Dennis Tuuri

I’m going to go ahead and get started with the review anyway while the parents are still taking the children down and then when they come up they’ll be able to hopefully pick up where we’re at. But I have a lot of things to say this morning and so I want to go ahead and get started real quickly.

We begin we continue now with our series of talks going through the husband wife relationships as recorded in the scriptures. And for those of you who weren’t here for the original series of talks, we started with men first because that’s where God starts. The man is the head of the covenant unit known as the family and marriage is a covenantal reality. We talked about that. And the man is the functional head of that covenant unit. And that means the man has greater responsibilities and accountability. And so it’s proper that we begin as we did in our series of talks with the responsibilities of the man.

And we said that really the responsibilities of the husband is the same as Adam’s responsibility was originally to the garden which was to guard the garden to keep it and also to till it to cultivate it. And those same two terms are used of the Old Testament Levitical order. They’re used of elders in the New Testament church. And then in Ephesians we see the husband’s responsibility is to love his wife.

And that’s defined as doing two things for her. Cherishing her, which we said the Greek word means as a bird that keeps its young warm by protecting with her wings. And we saw how God does that with us. The husband is to guard the wife in that sense then to cherish her to keep her protected and he’s also to nourish her and we said that same term is analogous then to the cultivation of the garden is to see in his wife that she develop and grow in grace with God as he is to develop and grow in grace with God and in obedience to his truth and become more heavenly as it were to see our lives reflect more of the heavenly realities of our salvation in Jesus Christ and our reconciliation to God our Father and so with each other as well.

And we talked about two specific examples of guarding and nourishing. The guarding example we used was the Old Testament case law that said we had to provide dower for our wives. And we believe that in this church. We believe we should teach our young men that when they grow up they should have accumulated a goodly sum of money to be given to the wife as her property as her insurance in terms of him dying or him leaving the faith or whatever. Provide a dower and by doing that provide financial security and to guard his wife.

Now also the Old Testament has a case law that we believe is still applicable to the church today that when a person gets married, he should take a year off. A man should take a year off from all public service. It doesn’t mean from his vocation. It means from other responsibilities in the church or specifically in the Old Testament in terms of going to war. He take that year off to cause his wife to rejoice in the relationship that God has created. And so he’s to nourish his wife in a special way that first year and develop in that first year the model for the rest of their lives, which is the husband serving the wife by nourishing her and guarding her.

Now move to responsibilities of the wife and we’re going to start this morning with a discussion of the basic concept of submission. We’ll make some application to the wife. We’ll also make application other areas of our life as well.

In Ephesians 5:22 the command to the wife is to submit herself unto her own husband as unto the Lord. In Colossians 3:18 says to wives submit yourselves unto your own husbands as it is fit in the Lord. And then the passage this morning we read that wives are to be in subjection to their own husbands. The same word is used throughout here and again in Titus as well in terms of the wife subjecting herself being under submission to the husband and that’s what we’re going to talk about this morning is submission and the passage that we read gives us Jesus Christ as our model for submission so we making reference to those verses specifically as well as the rest of the text as we go through this point we’re trying to make here is that the basic responsibility of the wife and the marriage relationship at least much of it rotates around the concept of submission so we have to understand that if we’re going to make specific application in the context of the marriage relationship.

So, first we’ll talk about the necessity of submission. Now, the passage we read 1 Peter 2 beginning at verse 11 follows of course 1 Peter 2:4-10. And we’ve always said that it’s very important when you deal with any part of the scripture to recognize the context of that scripture. Most of us are very familiar with 1 Peter 2:4-10. We see there a definite link between the covenant communities of the Old Testament and the New Testament.

So, many of us have probably pointed out these verses to other people time and time again to dispute some of the teachings of dispensationalism. We’re very familiar with those passages and the implications for our lives, the implications in terms of the continuity again of the covenant community of God. And we stress that the necessity of obedience to the law of God based upon those verses and that continuity and that’s good.

We stress historical optimism and that’s good too from those texts. But it’s important to realize that these verses 1 Peter 2:4-10 describing that continuity goes on to make specific application beginning at verse 11 and then in verse 12. Verse 11 tells us specifically that on the basis of this continuity then the basis of the identity of the church and the continuity of God’s working with the group of people throughout history that since we have been now brought into the covenant community as it were we have some responsibilities and first we have a responsibility to abstain from fleshly lust and that’s a very important verse we don’t want to go over it lightly we want to say that the scriptures in other places are quite clear that we’re to flee from situations that may produce temptation to us.

