What Submission is NOT!

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Marriage – It is God’s idea! It is a place of high honor! It is a sacrifice! It is a act of submission.

In this final week of this marriage series, we are going to discuss… submission. It is a hot topic that every one of us loves to discuss…

 “Submission is not about authority and it is not obedience; it is all about relationships of love and respect.” – William Paul Young, Author of “The Shack”

 “You cannot fulfill God's purposes for your life while focusing on your own plans. ” – Rick Warren

 “The truth is, if we don't learn to submit to authority, we won't ever learn to submit to God.” – Joyce Meyer

Christian Submission is not about being a Doormat. It is not a button that you push to prove you are better or more liked or have high abilities… Paul, who writes this passage, deals harshly with both secular authorities and with Christian brothers and sisters when they overstep their bounds and treat him as less than he is.

The Submission that Paul is calling us to is a mutual submission – not one where there is one person in submission, and another in authority, but that we would submit to each other.

Christian Submission is not about over-the-top politeness like those two chipmunks in the cartoons who say, “no, no, no, after you,” “no, I insist after you,”  It is not the abdication of responsibility or authority so we get no-where and no decisions get made because we are so worried about stepping on each others toes. Christian Submission is not about the lowest common denominator.

Submission is not about keeping each other from getting ahead. Christian submission doesn’t say, “I’m not going to use my God given gifts, because I might make someone else look bad”
There is a sense in the term of submission of coming under the other person, not to be held down by them, but to lift them up!

Philippians 2:6-7 explains Jesus example as: “(Jesus)Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.” 

Submission is not about how good the other person is over you or how powerful you can become over them … More to Come...you know I love ya, Don