Submission is one of the most counter-cultural words in the New Testament — and one of the most misunderstood. It is not weakness. It is not silence. It is not the suppression of the self. Christian submission is the strength to lay down the right to your own way for the sake of Christ, His church, and the people God has placed around you. At Grace Fellowship Church in Sarasota, we hold this doctrine because the New Testament holds it everywhere.
“Submitting to one another in the fear of God.” — Ephesians 5:21
Before the New Testament asks any specific person to submit to any specific authority, it asks every Christian to submit to every other Christian. “Submitting to one another in the fear of God” (Ephesians 5:21). Mutual submission is the air the Christian community breathes. We yield. We defer. We esteem others better than ourselves (Philippians 2:3). We do not have to win every argument or have our way in every decision.
This is not natural. It is the Spirit of Christ in His people, reproducing the pattern of His own life. Jesus, who was equal with the Father, “made Himself of no reputation” and became a servant (Philippians 2:6–7). The cross is the deepest act of submission ever performed in the universe — the Son submitting to the Father, all the way to Calvary, “for the joy that was set before Him” (Hebrews 12:2).
Until we have settled that we are all called to submit, the more specific submissions in Scripture will sound oppressive. Once we have settled it, they begin to sound like freedom — the freedom of being delivered from the exhausting tyranny of self-rule.
“Therefore submit to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you” (James 4:7). Every other submission only works if this one is real. The Christian’s life is the long, joyful surrender of will, mind, and body to a Lord who can be trusted because He has already died for us.
“Obey those who rule over you, and be submissive, for they watch out for your souls, as those who must give account” (Hebrews 13:17). Christian submission to faithful elders is not blind obedience to men. It is glad cooperation with the men God has set as shepherds in a local body.
“Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord” (Ephesians 5:22). And immediately: “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her” (5:25). The same passage commands both — and the husband’s call is the heavier one, because his pattern is the cross.
“Let every soul be subject to the governing authorities” (Romans 13:1). Children to parents (Ephesians 6:1). Workers to employers (Ephesians 6:5). The Christian is not anarchic. We honor the structures God has placed in the world — within the limits of obedience to Him (Acts 5:29).
A doctrine of submission has been weaponized in the past, and it is right to say plainly what biblical submission is not. Submission to God is unconditional. Every other submission is conditional on the higher claim of obedience to God. “We ought to obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29). When any human authority commands what God forbids, or forbids what God commands, the Christian’s first allegiance is clear.
Submission does not silence the wife who is being mistreated, the worker who is being exploited, the church member who sees sin in leadership, or the citizen who watches injustice go unchallenged. The Bible has examples of every one of these speaking up — Esther, Daniel, Nathan, Paul before Felix. Christian submission is not the suppression of the conscience. It is the willing yielding of the self for love’s sake, within the limits of God’s law.
And submission never sanctions abuse. If you are in a marriage, a workplace, a family, or a church where someone is using “submission” to harm you, that is not the doctrine the New Testament teaches. Get to safety. Talk to a pastor. Call the authorities if needed. The God who designed Christian submission also designed the church and the civil order to protect the vulnerable.
“Yes, all of you be submissive to one another, and be clothed with humility, for ‘God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble.'” — 1 Peter 5:5
The world preaches that the path to freedom is to insist on yourself, defend your rights, never bow your head. Jesus preached the opposite. “Whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it” (Matthew 16:25). The proud Christian is an exhausted Christian. The submitted Christian is a free Christian — because the weight of running the universe has finally dropped off his shoulders, where it never belonged in the first place.
At Grace Fellowship Church in Sarasota, we want to be a community marked by glad mutual submission. Husbands who lay down their lives for their wives. Wives who honor their husbands. Members who honor their elders, and elders who honor the flock. Brothers and sisters who would rather give a brother the win than win an argument. None of this is natural. All of it is the fruit of the cross.
Submission is not weakness; it is the cross working. The natural self resists being under anyone, which is exactly why the Spirit uses submission to form Christ in us. A believer learning to submit — to God, to His Word, to faithful shepherds, to one another in love — is a believer being quietly conformed to the One who submitted Himself all the way to the cross.
— Sundays at 10:00 AM · 4350 17th Street, Sarasota, FL.