Welcome to Part 12 of the weekly release of my book, Unless God Builds It: A Proposal to Radically Rethink the Church.
In the last post, we explored the biblical case for open participation in our weekly gatherings, looking at how the early church model allowed everyone to share. We then looked at how church history quickly lost this pattern, and why giving the Holy Spirit room to speak through any member should be our default setting.
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In this post, we kick off Chapter 4 by dismantling what we’ve been taught about submission, explaining why true biblical submission is active service rather than passive silence, and showing how mutual evaluation is essential for corporate discernment.
My thesis is simple: If we want to see the kind of church that only God can build, then we need to learn to rely on God to build it. Everyone wants a method that works, but that’s part of the problem. We start relying on man-made methods, and we stop relying on God, unless our method is to rely on God, which works every time.
As it relates to building the Church, nearly every conceivable question about “what to do when…” or “how to deal with…” can be answered the same way: Seek the Lord. Learn to rely on his Spirit, and he will equip you with everything you need.
However, there is a caveat to this: Relying on God requires that we rely on God’s people, for they are extensions of God in your life for that very purpose. Someone who says they are relying on God but comes to all their conclusions in isolation is deceiving themselves. This is true on multiple levels, but in this chapter, we’re going to talk about it on the level of discerning what God is saying and doing in your church.
It is absolutely crucial that we learn to rely on each other for wisdom, direction, and discernment. Any attempt to be a radically Spirit-led church, without the proper foundation of corporate (i.e., bodily, collective, communal) discernment, will quickly devolve into chaos and division. And yet, despite how fundamental it is to the health of a church, it is a rare Christian who understands this practice.
The result of this widespread ignorance is that words like “Spirit-led” and “charismatic” are often (not incorrectly) associated with a certain kind of disorder. Some care enough about the Spirit’s leading to endure the chaos. Others care too much about order, so they forgo the Spirit’s leading. And, of course, there’s a wide degree of variance between those two poles. But my goal here is to help prevent you and your church from ever having to decide between the two.
Submitting to One Another
Submission is one of those words that was never supposed to put a bad taste in your mouth, and yet, for so many people, it does. Words like “defiant,” “controlling,” “proud,” “manipulating,” “lording over,” and the like—those are the bad ones. But submission, according to the word of God, is beautiful.
I am not only talking about submitting to God. That, I assume, you already agree with. I am talking about submitting to his people, particularly those in your local church whom God has appointed you to be in close relationship with.
Here is the most obvious scripture that instructs us to do this:
And . . . be filled with the Spirit, addressing one another in [song] . . . giving thanks always . . . [and] submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ. (Ephesians 5:18-21)
Submission is here portrayed as a description (among others) of being filled with the Spirit. The reason we are to do it is “out of reverence for Christ.” This makes sense, doesn’t it? Because we are members of Christ, Jesus said that when we serve one another, we actually serve him (Matthew 25:31-46; Matthew 10:40-42; Luke 10:16; John 13:20). And so, when we submit to one another, we submit to him. Therefore, the one who says they’re submitted to Christ, but is not submitted to any other Christians, is remarkably suspect. On the other hand, those who desire to submit to Christ can tangibly (not just theoretically) do so by submitting to their church.
But now, what does it mean to submit? For a lot of people, the idea of “submission” is something like “Shut up and do what I say.” It is total passivity and conformity to the designated leader. And that’s where we must make our distinctions. For one, submission has little to do with passivity, which I’ll explain below. And two, while it has much to do with conformity, let us remember that our “designated leader” is no mere mortal, but Christ Jesus himself. Therefore, Christ is the one we’re looking for within our fellow brothers and sisters, that we might submit to him through them, thus being conformed into his image.
The proper way to understand submission is in two parts, both of which are needed to complete the act.
The first part is service. The Holy Spirit apportions different gifts to each person, and each person serves the Body with their gifts (1 Corinthians 12:11; Romans 12:6; 1 Peter 4:10). In doing so, they are serving Christ, their master, according to his will. By definition, this side of submission is most obviously active, not passive.
With this in mind, to withhold your gift from the Body—if, in fact, you believe it’s a gift—should be understood not as submission but as a lack of submission. For example, many times throughout my pastoral leadership, brothers and sisters of mine have withheld their genuine concerns about something that I’ve taught, all in the name of “submission.” This reveals how they tend to equate submission with passivity toward their human leader and equate speaking with subversion of authority. But if they believe that the insight they have is from God, then to submit to me and/or the church (on this one side of submission, anyway) would be to serve with their insight, not to remain silent. No less do I inherently submit to them when I teach them what I believe God has taught me for their benefit.
