The Spiritual Practice of Submission (for both men and women)

I’m a child of the tumultuous 60s and 70s. Resentment. Rebellion. Revolution.

Our disillusionment collided with approval by the FDA of “the Pill” in 1960 and a sexual revolution was born. Free love. Free sex. An explosion of sexually transmitted diseases and the right to commit abortion in 1973. We were/are proud of making it on our own.

Men had few bearings upon which to draw to guide their masculine identity. Our role models were the Great Generation who’d won WW II, but who didn’t tell their stories. Wedged in between the Great Generation and my generation, the Boomers, were those of the Silent Generation, born between 1928 and 1945. They are called the silent generation for a reason.

As the men of the 60s and 70s lost their way, women redefined their roles. They eyed the housewife role of their mothers and the submission taught by the church and revolted. The women’s revolution. Feminism. Burned bras. A woman can do anything a man can do.

Strong women. Weak men. The push for equality, not defined as equal in value, but as same in ability.

And here we are considering a culturally repulsive topic: submission.

Talk of submission is repressive. Religious input advancing submission as biblical and godly is intemperate, offensive, degrading, disrespectful, and an affront to women. Besides, submission is a prop for men too weak to hold their own as a man.

In the battle of the sexes, there’s no room for mercy. Only the weak submit.

From the traditional view, submission is a demeaning requirement upon capable women and an undeserving elevation of pitiful men into a dominant role they neither desire nor merit. Many view advocacy for submission as a license for abuse.

Is the practice of submission outdated (along with the Bible), inappropriate, irrelevant?

Is it possible that submission means something different than subservient, lesser, unequal, unqualified, relegated to another’s dominance? Is it possible that submission is positive not punitive?

Possible, but seemingly unlikely given the oft-cited biblical directive: “Wives, be subject to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord.”

What this verse and its companion passages mean in a popular culture that is morphing by the day is tricky business, but that’s why I’m writing. What this verse does not mean is much clearer.

It is not only unreasonable, it is unconscionable to assert that God is disrespectful toward women or that He favors men over women. It is ludicrous to assert that this passage means men are superior, women inferior, men capable, and women incapable.

Neither is it possible that this passage is advocating for subservience. The Gospel of Christ frees us from subservience to sin and endows us with salvation, freedom, establishment, and ultimate worth. The spiritual life of obedience exposes our godly desires for us and experientially aligns our understanding with God’s perspectives.

Favoritism, capriciousness, and punitive behavior are the stuff of insecure individuals. God is many things, but He is neither insecure nor petty. Jesus Christ proves this and dispels any notion of God existing outside the realm of pure love.

Reflecting on creation, the author of Genesis writes, “This is the book of the generations of Adam. In the day when God created man, He made him in the likeness of God. He created them male and female, and He blessed them and named them Man [Adam] in the day when they were created.”

God made a male man and a female man. He blessed both equally as one being while endowing each with unique roles and abilities.  

It is shortsighted to say a woman’s place is in the home. It is also shortsighted to declare that all men are leaders, or that all men are good decision-makers, or that all men are wise guides.

Deriving a definition of submission based upon gender or roles is narrow enough to be unreliable, but defining submission by traditional gender roles in Western culture is what we’ve done. In so doing we’ve recoiled at the concept of submission as defined by culture and missed the practice of submission as a spiritual discipline.

“All the spiritual disciplines have the potential to become destructive if misused,” writes Foster, “but submission is especially susceptible to this problem. As a result, we need to be clear regarding its limits. The limits of the discipline of submission are at the points at which it becomes destructive. It then becomes a denial of the law of love as taught by Jesus and is an affront to genuine Christian submission.”

Before launching into his thoughts on submission in Ephesians 5, Paul writes, “…and be subject to one another in the fear of Christ.” Then he develops what he means by being subject to one another: wives to your husbands, the church to Christ, children to parents, and husbands to their wives by loving them as Christ loves.

There are distinct roles men and women play in their relationships. While no marriage is like the other in daily dynamic, every Christian marriage has the same foundation as reflected in the traditional vows: to love and cherish until death do us part.

