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The Perfect Example of Submission to God

“Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him…” (Isa 53:10a ESV). The full extent of the suffering that the Roman crucifixion produced is truly unimaginable for us today. Why did He endure the pain of the whips, the shame of being exposed before all, the cruelty of being left to hang on a cross to die? Why did He sacrifice Himself not only to die but to the torture? “(L)ooking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God” (Heb 12:2 NKJV).

Jesus wanted to fulfill the will of His Father (John 6:38) and save the world from our sin, “…who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross…” (Heb 12:2c). However, at the exact moment He was “…despising the shame…” (Heb 12:2d). Elsewhere in the Scripture we can witness through Jesus’ own words that He would have preferred another route. “(S)aying, ‘Father, if it is Your will, take this cup away from Me; nevertheless not My will, but Yours, be done” (Luke 22:42). Why is it that Jesus continued performing the will of another?  

What Does Submission to God Look Like?

Have you placed much thought into what submission is? The Lamb who was led to the slaughter and opened not His mouth is the perfect example and definition of what submission is. To many people, this word, submission, causes the indigestion of pride to boil inside of them because they liken the verb to things such as oppression. The world correctly defines the word “(1) a: to yield to governance or authority b: to subject to a condition, treatment, or operation.” ¹ One scholarly source defines ὑποτάσσω (translated as submitting) as “to cause to be in a submissive relationship, to subject, to subordinate.”²

Submission by definition of man and action of Christ is to surrender yourself and your will to the will of another. If we were only submitting to God on matters we agree with, then we were never in submission to Him. We were only agreeing with Him at times. At the moment when His will doesn’t necessarily align with yours, but you obey anyway, you are genuinely in submission. Our submission to God can be tested at moments of loving our enemies (Matt 5:44), bearing one another’s burdens (Gal 6:1), submitting to one another (Eph 5:21), repenting of sin (Luke 13:3), or obeying the will of God (Heb 5:9).

How to be Submissive to God

Jesus endured the will of the Father because He, as a good Son, was in submission to His Father (Eph 6:1; 1 Tim 3:4). We asked why, but now let us end with how. How was the Son able to submit to the Father? It was because He loved who He was in submission to. “But that the world may know that I love the Father, and as the Father gave Me commandment, so I do. Arise, let us go from here” (John 14:31). Do you love enough to be in submission (John 14:15)?

1. Inc Merriam-Webster, Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary. (Springfield, MA: Merriam-Webster, Inc., 2003). ↩︎
2. William Arndt et al., A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 1042. ↩︎