Passage: Ephesians 5:21
The Big Idea
“Submitting to one another in the fear of God.” Something in us rises up against that word. But submission isn’t weakness; it’s the very nature of Jesus, who has all power and yet delights to do the Father’s will. Rebellion is the nature of Satan. God shapes us like a potter, often through the pressure of the people He places over us, and when we humble ourselves under His hand, He pours out grace and lifts us up in due time.
The Lighthouse
There’s an old story about a ship’s captain who saw lights in the distance on a dark, foggy night. He told his signalman to send: “Alter your course ten degrees south.” The reply came back: “Alter your course ten degrees north.” Angry, the captain sent: “Alter your course ten degrees south. I am the captain!” The reply: “Alter your course ten degrees north. I am a seaman third class.” Finally the captain sent the message he knew would settle it: “Alter your course ten degrees south. I am a battleship!” The reply: “Alter your course ten degrees north. I am a lighthouse.”
One preacher drew the point well: in our dark and foggy times, all kinds of voices shout orders into the night. But one voice, which can sound almost absurd, is the Light of the World, and we ignore it at our peril.
Submission Is Everywhere
Paul writes, “Submitting to one another in the fear of God” (Ephesians 5:21).
Submission is all around us. Even the toilet in your bathroom submits to its role. Imagine if it rebelled!
Our whole society is built on submission. All our laws depend on it. When you board a plane, you submit to security screening or face the consequences. Traffic laws aren’t designed mainly to restrict you but, in theory, to keep you safe so you can live a full life. (If you’ve ever seen traffic in a country where nobody follows the rules, you know!)
Yet when God speaks of submission, something inside us screams, “Who is He to tell me what to do, who to listen to, who to obey?” We’re fine when the world tells us what to do, but when it’s Jesus, suddenly there’s a problem.
What is that inner uprising? Why is “No!” the first word toddlers fall in love with?
As we grow up, a battle keeps raging inside us over whether we’ll submit or rebel. Even after we come to Jesus, that rebellious nature doesn’t simply disappear. It may be raging in you right now.
But as we walk in the life of the Spirit, we grow into the likeness of Jesus Himself, and His nature is one of complete submission to the Father. As we surrender to the way of the cross and choose to submit, we find freedom, healing and blessing.
If Jesus’ nature is submission, Satan’s nature is the opposite: rebellion.
The Potter’s Pressure (Jeremiah 18)
God is love. He is gentle. He cares for you more deeply than you can understand. But He’s also King, King of the whole universe. Everything submits to Him except some angels and rebellious people.
And He’s such a kind King that He wants to bring us back to the place where we can be blessed and live the full life He intended.
How? By applying pressure. And if we yield to that pressure, blessing follows.
God sent Jeremiah to the potter’s house. There the potter was working at the wheel, and when the vessel was marred in his hand, he reworked it into another vessel as seemed good to him. Then the LORD said, “Can’t I do with you as this potter has done? Like clay in the potter’s hand, so are you in My hand” (Jeremiah 18:1-6).
What gives God the right to put pressure on me? Authority.
He’s the ultimate authority. His name is I AM. He’s self-existent and in charge of everything. Even our reason and logic must bow to His authority. He’s all-powerful, all-wise, all-knowing, Creator and Sustainer of everything from galaxies to atoms, seen and unseen.
And yet He’s willing to work in our lives. He could simply force us to do what He says. But He wants a deeper relationship of love, where we freely submit to Him and experience love as it really is.
Why do demons have to leave when commanded in Jesus’ name? Because we’re so awesome? No. Because God’s authority requires them to. They can’t rebel against it.
Submission Isn’t Weakness
People associate submission with weakness. That’s completely wrong.
Jesus is the perfect example of submission, and He has all the power in the universe.
The psalm fulfilled in Him says that He came delighting to do God’s will, with God’s law written in His heart (Psalm 40:7-8; Hebrews 10:7).
Was Jesus less powerful than the Father? No. Scripture says all things were created through Him (John 1:3). Isaiah calls Him Mighty God and Everlasting Father (Isaiah 9:6).
So why didn’t the Father come to earth? Why wasn’t the Spirit crucified for us? Because in eternity past, in the counsel of the Trinity, the Son, in His impossible love, willingly offered to lay down His life to redeem mankind. Jesus said no one takes His life from Him; He lays it down of His own accord. He has authority to lay it down and to take it up again, and this charge He received from His Father (John 10:18).
And the Father isn’t a grumpy figure in heaven who had to be talked into it. He initiated our salvation by sending His Son (John 3:16).
There’s a well-known story, often told as a parable, of a drawbridge operator whose young son wandered into the gears just as a passenger train approached. He had a split second to choose: lower the bridge and save the train full of people, or leave it up and save his son. He lowered the bridge. As the train roared past, the passengers waved and laughed, never knowing what it had cost him. Whatever the story’s origins, it gives a glimpse of what the Father gave.
Jesus is the picture of total surrender to the Father’s will. He humbled Himself to the point of being tortured and killed without mercy. He didn’t complain; He trusted the Father the whole way through. That’s our example.
Peter says that since Christ suffered in the flesh, we should arm ourselves with the same mind, for whoever has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin (1 Peter 4:1).
Why does our flesh hate submission? Because it requires brokenness: complete surrender to the Father’s will, even when it involves suffering. Are you willing to go to the cross like Jesus, submitting every step of the way?
