from Calvary Community Hour Spiritual Disciplines Series inspired by Richard Foster’s Celebration of Discipline
If I’m honest, when I hear the word submission, I don’t think of Jesus.
Instead, I think about 1960s housewives, saccharin-sweet people pleasers, and skilled manipulators who use a pseudo-submission to ultimately get their own way. I think of people trapped in abusive relationships, convinced that God expects them to live to please someone else.
Foster writes, “Of all the Spiritual Disciplines, none has been more abused than the Discipline of Submission. Somehow the human species has an extraordinary knack for taking the best teaching and turning it into the worst ends.”
I am not interested in making any part of those stereotypes of submission part of my personal spiritual disciplines.
So, as we explore this discipline at Calvary, I think it’s important to know three things: 1.) how Jesus is the ultimate model for submission, 2.) how revolutionary the discipline of submission is when taken into the context of First Century society, and 3.) what submission is not and the limits of submission.
Let’s think about the kind of life Jesus modeled: talking with and listening to women, welcoming children, washing feet. In all of this, Jesus modeled leadership by regarding each human person as a free moral agent and by becoming the servant of all.
Even more profoundly, Christ Jesus, who was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, took the status of a slave, and became human! And as a human, he chose to remain human and humbled himself to the point of death — even the most humiliating and brutal death on a cross (Paraphrase of Philippians 2:5-8).
Mark 8:34 is an astonishing statement by Jesus that reflects the life required by the Discipline of Submission, “If anyone would come after me, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.”
Jesus refused to submit to the values of the culture around him, yet freely submitted himself to others for the sake of love.
That is what submission is about. As Foster writes, “The freedom corresponding to submission is, “the ability to lay down the terrible burden of always needing to get our own way.”
Had God been thinking primarily about God’s own exultation, there would have been no Jesus, and there would certainly be no divine call to submission. Jesus showed us The Way through humble service and submitting to both the powerful and subordinate instead of insisting on his own way. It led to a cross. And he calls us to take up our own cross.
The place I and many people I know get hung up on the concept of submission is when Paul says, “Husbands, love your wives and wives, submit to your husbands.”
To our egalitarian 21st century society, this feels lopsided and skewed to keep men in power.
How important it is, then, to understand First Century culture. In Jesus’ time, men were the only people who held power and households were structured with the patriarch holding all of the property and wealth. In this cultural structure, women, children, and slaves were all considered property.
The Gospel, however, freed all people from second-class citizenships and all who heard the Gospel and believed it knew it. Haustafel is a German word that biblical scholars use to describe the reciprocal ethical instructions found in the New Testament. Paul, thoughout his letters, outlines the mutual duties of husbands and wives, children and parents, slaves and masters.
In these letters, Paul addressed those who were normally denied moral agency, treating them as people capable of making faithful decisions before God.
It was revolutionary.
“Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ,” says Paul in Ephesians 5:21.
Can you imagine a world where no person is ever objectified or used as a means to someone else’s end?
“Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves,” encourages Paul in the letter to the Philippians (2:3).
Can you imagine how this posture toward others would revolutionize our hearts for mutual respect and love?
We have centuries of religious and power-hungry people who have taken the verses of these letters out of context and distorted them.
It’s essential to know then, for those at the top of the social order, the call to submission is reciprocal.
Richard Foster warns that submission is one of the most abused spiritual disciplines. Instead of leading to freedom, it is often distorted into unhealthy patterns.
- The Doormat loses their sense of self, becoming valued only for what they do rather than who they are.
- The Pleaser avoids conflict at all costs, confusing peacekeeping with genuine love.
- The Dependent lets others make every decision, mistaking passivity for faithfulness.
- The Manipulator appears submissive on the outside but subtly uses service, kindness, or generosity to stay in control and get their own way.
Sadly, these distortions often appear in our homes and churches—and are sometimes even praised as virtues. Jesus offers a better way. True submission is not about losing ourselves or controlling others. It is the freedom to love, serve, and let go of the need to always have our own way.
What would it look like to practice submitting to one another in love?
Foster writes, “Only submission can free us sufficiently to enable us to distinguish between genuine issues and stubborn self-will.”
So it starts with recognizing that most things in life are not major issues. Because of this, a posture of submission would be to approach any and all issues lightly.
A late mentor of mine used to ask when people at church would get attached to an issue or in a heated debate, “Is this a salvation issue?”
Foster gives some sage advice for our era of divided politics and toxic comment feeds: the best way to handle most issues and situation: say nothing.
It’s certainly a counter-cultural posture.
But Jesus himself modeled it. Even in a place of life and death before the high priest, after false witnesses testify against him: “But he was silent and did not answer.”
And before Pontius Pilate: “Jesus made no further reply, so that Pilate was amazed.”
It was the way to the cross, but it was also the way to life.
Jesus knew that preserving his own life was not his highest calling, and he embraced submission for the sake of our salvation.
That puts into perspective the last dumpster fire of a comment feed where we could not help but keep posting to prove we were right.
The Discipline of Submission begins there: with perspective.
What would it look like to distinguish between genuine issues and stubborn self-will, and to trust that God makes best use of energies that we offer for the sake of the cause of love.
Foster reminds us that submission has limits. We are never called to submit to abuse, injustice, or anything that destroys the image of God in ourselves or another person. When submission would perpetuate oppression or impede justice, the discipline itself calls us to holy resistance.
That, too, is the way of Jesus.
Jesus submitted his own will to the Father, but he never submitted to systems that dehumanized people. He overturned tables, challenged religious hypocrisy, broke social barriers, welcomed those society rejected, and refused to cooperate with injustice. His submission was always to love—and that love sometimes looked like quiet service, sometimes courageous resistance, and sometimes silent trust.
That’s the question this discipline leaves us with: Am I holding tightly to my own will, or am I surrendering it to the cause of love?
Imagine a church council where people genuinely listened before defending their own ideas. Imagine a marriage where neither spouse had to win every disagreement. Imagine a political conversation where being faithful mattered more than being right.
Sometimes practicing submission will mean speaking. Sometimes it will mean remaining silent. Sometimes it will mean yielding. Sometimes it will mean resisting. But it will always mean following Jesus, who showed us that true submission is never about power or control. It is about the freedom to love so completely that we no longer need to get our own way.