Now, that’s not the total sum of what this verse is talking about, but it’s an important implication especially in light of the headlines this last week relative to Reverend Swaggart. I just ask you to remember in passing here that 1 Peter 2:11 isn’t in there just for Jimmy Swaggart. Okay? God gives us this admonition because we need it because we’re all prone to sin in many ways. And that the temptation that apparently he succumbed to is common to all of us.

Now God gives us the ability to resist those temptations. But part of that the primary way God gives us to resist those sorts of temptations is the scriptures and the admonition he gives us to abstain from fleshly lust. And so you want to be very careful in your own walk and the walk of your family to root out that sort of activity and those sorts of attitudes that then become full-fledged sin later on in terms of commitment of acts.

What I’m trying to say is here that let’s not sneer at Reverend Swaggart this last week. Let’s be warned for ourselves personally in our own walks. That’s first application. But it goes on then to talk about the necessity of submission in verse 12. And again, this is based on covenant continuity, the community that God works with. And verse 12 goes on to speak directly to the necessity of submission. Now, submission characterizes actually all of our relationships that we have both with God and with man.

And which we’ll talk about this as the morning goes on. Now the reconciliation that God teaches in the first half of chapter 2 then okay the reconciliation to God we’ve talked about this before is then worked out in terms of reconciliation with other men that God has created. We have reconciliation with God vertically. We have reconciliation with man horizontally. And that reconciliation is then talked about.

So it’s quite natural thing to go from the first half of 1 Peter 2 and reconciliation to God to go on to speak then of the requirements of that reconciliation in terms of our relationship to people and to various particular relationships that we’re in the context of. We see the primacy then in this second half of 1 Peter 2 of submission as a necessary starting point for the Christian life and to always keep before ourselves.

So submission is based upon covenant continuity. Submission is also the necessary precursor to godly obedience. We’re going to talk next week about Sarah as a model for obedience. And in 1 Peter 3 which we didn’t read but this is the post context we looked at the precontext of the section we did read and after the section we read we get to 1 Peter 3:2 and onward and in verses five and six we read that after this manner in the old time the holy women also who trusted in God adorned themselves being in subjection that same word unto their own husbands even as Sarah obeyed Abraham calling him Lord.

Subjection and obedience submission and obedience are not identical is what I’m trying to say here. Submission, as we’ll see as we develop this, is a necessary precursor for godly obedience. You can have obedience, but not based upon submissiveness and not based upon submission. Okay? Submission, it represents an attitude, a perspective in terms of our understanding of the order of the universe and our place in it that God has put us into. And it yields us to God in that sense. And but it then would of course usher forth into works as it says in verse 6. Sarah was submissive and we know that because she obeyed her husband calling him Lord.

I had an opportunity to talk this week with several people about some things that are said commonly about our church and what we our church believes. One of the common objections to what the stress of our church is that we believe that you have to have works in order to be saved. And of course, we don’t believe that. We believe in justification by faith. We believe that it’s through the atoning blood of Jesus Christ we have peace with God and his righteousness imputed to us as the basis for our salvation. That’s fine and good. But the second point of that is that works are necessary to evidence that salvation. Works are not necessary to gain the salvation. But God does say there are necessary evidence of that salvation. Faith without works is dead. There is no faith.

Well, the same relationship exists between submission and obedience. Submission in your mind without obedience with your body is dead. Okay? And so it’s the same relationship here. Okay?

So we have to understand submission and understand how to obey in a godly fashion. Verse 18 of the passage we read speaks specifically about servants and it says be subject to your masters with all fear. Okay, the word there, the expression with all fear has in it the indication that the servant is not supposed to serve with pretense or a forced subjection to the master. He’s to do it with reverence as it were with fear with a godly submission a sincere and willing feeling of reverence the proper due of their particular calling in life at the station they find themselves in which is a servant relationship.

This sense of submission is the proper due of their calling to life. And that calling to life has been given to them by the providence of God. Colossians 3:21 echoes this same thought when it says that servants are not to serve with are not to be obedient with eye service only or as men pleasers. The submission required of servants is a godly submission not based upon an unwilling obedience, but based upon a willing obedience to do what God has called them to do. Our aim, in other words, is God and his glory and his calling in our lives.

