The Discipline of Submission

            Submission is something that in our society and culture would be considered counter-cultural. It goes against almost everything that we have ever been taught. We are taught to take care of ourselves. We are taught to be independent from a very young age. We are taught to look out for number one, and to put our own interests ahead of everyone else’s.

            When people think of submitting, almost immediately everyone thinks of something negative. In the wrestling world, submission is something that you force someone into, it is not something they want to do. Many people will point to how Men (mostly) have abused the idea of submission that is described to us in scripture.

            So for us today, when we think about submission, we think it is something negative. We get an image of being a doormat. We think that it means that we have to allow everyone to walk all over us.

            This week we will be looking at the act of submission as a spiritual discipline. It is a discipline, again, because it is something that does not come natural to us. Our human nature is to look out for number one! It is to look out for myself. But submission as a spiritual discipline is to put us more in line with who Christ is, and how he lived his live.

            Jesus’ whole life was a life lived out in Submission to the will of the Father. Philippians 2 says it this way,

“Who, being in very nature God,
    did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
⁷ rather, he made himself nothing
    by taking the very nature of a servant,
    being made in human likeness.
⁸ And being found in appearance as a man,
    he humbled himself
    by becoming obedient to death—
        even death on a cross!

⁹ Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
    and gave him the name that is above every name,
¹⁰ that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
    in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
¹¹ and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord,
    to the glory of God the Father.”

           Jesus lived his life in submission to the will of the Father, and he displayed what humility and submission to others looked like while he was here on earth. When he was in front of Pilate, he could have asserted himself, but he submitted to his authority. He submitted himself to the point of death on a Cross, and he did all of this for us - Mark 8:34-38:

           

            Jesus modeled what it looks like to live a life of submission. Submitting himself to the will of the father, and he calls us to this life as well.

“Then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. ³⁵ For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it. ³⁶ What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? ³⁷ Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul? ³⁸ If anyone is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will be ashamed of them when he comes in his Father’s glory with the holy angels.”

         Jesus calls us to deny ourselves – to be submissive – to the will of the Father. This is difficult for us to do. We want to be in control. We want to be number one. To submit to the will of the Father is putting our complete trust in him for everything. Not only are we to submit to the Father, but we are to submit to the authorities over us, we are to submit to each other in how we live. Submission is difficult, yet, Jesus modeled it for us, and calls us to a life of submission to one another.