Momentum: Pursuing God’s Blessings Through The BeatitudesPrimjer

Who Do You Submit To?

"Submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ." Ephesians 5:21

Paul is describing what it looks like when God’s people are filled with the Holy Spirit: They sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs to each other (5:19). They’re always giving thanks (5:20), and they submit to one another (5:21).

If you’re not a member of a local church, whom do you submit to? This is a serious question. How can you do what God asks you to do in Ephesians 5:21, if you are not a committed member of a local church? Meekness grows through the discipline of committed relationships. These are God’s gift to us in the body of Christ.

Autonomous, self-directed Christians miss out on the blessings of meekness. If the pattern of your life is to walk away every time a person upsets you, you cannot learn meekness. Meekness can only happen when you’re upset and you submit yourself to God in the middle of it.

Submission to God’s Word and to his will are unconditional; our submission to each other is not. There may be times when we say, like the apostles, “We must obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29). But remember, the apostles said this when they were forbidden from preaching the gospel.

The normal pattern of healthy Christian relationships is that we submit to each other: “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves” (Philippians 2:3 NIV). Meekness is formed out of the difficulty of doing this.

This means I must listen to what others are saying and to what others think. I must listen to it and give weight to it, even when I feel I may be right.

For further reading, see Ephesians 5:18-21