The Necessary Foundation
5: 21
The necessary foundation DIG: Why is submission to one another important to harmony? Why is submission so hard for many people? Rabbi Sha’ul addresses the issue of harmony among believers in general and the home specifically. What role does the Ruach Ha’Kodesh play in enabling us to live in harmony with others? Do you see it practiced?
REFLECT: Everyone is to submit to someone. Who are you in submission to? Is it hard or easy right now to be submissive to your government? To your place of worship? At work? Why is that? How can you change? What is one challenge to harmony that you face in your relationships? What is one thing you can do this week to promote harmony in your family?
Families are the building blocks of human society.
This verse is a transition to Paul’s extensive discussion of relationships that continues through 6:9. The general principle of mutual submission, submit to one another (5:21a), not only is a product of the filling of the Ruach (to see link click Bt – Be Filled with the Ruach) but it is also the foundation of the more specific principles of authority and submission – in relation to wives (see Bw – The Role and Priorities of the Wife), and husbands (see Bx – The Role and Priorities of the Husband), parents and children (see By – The Responsibilities of Children and Parents), and bosses and employees (see Bz – Bosses and Employees) – with which 5:22 to 6:9 deals.
Among the worst tragedies of our day is the progressive death of the family as it has been traditionally known. Marital infidelity, exaltation of sexual sin, homosexuality, abortion, so-called women’s liberation, delinquency, and the sexual revolution in general have all contributed to the family’s demise. Each one is a strand in the cord that is rapidly strangling marriage and the family.
Homosexuals are demanding the right to be married to each other, and many states as well as a growing number of church groups are recognizing that as a right. Lesbian couples, and even some gay couples, are bringing together the children they have had by various partners of the opposite sex and calling the resulting conglomerate a family (see the commentary on Leviticus Ae – The Bible and Homosexual Practice). Many unmarried women elect to keep and raise children to whom they have given birth. In such situations, single-parent families are becoming a matter of choice as of necessity. And if that were not enough, now the Alphabet Mafia contends, contrary to biology 101, the Bible, and common sense, that men can give birth to babies! Satan’s fingerprints are all over this.
Families are the building blocks of human society, and a society that does not protect the family undermines its very existence. And make no mistake, the family is under attack. And when the family goes, everything else of value soon goes with it. When the cohesiveness, meaningfulness, and discipline of the family are lost, anarchy will flourish. And where anarchy flourishes, law and order, justice and safety cannot. The family nourishes and binds society together, whereas the anarchy that results from its absence only depletes, disrupts, and destroys. Without the necessary foundation of authority in relationships, people grope for meaningful, harmonious, fulfilling, relationships by whatever means they can find or devise. Experimentation is their only recourse, and the disintegration of the family – and ultimately the society in general – can be seen as the only, and inevitable, result.
It is time for believers to declare and live what the Bible has always declared and what the Church has always taught until recent years. God’s standard for marriage and the family produces meaning, happiness, blessedness, reward and fulfillment – and it is the only standard that can produce those results.224
Sha’ul warned the believers in Ephesus to live in total contrast to the corrupt, vile, self-centered, and immoral standards around them. The relationship between husband and wife was to be modeled on that between Messiah and His Church. For the husband is the head of the wife as Messiah is the head of the Church, His Body, of which He is the Savior. Now as the Church submits to Messiah, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives, just as Messiah loved the Church and gave Himself up for her (5:23-25). The relationship between believing husbands and wives is to be holy and unbreakable, just as that between Messiah and His Church is holy and unbreakable.
The marriages and families of believers are to be radically different from those of the world (1 Jn 2:15-16). The relationships between husbands and wives and parents and children is to be bathed in humility, love, and mutual submission that the authority of husbands and parents, though exercised when necessary, becomes almost invisible and the submission of wives and children is no more acting in the spirit of gracious love.
But this basic principle of submitting to one another only finds its power and effectiveness in Messiah. The family can only be what God has designed it to be when the members of the family are what God has designed it to be . . . conformed to the image of Messiah (Romans 8:29). Just as an individual can only find fulfillment in a right relationship with God, so the family can only find complete fulfillment as believing parents and children follow His design for the family in the continuous control and power of the Ruach Ha’Kodesh (5:18b). People who do not know or even recognize the existence of authority of YHVH are not motivated to accept God’s standard for marriage and the family or for anything else for that matter. They do not have the new nature or inner resources to fully follow those standards even if they wanted to.225
Submit is from the Greek word hupotasso, originally a military term meaning to arrange or rank under. Spirit-filled believers rank themselves under one another (see the commentary on Romans Af – The List of “one another” Commands). The main idea is that of relinquishing one’s rights to another person. Paul counseled the Corinthian believers to submit to their faithful ministers (see the commentary on First Corinthians Ec – Signs of Love in the Fellowship: Submission). Peter commands us to submit ourselves for the Lord’s sake to every human institution, whether to a king as the one in authority, or to governors as sent by Him for the punishment of evildoers and the praise of those who do right. For such is the will of God (1 Pet 2:13-15; also see Rom 13:1-7). A nation cannot function without the authority of its rulers, soldiers, police, judges, and so on. Such people do not hold their own authority because they are inherently extremely important because without the appointment and exercise of orderly authority the nation would disintegrate in anarchy.
In the family, the smallest unit of human society, the same principle applies. Even a small household cannot function if each member fully demands and expresses his or her own will and goes their own way. The system of the authority of ADONAI has ordained for the family is the headship of husbands over wives and of parents over children. That is the necessary foundation that society must be built upon.226
Dear Heavenly Father, praise You for modeling the father’s role of loving authority in a family. You so greatly love me by the huge sacrifice of shame and pain that You gave for my salvation (Hebrews 12:2). How wonderful that Your love is so tender that I can always count on You. Your love is greater than any situation that can try to separate us. But in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Messiah Yeshua our Lord (Romans 8:37-39). Even greater than being a child of Abraham physically, is to be a spiritual child of Abraham (Romans 4:2-5), by having faith in You. For one is not a Jew who is one outwardly, nor is circumcision something visible in the flesh. Rather, the Jew is one inwardly, and circumcision is of the heart – in Spirit not in letter. His praise is not from men, but from God (Romans 2:28-29). I rejoice by submitting to such a wonderful Heavenly Father as You. I trust You, I can count on You to always do what is best for me because You love me so much. In Messiah Yeshua’s holy Name and power of His resurrection. Amen
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