To make this case even a bit more strongly, we might think of the spiritual gifts in two categories: (1) Speaking, (2) All Other. (This precedent can be found in 1 Peter 4:11.) In the “all other” category, it’s much easier to understand that passivity is not submissive. If my wife were to sit on the couch and watch television all day, as opposed to serving in the countless ways around the home that she does, no one would call that “submission.”
Well, it is no different with the speaking category of spiritual gifts. It would be an ugly form of passivity if my wife never told me what she believed God was speaking into our marriage, or never shared her genuine concerns with me. This is true, in particular, because I ask her to speak to me honestly. If I didn’t, or if I explicitly asked her not to, then her submission may indeed require her to keep silent, and God would still work through her in that (see 1 Peter 3:1-2). However, I wouldn’t be a very good leader in that case. The truth is, I am always open to the fact that God can speak through her to shape my own convictions, to help me grow and lead better. Thankfully, because she honors my leadership, she is faithful to steward her convictions with me, even if it starts as a disagreement. This is just another form of serving, but with her words.
The point here is that every kind of genuine service falls under the banner of “submission.”
And yet, we have not completed the act of submission if we have only gone this far. The second part of submission is more like submitting an exam to your teacher for grading. It is to grant others the ability to evaluate the positions you hold or the work that you’ve done. It’s to acknowledge that you aren’t the authority in the room, that you aren’t the sole possessor of knowledge, and that you trust someone else to help you learn and grow through correction.
To be clear, I don’t mean that we should submit to any one person as the authority in the room except for Christ. Rather, we all submit to one another, trusting that Christ’s authoritative judgment will be revealed and established through the agreement of the saints.
As a brief sidenote, for those of you who love original language studies, I will insist that you must look deeper here than what you’ll find in your Greek lexicon. While the definition I’m providing here is not explicit in the Greek term for submission (hupotasso), like it is in English, it is implicit in every form of submission that the Greek term was used for—a logical extension of the idea. In short, evaluation/judgment is intrinsic to every relationship involving an authority-submission dynamic. A person cannot yield to an authority without also subjecting himself to that authority’s evaluation or judgment within the purview of his service.
But back to the point.
When my wife disagrees with me about something and presents her opinion, it is the beginning of submission. But if she were not open to feedback, open to reason, humbly considering my position, willing to talk more and pray about it together, then it would not actually be submissive; it would be domineering and arrogant.
No different with the Church. For the first half of submission, we should train everyone to freely share their gifts, which include speaking what they believe is from God. For the second half of submission, we should train them to open themselves to judgment—not the condemning kind but the constructive kind. And isn’t this exactly the paradigm we see in the Scriptures?
As we discussed in the last chapter, we could put all “speaking” gifts under the banner of “prophesying”—i.e., being the mouthpiece of God for a specific moment in time. Under this banner, Paul says, “you can all prophesy one by one, so that all may learn and all be encouraged” (1 Corinthians 14:31). That’s the first half of submission. And in the very next verse, he says: “and the spirits of prophets are subject to prophets. For God is not a God of confusion but of peace” (1 Corinthians 14:32-33). That’s the second half of submission. Others (who also have the Spirit) have the authority to weigh whether something is from the Spirit.
Again, he says, “Let two or three prophets speak [this is the first half of submission], and let the others weigh what is said [this is the second half of submission]” (1 Corinthians 14:29).
And elsewhere, “Do not despise prophecies [i.e., don’t reject the first half of submission], but test everything; hold fast what is good [i.e., but practice the second half of submission, as well]” (1 Thessalonians 5:20-21).
The Apostle Peter also wrote about this subject, though instead of “submission,” he used the term “humility”:
Clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility toward one another, for God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you . . . (1 Peter 5:5-6)
Notice the connection between humbling ourselves toward one another and humbling ourselves toward God. The one is a means to the other, just like with submission.
Humility could also be said to have two sides to it: the side of service and the side of not considering oneself to be wise. Practice these, for they come with the promise of grace and exaltation.
The bottom line is that if we want to know what God is saying and doing, we need to learn the absolutely foundational truth that he speaks through his Body. Yes, he speaks through Scripture. Yes, he speaks to you individually in prayer. Yes, he speaks in all sorts of ways. But there are few so powerful as when he speaks through all the saints—when, with one voice, they declare his counsel.
When all members are faithful to speak what they believe is from him and to humbly honor the authority of Christ in each other, the Spirit will provide the level of agreement that is needed for that time, for his sheep know his voice (John 10:4).
I understand that this may still feel a bit conceptual, so we’ll spend the rest of the chapter bringing it to life through real examples of my own.
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Questions for the Comments:
Have you ever stayed silent about a concern in your church in the name of “submission” or “respecting authority”? How does the idea that speaking up is actually a submissive act of service change your perspective?
How comfortable are you with the second half of submission—letting others evaluate and weigh your spiritual insights? Why is mutual correction so difficult for us to practice?
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In Christ,
Jake