Sacrifice and Submission

Submission can still be a hot topic today, but for the most part the discussion has been swept away under the guise of ‘only fundamentalists talk about submission.’ “Conservative” Christians attempt to assert the Biblical mandate of submission, but it really only serves to alienate and polarize people. Most people today, even in the church, do not have a Biblical view of submission. The problem is that, in our individualistic, “me” oriented culture no one is submitted to God. On occasion, I will bait Christian men with the question; “Do you want to make your wives submit?” Some will nod in the affirmative with wide-eyed anticipation; others will cross their arms with a skeptical look of ‘where is this going?’ When I tell them that they need to demonstrate submission, they all groan or roll their eyes. I have not had one man say, ‘tell me more, I want to demonstrate submission to God as example for my wife.’

Likewise, sacrifice does not seem to be a part of the Christian vocabulary today. Yes, Jesus was the sacrifice that gave us reconnection with the Father, but too often sacrifice is viewed in the negative; God wants mercy, not sacrifice (Matt 9:13) or sacrifice is something Christ did for us. We are not taught that we are the sacrifice. Romans 12:1 tells us to offer our bodies as living sacrifices and Ephesians 5 admonishes us to be imitators of Christ and give up ourselves as offerings and sacrifices to God. Early Christians knew the cost of discipleship – they could lose everything, even their lives for declaring themselves Christians. Today, it seems that we not willing to sacrifice anything to be Christians. The fact that the average Christian gives $5 a week to his church bears this fact out. Heaven forbid, we ask that one gives up his “freedoms” so that he can be holy and set apart for God.

Interestingly, Paul addressed sacrifice in Romans 12 and submission in Romans 13. In the next couple of weeks, we will look at these two concepts individually. Christians are to live sacrificially and more specifically, husbands are called to sacrifice for their wives: “Husbands love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her” (Eph 5:25). Christians are also to live in submission; first to God, but also to governmental authorities, church leaders, employers, each other and more specifically, wives are called to submit to their husbands. Christians should demonstrate lives of sacrifice and submission – this shouldn’t be the man versus woman contention it has become, but that is what happened with the fall isn’t it?