Said another way, marriage is given to us by God not only to procreate and populate the earth, but to pantomime the magnificence of what it means that we as the collective Body of Christ, the Church, are the bride of Christ. Just as God gives us friends to help us comprehend what it means to be a friend of God, and gives us family to help us understand the magic of being in the family of God, so God gives us marriage to portray what He means when He deems us His bride.

When a man and woman pledge themselves in marriage, they pledge to love one another throughout all the challenges of life. The vows taken are not self-serving, they are self-sacrificing. To love as Christ loves is to submit ourselves to a life of service, care, unconditional love, and self-sacrifice.

Did you notice the definition I just created for biblical submission?

The spiritual practice of submission is the spiritual practice of loving as Christ loves, not only in marriage, but in all aspects of life. Living in this manner is an affront to pride and self-preservation. Yielding up ourselves as superior, or better, or preferred, or entitled sabotages self-sufficiency and self-establishment and places us in position to understand that our lives are in Christ alone.

This lifestyle and attitude are contrary to culture. Spiritual submission is challenging—so challenging that adopting this attitude of mind requires practice to understand, appropriate, and maintain.

Richard Foster says,

“The touchstone for the Christian understanding of submission is Jesus’s astonishing statement, ​‘If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me (Mark 8:34).’ This call of Jesus to ​‘self-denial’ is simply a way of coming to understand that we do not have to have our own way. It has nothing to do with self-contempt or self-hatred. It does not mean the loss of our identity or our individuality. It means quite simply the freedom to give way to others. It means to hold the interests of others above our own. It means freedom from self-pity and self-absorption. 

“Indeed, self-denial is the only true path to self-fulfillment. To save our life is to lose it; to lose our life for Christ’s sake is to save it (see Mark 8:35).”

Johnny Calhoun says, “The discipline of submission is the desire to have Jesus as the Master of my life in absolutely every way.”

As you can see, the spiritual practice of submission is not demeaning, it is simply following the example of Christ’s practices.

Returning to “wives be subject to your husbands:” The passage is not elevating men and demeaning women. This can’t be the meaning of the verse. Rather, the instruction is, a) offering women a resourceful focus that is advantageous to them in their quest to live godly lives, while b) pantomiming within marriage how Christ submitted to God and thus demonstrating how our submission as men and women in the Body of Christ—His bride—is respectful of God.

Of course, as noted earlier, all the spiritual disciplines can be abused and mismanaged. This especially true for the practice of submission as Foster stated: “The limits of the discipline of submission are at the points at which it becomes destructive. It then becomes a denial of the law of love as taught by Jesus and is an affront to genuine Christian submission.”

I was speaking on the spiritual disciplines recently with a group of ministry leaders. Their pushback was strong! One accused me of damnable and pernicious heresy, others that I was teaching legalism, others that I was advocating that we walk walking after the flesh to improve our standing with God.

Let’s be clear: There is nothing you can do, or fail to do, that will enhance, alter, diminish, change, or otherwise affect positively or negatively your acceptance by your heavenly Father. Regarding your worth, you are the pearl of great price Jesus spoke about. As to heresy: baloney!

Note this summarized guidance from Philippians: “Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves. Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself. He humbled Himself by becoming obedient.”

The essence of submission is comprised of humility, mindset, and attitude.

Love determines the most redemptive thing for another individual and then takes action. This is a sacrifice. By definition, love gives without thought of return. Love is humbling. Love is an act of self-sacrifice in order to redeem.

We are all tempted toward self-survival, selfishness, self-promotion, and self-determination. To live opposite of this self-centeredness requires adopting a mindset that opposes pride, position, and an attitude of self-importance. The conflict between self-significance and self-denial is the fundamental sin of humanity, the original sin in the Garden, and the constant that drives humanity to subdue and subjugate others in order to establish their own self-esteem and self-sustainability.

In a word, the most fundamental of all sins is pride. This is why Jesus’ instruction is radical and counterintuitive: If you wish to have life, give up your life.

The harder it is to humbly submit yourself in a given situation is an indicator of how enticing the temptation is to forego submission of self and opt instead for self-elevation, self-aggrandizement, self-worth, self-sufficiency.

This is why the spiritual discipline of submission requires practice.

Humility is hard—for both men and women.

A man wants to conquer, to best an opponent, to be victorious in the arena. If successful, he holds his head high, endows upon himself self-sufficiency, self-made man, and struts with cockiness. While winning is not bad in itself, the temptation is to embrace adulation as self-defining, self-pride, self-sufficiency.

