Fight For Your Family

The word ‘submission’ is a “dirty word”, at least it is treated as one in our society.  It’s a word which conjures up all sorts of subservient, slavish images, but a word that, in the biblical sense, is misunderstood.

Question:  Who would deny that Jesus is victorious?  Who would deny that He conquered sin and death and evil?  No one who is a believer would.  We know He is King of kings and Lord of lords.  But how did Jesus do it?  How did He gain the victory over those things?  He did it in an unexpected way:  by submission and self-sacrifice.

Read Philippians 2:3-11.

Jesus is exalted in victory to the highest place because He made himself nothing  and humbled Himself even unto death.  That is totally counterintuitive to us, but it is the Gospel and it is the Truth.

But we might respond, “Well, perhaps that worked for Jesus, but not for us.”  Listen, however, to James 4:7: “Submit yourselves to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you.”  How do we resist the devil?  By submitting ourselves to God.  Our resistance, our fighting is submission to God.

But we hate submission!  It’s a bad word in our cultural vocabulary.  We’re taught to be assertive and independent.  But what does the Bible mean when it calls us to submit?  It means seeking first God’s Kingdom and His righteousness before our own.  It means making God’s perfect will our priority and His way our delight.  It means loving God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength and loving our neighbor as ourselves.  It is not passivity, rather it is, as Alec Motyer suggests, ‘active allegiance’.  To submit to God is to love God.  For if we love God, we will obey Him; we will desire to please Him; we will be devoted, in all things, to Him.

It’s ironic that we love the word ‘love’ and hate the word ‘submission’ because love involves submission.  We see this in human relationships.  People who only ever look to their own interests and never to the interests of others have no friends or loved ones.  They may have people who obey them or fear them, but they have no one who loves them.  They can’t because they can’t love or receive love.  Love involves submitting yourself to another person, for it is only by submitting yourself that you can love and be loved.  Selfishness is the biggest barrier to love.

And so, Ephesians 5:21-6:4, though one of the most misunderstood passages in the NT, teaches us how to fight for our families.

Verse 21 is crucial.  It says: “Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.”  ‘Submit’ is actually a participle and so literally says, “submitting to one another.”  As a participle, it is dependent upon the verb that come before it, namely the command to be filled with the Holy Spirit (Eph 5:18) – (addressing, singing, giving thanks, submitting). And so Paul is stating that, as we are filled with the Holy Spirit, we submit to one another.  Verse 22 goes on then and literally states, “wives to your own husbands as to the Lord”.  The NIV adds the verb ‘submit’ in that verse, but there is no verb in v.22.  It borrows it from verse 21: “Submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ - wives, to your own husbands.”  And notice that v. 21 assumes two parties, not just one.  So where is the second subject of the verb ‘submit’?  In v. 25: “Husbands, love your wives.”

So when you put it all together, the command is: be filled with the Holy Spirit … submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ – wives to your husbands (by respecting them –v.33) and husbands to your wives (by loving them).

Husbands submit themselves to their wives by loving them.  This point is emphasized by the statement, “just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.”  How did Jesus do that?  We read it before: Christ 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. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death-- even death on a cross!  Jesus loved the Church by making Himself nothing, taking the nature of a servant, humbling Himself and dying for her.  Husbands, that is what you are called to do for your wives.  As a husband you are to humble yourself, be a servant and lay down your life (your agenda, your perceived rights, your desire to be right all the time, your stubbornness, your ambivalence; your indecisiveness, your self-centeredness).  Lay it down and love your wife as Christ loves His Church.  And notice the command is not husbands, if you feel love for your wife then show her.  No the command is to love.  And when you submit in love to your wife, it makes it easier for her to submit, in respect and love, to you.

People often take offence at this passage because they think that it tells wives to submit to their lousy husbands and just take it.  It doesn’t.  It tells wives to respect their husbands who are loving them, for submission is possible when you are loved with a Christ-like love.  For love is patient and kind; it does not envy or boast; it is not proud or rude or self-seeking or easily angered or resentful.  It always protects, trusts, hopes and perseveres.  We can give ourselves to that kind of love.  When husbands follow Christ’s example of submitting themselves in love, they make it easier for their wives to follow Christ’s example and submit themselves in respect.

Think of ballroom dancing.  When it is done well, it is a beautiful thing.  And the rules of ballroom dancing require the male partner to lead.  His foot needs to move first while the female partner follows that movement.  But never, in a well done dance, does a spectator say, “look at how dominating that man is – what a male chauvinist pig!”  Rather, their attention is given to the woman.  Because the man’s leading serves to emphasize, highlight and accentuate the woman’s part.  And a dance in which the man leads – not to dominate, but to accentuate the woman and the woman follows not to be a doormat but to be guided and carried and lifted and supported – it’s a truly beautiful thing.

And so, how does one fight for one’s marriage?  By following Jesus’ example.  By submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ and as you’re filled with the Holy Spirit.  Now, it gets complicated when only one chooses to follow Christ.  It makes it extremely difficult for the other person.  And so, I charge you all – every husband and every wife:  fight for your marriage!  Fight by fighting against selfishness.  Fight to submit yourself to God.  Love God more than anything or anyone else.  And then you will find that you can submit to others in love.  Fight by loving.  That is, I believe, the only thing that will hold a marriage together - mutual selfless love is the only thing that will hold it together.

But if you’re going to fight for your family, you have to fight for your children too (and not just with them).  How do we do that?  This part is shorter because we have already established the means.  We start to fight for our children by fighting against our own selfishness which makes us sometimes resent the children God has given us – why are they like that?  Why are they so difficult? Why don’t they ever listen?  I was never like that.  Why can’ they be like those kids?  And we have to fight against our selfishness that makes us give up:  It’s too hard and just I’m too tired.  We read in Ephesians 6:4, “Fathers (we could say parents) do not exasperate your children, but bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord.”  We must give of ourselves to nurture our children.  We’ve all heard the nursery rhyme “Little Bo Peep” which ends with “leave them alone and they’ll come home wagging their tails behind them.”  Well, that isn’t true – not in shepherding nor in parenting.  We have to nurture our children and raise them up in the Lord.  And that requires submitting our wills to God and giving ourselves to do the difficult work of raising our children in the Lord. 

As in marriage, we fight this battle with love. If you think your kids are difficult, ask God about your own track record as His child.  And yet you are loved!  So love your children and strive hard to raise them to love the Lord.  And when you do that, you make it easier for them to obey God’s command to obey you.  If you submit yourself to the Lord and love them, they can submit to the Lord and obey and love you.  So fight for your children.  Don’t give up. 

And finally, if you are not married or you don’t have kids, this still applies to you.  Because we are a family as the church.  We are brothers and sisters in Christ and have even taken vows to support each other and the children among us.  We must all submit to one another out of reverence for Christ, for we are called to love each other and bear with one another.  We are called to look not only to our own interests, but to the interests of each other.

So Beloved of God, fight for your families and fight for our family.  Submit yourselves to God.  humble yourselves before the Lord and He will raise you up.  He will raise us up.  Fight against selfishness in your marriage; in your parenting; and in your relationships in the church.  Fight to love – to love God more than anything else; and to love your neighbor (your spouse, your children, your brother and sister in Christ) as you would be loved.

As John M. Perkins has stated, “Love is the final fight.”