April 22, 2024

GOD’S WORD FOR TODAY:

“Find out what pleases the Lord. Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the Head of the Church; His body of which He is the Savior. Now as the Church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.” (Ephesians 5.10; 22, 23,24)

REFLECTION ON GOD’S WORD:

“…IN EVERYTHING…” You learned in school as I did, if one part of the statement is false the entire statement is false. It does not mean “if one part of the statement is disagreeable to me the whole statement is disagreeable.” It does lead us to consider, especially in our spiritual relationship with God’s Word, “If one part of the statement is agreeable to me then the whole statement must be agreeable to me.” This is harder because we fear submitting to the totality of God’s Word. Our humanness wants to be able to edit, pare away and ignore what we don’t like or what we disagree with or what we don’t understand or what we simply want to ignore because it doesn’t serve our purpose. Paul writes to Timothy “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.” (2 Timothy 3.16-17) So, as we look back upon Paul’s word of instruction to the Faith in Christ community in Ephesus, we have to read the inclusiveness and totality of application he uses to make his point concerning “submission.” Yes, we read it correctly, ““…IN EVERYTHING…” How some, that is “men,” love to read as the Church is to submit to Christ (no qualifier appears given as this point), so wives should submit to their husbands about EVERYTHING.” But, wait, one part of that statement influences the other. It is correct to read it this way, too: “As the Church should submit to Christ about everything, so also should wives submit to their husbands.” I know, I have gone from “preaching to meddling.” True hurts and we all feel its sting as clearly as when Paul declares “For ALL have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” And again, “Where, o death, is your victory? Where, o death is your sting?” Paul was just talking to one but to us all. We must easily profess, too, that Jesus didn’t die for some but for all. God’s Word is meant for every person to hear, listen to and respond in accordance to the expectation of submission.

And submission means more than compliance! Do I need to say that again so that we all may hear it? Submission means more than compliance. This was the failing of the Law in the days after it was given to Moses and then passed down from generation to generation. If we stop long enough to consider it, the Decalogue was given because the aforementioned thinking was already in play and the Shema was not fully engaged in the hearts, mind and spirit of those whom God had called into being with meaning and purpose reflecting His goodness and righteousness. When Jesus professes that the greatest commandments were those known to the priests, the scribes, the Pharisees and more than likely to the entire Jewish population because they were all to have been raised up with the Law and confessing it by the time they were “of age,” everyone knew the truth. They either had to confirm or deny their own knowledge of “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength and mind; equally love your neighbor (the stranger, the foreigner, the enemy) as yourself.” Jesus added, “On these hang all the Law and the Prophets.” Today, how many people, including God-fearers and Christ-followers (they are not all the same and sometimes they consider themselves mutually exclusive), get hung up on the word “command/commandment” and never even hear, must less listen to, the rest of the teaching?

So, let me reflect again in short order “submission means more than compliance.” With that I mean that just going through the motions without authentic intentionality or “meaning it,” neither examples nor promotes one’s true desire to let God’s Word live in them. Sometimes it leads to a “fake” message of relationship. We assume that those who are living together actually love each other just like we may assume that everyone who goes to worship actually love God and believe that Jesus is the Christ. Oh sure, there are those who will tell you “fake it till you make it.” But, familiarity does not breed “buy in.” Living by rote is one of the main complaints against “church.” People do it on auto-pilot to check the box off their list for “being good.” Still, how much thinking and engaging with the word of God is there if we merely check a box that on our list of boxes to check grows smaller and smaller until it seems almost imperceptible? We may get to the point, and undoubtedly some and perhaps many have already, that the call to gather as a “Word of God” community seems so trivial in the scope of everything else it may easily be ignored, discarded and thus minimized as to its importance and vital necessity to the whole of our lives. They may even say “Going to church isn’t everything.” But, what if it is? What if we have perceived incorrectly the priority of our Church attendance thinking it means “going to” instead of “taking with”?

Yes, “As the Church submits to Christ [everything], so should the wife submit to her husband [everything].” We already know that Paul has iterated “Husbands be subject [submissive] to your wives as you are to Christ who is the Head of the Body as you are head of the family.” Paul isn’t speaking to some. Paul is speaking to all. He is speaking so inclusively on this matter that it matters exclusively. Just as we are “the Church” at all times and to be submissive to Christ in all things, so should our human relationships reflect the same truth. Tough? Challenging? Impossible? Do we not have a “word” to address that thinking as well? “With human beings it is impossible but nothing is impossible to God and with God.” (Matthew 19.26) Some want to use that phrase as an empowering motivation statement that God is helping them be better in their work, in their play, in their personal pursuits to satisfy their wants and needs of the flesh, etc. Jesus was speaking to the reality of discipleship and submitting everything we have to God so that God’s purpose of life-giving could be manifested with the resources offered back to Him. See, it isn’t about “compliance” such as tithing but “submission” such as in all things and with everything. It speaks not to the simple physical manifestation or oral confession or mental gesturing as with consent by a nod of the head. It speaks to “laying it all on the line even when it hurts” in order that being the Church is the totality of life and living.

And that type of thinking, Paul teaches, is what we should be manifesting, confessing and gesturing in all our relationships so that they image and proclaim our faith in God through Jesus Christ our Lord who submitted Himself for our sake to death, even and especially death on the cross, that we might have life and have it abundantly.

*TODAY’S PRAYER IN RESPONSE TO GOD’S WORD:

Father, before we were conceived in the womb, You had already formed us in Your love and by Your Spirit brought us into being. Each one of us is blessed with the opportunity of doing right, being good and producing the fruit of the Spirit so that others may be fed the truth of that same love so that the two will become one. It is our soul’s sincere desire to embrace the oneness You have in mind that we would know that we are Your people and that You are our God. Lead us in that discovery of the truth and the manifestation of that love for us all. In Jesus’ name, we pray. AMEN.