Submitting to One Another

Today’s is one of those passages most often misapplied, overstated, misrepresented and also divisive. Our word for today is Submission. Take a deep breath, let it go, take another, let it go and keep repeating. This will get better.

Paul is talking to disciples of Jesus about how carefully they should walk ‘because the days are evil’ but is taking a positive approach:

Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil. Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is. ¹

Be careful, be wise, make the best use of time and be understanding of the will of the LORD. All of these are active keys to living in Jesus and not being overcome by evil times. Paul then adds avoidance of that which detracts from the fullness of the Spirit, that which enhances our focus upon the LORD

And do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit, addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart, giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ…²

Get your focus off lesser things, get your focus on divines. It is presumed that the disciple is filled with the Holy Spirit and does not desire and of the escapes of this world would encourage.

Let us give you the thought that this is warfare: careful where you walk, understanding the circumstances, being wise, prepared for the enemy, understanding the Way of the LORD. In that context, let me introduce you to the Greek military term for closing ranks, for maintaining a formation where each squad member protects the others by staying in order to cover each other against the opposition. ‘Be careful how you walk’ means to take heed, pay attention, examine closely the space you are occupying as you pass through where you are at now. ‘Time’ as in ‘making the best use of the time’ isn’t time as kept by a watch or a calendar, chronos time, but is kairos time which is measured by successive events, the crisis times that we are most likely to remember because of impact. The military term is ‘hypotassō’ ³ and is used in the next phrase,

…submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ. ⁴

It is imperative to see the context, that the lead-in use of ‘submission’ is to ‘one another’ so that before we go into social relationships, we are all to submit to one another. This removes any superiority and reduces the following submissions to that closing formations with one another for mutual protection. Remember—The days are evil. Being in agreement with the LORD and in edifying relationship with each other is foremost. All of the following ‘submissions’ are to be for edifying and building up in the LORD.

Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. ⁵
For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.
Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her…⁶

Yes, the wife is to be in submission to her husband but remember that in the previous verse all are to be in submission to each other. Using the military example, where is the husband? He assumes the role as Christ did in expressing sacrificial love for the Church, laying His life down for the Church so,

…that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body. “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. ⁷

You cannot separate the mutual, beneficial submission from the example of Jesus submitting Himself to the Father for the redemption of the Church, all disciples of God. The husband is to submit to the desires of the LORD just as Jesus submitted in love. This is not a superiority issue but a laying down of rights issue.

Do all in a military formation benefit from the mutuality of protection in the formation? Certainly for each covers the assaults of the enemy against the others. Does status have anything to do with the effectiveness of the submission? No for all are valued mutually. And so it is in this model of submission:

However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband. ⁸

In the following chapter, there are several more examples but in each submission has the context of roles rather than values before the LORD. And in each, serving God’s purposes in serving and edifying the ‘others’ is of higher value than emphasizing the position of the server.