Pride is a potent intoxicant.

Just as it was tempting for Christ to embrace His divinity at the expense of His humanity, it is tempting for men to embrace their strength as defining and their successes as self-establishing. Just as Christ humbled Himself in obedience, so men are instructed to submit themselves by laying aside their lives and love sacrificially, humbly, and obediently—even if it costs them their lives. Humility.

If men are strong, women are powerful.

I’ve never understood feminism’s aspiration for women to be like men. That’s demeaning. How is femininity established by adopting masculinity as preferable? Besides, no matter the narrative, a woman will never be a man. Why would she want to be—unless her femininity is a shipwreck?

One of the most famous of feminists, Gloria Steinem, said, “A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle.” In one sense, Ms. Steinem is right. Apart from being handy to have around when a jar needs opening, men are more and more being relegated to nothing more than sperm donors.

Women possess powerful mojo. So powerful, that a woman’s temptation to abuse her power can make her susceptible to becoming self-sustaining, self-sufficient, self-imposing, and self-righteous. Pride. I don’t need anyone, including a man.

It’s interesting that the Bible doesn’t instruct a wife to love her husband. Rather, it states, “…let the wife see to it that she respects her husband.” Humility. Just as it was tempting for Christ to cling to His divinity, it can be tempting for a woman to cling to her power as a woman.

Pride is enticing for us all. Self-importance. Self-worth. Self-establishment, by me, for me, apart from everyone else—including God.  

The practice of submission is an adoption of attitude, a setting of the mind, a relinquishing of self-determination, an active embrace of sacrifice on behalf of another. The discipline is the regular doing. The practice of the discipline creates sophistication.

The practice of submission actively combats our vulnerability toward pride.

Men and women are strong and powerful human beings. Together, the temptation is to embrace self-rule and make ourselves like God.

Ah, the original temptation by the serpent in the Garden: “Eat this and you will be like God.” Pride. Once the forbidden fruit was eaten and the first humans became gods, they seized upon their self-established pride and girded themselves with independence, far from God, east of Eden.

Pride, the basic sin, the fundamental shortfall.

Any circumstance vulnerable to the temptations of self-elevation, self-importance, and self-will is the red flag marking pride’s germination within the flesh. As the most basic of all temptations, it is the temptation common to us all as human beings, the most tempting of all temptations, and the most flagrant of all sins because it establishes us as gods, rivals to the true God.

Thus, the importance of practicing the spiritual discipline of submission.

In all ways, throughout every aspect of life, we practice love, humble ourselves, and see to other’s wellbeing. As fellow travelers in the journey of life, men and women serve one another by submitting ourselves to each other.

In so doing, we affirm the value of our human worth as we guard each other against pride. It is in giving up our lives that we discover life and Life.

We could explore the passage of Scripture that says, “Children, honor your parents.” The admonition of the verse is for parents to teach their children humility and for children to practice humility.

If we had time, we could discuss submitting to the government, authorities, unjust rulers, and slave masters.

Although it is important to reconcile injustices and social discord, the imperfections of living in this fallen world are first and foremost opportunities for us to practice the spiritual discipline of submission. Otherwise, we are prone to believe human systems, government chief among them (think, Socialism), can establish us as people of worth, importance, and significance.

Circumstances serve to assist us in our accountability to humility, our dependence upon Christ as our life, and do so while facilitating our resistance to pride’s entitlement. 

We are called to humility, just as our Older Brother chose to live. The practice of submission serves this spiritual discipline.

Have this attitude which Christ demonstrated: Do not think yourself superior. Humble yourself as a matter of practice. Discipline your understanding of life in Christ. In so doing, you guard your heart against pride.  

While counterintuitive, it is in humbling yourself—submitting yourself—that you love, live, and discover personal fulfillment. Thus, in practicing the spiritual discipline of submission, you learn the beauty of how Christ lived.

In practicing the spiritual discipline of submission, you discover freedom.

I’m free. Thank God. I’m free at last. I’ve jousted against the pride of life and overcome. In submission Christ has bestowed upon me life and elevated me with Him to the right hand of God.

Next up: the spiritual practice of fasting. More soon.