There are no shortcuts to godliness. The flesh isn’t godly, and it must die.
Some Honest Questions
With that in mind, let’s ask ourselves:
- Is it hard for you to get along with people?
- Do you often feel lonely?
- Are you bitter toward those in authority over you?
- Are you rude or unkind to those under you?
- Are you quick to correct others without imagining how you’d feel in their shoes?
- Are you gentle?
- Do you lack spiritual authority when you share God’s Word?
- Are you defensive?
- Are you hurt when someone corrects you?
- Are you desperate to control situations?
Many of these struggles, which we’ve all experienced, flow from a lack of submission and surrender.
The Heart of Satan (Isaiah 14:12-15)
When we take things into our own hands, here’s what’s really happening. It’s more than “sinning.” We’re walking with the heart of Satan instead of the heart of Jesus.
Isaiah describes the fall of the “morning star”: “How you are fallen from heaven! You said in your heart, ‘I will ascend into heaven; I will exalt my throne above the stars of God; I will sit on the mount of assembly; I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the Most High.’ Yet you will be brought down to Sheol, to the depths of the pit” (Isaiah 14:12-15).
Satan’s rebellion started in the heart: “Something God has done is wrong.” And it ends in destruction, waste and ruin.
Submitting to one another is about our hearts following Jesus, who wants to save us, rather than Satan, who wants to destroy us.
People God Has Placed in Your Life
Here’s the deal. God has placed people in your life: a spouse, a boss, a pastor, authorities of every kind. You may feel they’re far from God’s will. But they’re actually a big part of your relationship with Him.
You can have fellowship with God as you honor them, whether they’re kind or harsh, whether you think they like you, respect you, or have earned it.
When God places someone over you, it can be His hand applying pressure, forming you like a potter shaping a beautiful vessel. God isn’t fighting against you. He’s working in you.
(A crucial clarification: biblical submission never means obeying someone who commands you to sin (Acts 5:29), and it never means staying in danger. If you’re being abused, God does not require you to submit to that. Get to safety and get help.)
“But I can’t handle this! It’s too hard! How can I submit to this?”
I know. It’s impossible in our own nature. That’s why Jesus offers a new nature: His own life flowing through you by the Holy Spirit.
That’s how grace works. God allows challenges that bring us to the end of our own resources, and there we learn to rely on Him, trust Him and depend on Him.
Peter says: all of you, be submissive to one another and clothe yourselves with humility, because God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. So humble yourselves under God’s mighty hand, so that He may lift you up in due time, casting all your cares on Him, because He cares for you (1 Peter 5:5-7).
We’ll be looking at some traditionally challenging passages next. But if we get God’s heart here, it will change how we read everything that follows.
God wants us to be submissive so He can bless us with His grace, so we can experience casting our cares on Him and seeing His wonderful care for us, adding another page to the record of His faithfulness.
How Jesus Submitted
What did Jesus do in Gethsemane when submission got hard?
He bowed. He prayed. He trusted. He believed. He cried out. He sweated drops like blood. He brought His friends with Him. He held on to the Scriptures. He poured out His soul to the Father.
Every one of those actions shows us how we can submit too, and find the same victory in the same way.
“Wait, wasn’t He tortured and killed right after that? How is that victory?”
The death of our flesh is the first part of the victory! That old man who never seeks the Lord’s will, that selfish part of us that follows Satan’s example, is put to death through our submission to the Lord.
And the second part is the new life Jesus showed when He rose from the dead. After we submit and die to ourselves, His life flows through ours. His resurrection power, His grace, is given to us!
In the Fear of Christ
“Submitting to one another in the fear of God.” Many of the oldest manuscripts read “in the fear of Christ.”
Our lives will be evaluated. And lest you think the Judge won’t understand submission, Jesus Himself said the Father has given all judgment to the Son (John 5:22). The One who submitted perfectly is the One who will evaluate our lives.
So we’re urged to have a holy fear of letting Him down, of displeasing Him. Paul asks whether we really want to provoke the Lord to jealousy; are we stronger than He is? (1 Corinthians 10:22). And he says that because we know the fear of the Lord, we persuade others (2 Corinthians 5:11).
Peter says to submit to every human institution for the Lord’s sake, whether to the emperor as supreme or to governors sent by him. This is God’s will: that by doing good you silence the ignorance of foolish people. Live as free people, but don’t use your freedom as a cover-up for evil; live as servants of God (1 Peter 2:13-16).
- When you love submission, it’s a powerful ministry to the world.
- When you love submission, it isn’t a law or a rule; it’s your joy, because you’re a servant of God who loves Him and has chosen to be with Him.
- When you love submission, you don’t have to hide things from your boss, your spouse or your pastor under a cloak, like a street vendor with watches inside his coat. You can honestly love them.
- When you love submission, you love God, because you’re learning His heart and drawing near to it.
I dare you: taste and see whether it isn’t the best heart you could ever know (Psalm 34:8).
Grace Takeaway
Submission isn’t weakness; it’s the heart of Jesus, who had all power and still said, “Not My will, but Yours.” Rebellion is the heart of the enemy. God uses the people and pressures in your life like a potter’s hands, and when you humble yourself under His mighty hand, He gives grace and lifts you up in due time. Cast your cares on Him. He cares for you.
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