfulness that befits obeying so great a Master.
The teenager who does their chores but purposefully slams the door or bangs the dishes is not submitting to Christ – because you wouldn’t obey the One who died for you that way, would you? The employee who sulks and grumbles and gossips about the manager is not obeying as unto Christ, because you wouldn’t gossip about Christ, would you?
The citizens who chafe under the laws and curse the government are not submitting to Christ, because you certainly wouldn’t do that if He were the King reigning in Jerusalem, would you? Seeing the design of authority and submission helps us focus it. There must be a sweet spirit about it, or else it is going no further than our respect or love for the human, which may not be much.
The love, sweetness and cheerfulness in your submission is the acid test of whether you are doing this unto the Lord, or unto men. If you are seeking to please self, you will have no joy in the submission, for it rubs you the wrong way. If you are obeying Christ, there can always be joy, since He is far above the pettiness of the human leader who annoys you.
Indeed, it is this cheerful submission that Peter speaks of as the thing that will win unbelieving husbands, and put to silence foolish unbelievers, and win over pagan rulers. Submitting to ungodly and unreasonable authority with a sweet spirit causes people to ask about the power in your life. That leads us to the third truth about Biblical submission.
- Biblical submission is empowered by the Spirit
Just as the God-fearing leader must depend on God to rule others, so the God-fearing follower must depend on God to obey. In Ephesians 5, Paul tells the believers that we are to be continually coming under the control of the Holy Spirit. From there, he launches into perhaps the most extensive passage on submission and authority in the New Testament, taking it into the home, and the workplace. Notice the’ cause and effect’ relationship between being under God’s authority and being under man’s authority in Paul’s words here:
And be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess; but be filled with the Spirit; speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord; giving thanks always for all things unto God and the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ; submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of God.
Ephesians 5:19-21
Coming under the control of the Spirit will produce praise, thanksgiving, and submission. Obedience is unnatural to the flesh. The flesh is a self-ruler. It is as we crucify the flesh, and submit to God, that submission is possible. Submission is quite simply impossible apart from the Holy Spirit of God. We will either be defiant or deferring, but we will definitely not be submitted sweetly and passionately to Christ.
It is only as you submit to God, that you will have the power and motivation to submit to others. After all, it is God you are submitting to ultimately, so if you are not under the control of the Spirit, then by definition, you are submitted to no one. Coming under the control of the Spirit gives you both the motive – to please God, and the means – His grace, to submit to earthly authorities.
So ultimately, submission becomes a simple thing. I didn’t say an easy thing, I said simple – meaning, uncomplicated. There are only two choices on the shelf: please God, or please self. You can choose to please self by defying authority or by deferring to it – and both times, you are simply seeking to get your own way. Or you can give up your own way and seek to please God. You can live the prayer of Christ out: ‘Nevertheless, not my will, but thine be done.’
As we do this, we will see that we submit in the fear of God. Our submission is not finally to humans, but to God. We can then submit to even unreasonable rules cheerfully, since it’s part of our spiritual curriculum to grow into the image of Christ. Only if the leader themself defies God’s authority will we continue to obey God, in spite of the leader. And we can only accomplish this when under the control of the Holy Spirit as we submit to Him, moment by moment, day to day.
Authority and submission. We need them to make sense out of a world that, left to itself, would unravel into the chaos of every man for themself. In short, we need God-fearing leaders, and God-fearing followers. We need leaders who will sacrificially lead, and followers who will lovingly submit. Both need the power of the Holy Spirit, Who enables us to follow the Lordship of Jesus Christ.