The word here that we’re talking about this morning, submission in the Greek is hupotasso. We’ve talked about that word before. We saw that word or a form of that word when we talked about the requirements of the eldership and how they’re to have their families in subjection, their children in subjection. Remember, we said then that the basic meaning there came from the military term where men were arrayed in ranks under the commander-in-chief. And that’s the idea here to have your family as ordered ranks as it were under your covenant headship. And so when we see the submission required in these verses, it’s the same idea. There’s an order to things. And God calls us to participate in that order willingly and happily under him and then under the various covenantal headships that he gives us in terms of relationships.

Now, this particular meaning is really what we’re getting at this morning. And hopefully what we’ll do now is go through some of the specifics in terms of our relationships. And this will become clearer and clearer as we move on through the discussion of this text that’s what we’re talking about in terms of submission.

Submission characterizes our relationships, all of our relationships. We’ll look at three relationships first specifically in the text and then three from other texts of scripture. First of all, we are to be submissive to rulers. And you’ll see on your outline that we’ve divided that into civil rulers and then to ecclesiastical rulers. The text that we read specifically has reference to civil rulers in verses 13-17. Romans 13:1-5 is another set of verses, of course, that talk about the need for this sorts of submission. Titus 3:1 is another reference. We’re not going to look up all those references this morning.

We don’t really have time, but we give them on your sheets there so that you can study them out if you want to go into more depth in terms of what we’re talking this morning. And again, it’d be a good Sabbath activity for the afternoon to look up some of these verses and to meditate on them and talk to your children about them. But any event, we are to be submissive to rulers. The word here in verse 13 for ordinance. Submit yourself to every ordinance of man for the Lord’s sake. That’s a very interesting and for some people a problematic verse because the word there is translated in every other occurrence in the New Testament as creation or creature and always has reference to God’s creation or God’s creatures as a result of his creative activity. But yet here we see the word being used of man. That’s the modifier attached to it there is every ordinance of man.

Other people say that a better translation would be every man’s ordinance. Okay, every man’s creation. But what I think the correct way to think of this is that it’s talking about all civil authority in general. And in fact, some people believe that this first half of verse 13 is a heading for everything that follows, not just the civil rulers, but the servants. And then in terms of the wife husband relationship as well, that all these things, marriage, work, vocational calling, civil and ecclesiastical rule are all creation of men in a certain sense that they work these things out, they create these structures, but that God ordains them, we’re to obey them in that sense.

Now, it goes on to say specifically uses two specific terms about the sorts of civil rulers that we’re to be submissive to. In verse 13, it says be subject whether it be to the king as supreme. Now, the word king there is used frequently in the Greek at the time and then go also in the scriptures to refer specifically to the Roman emperor. Okay? And the Roman emperor’s reign extended over the areas that this epistle was written to.

And so probably that’s the specific reference here, king. He’s referring specifically to the Roman emperor. The second term he uses in terms of the civil govern magistrate is in verse 14 or unto governors. And the word there is a different word. It means rulers in general. Now the scriptures tell us that we’re going to be judged for every idle word that we speak. And if what we have in the scriptures is a refined word from God, and some of the phrases used in the Psalms refer to as a doubly refined word.

There are no idle words in God’s revelation of himself. He has everything here for a purpose. And so we have to wonder why is he using two separate terms for rulers in this text? Why does it refer to the Roman emperor and then a more general term for all other rulers as well? Calvin spoke about this in his commentary on this passage. I wanted to quote some of his comments relative to this verse.

The meaning is that obedience is due to all who rule because they have been raised to that honor, not by chance, but by God’s providence. Most people are in the habit of inquiring too closely by what right power has been attained. But we ought to be satisfied with this alone that we see that they exercise power. Thus, Paul cuts off the handle of useless objections when he declares that there is no power but from God.

It is for this reason that scripture so often says that it is God who guards kings with a sword, who raises them on high and who transfers kingdoms as he pleases. Since Peter refers especially to the Roman emperor, it was necessary to add this admonition, for it is certain that the Romans penetrated unto Asia and subdued these countries more by unjust guiles than by any legitimate way. Besides, the Caesars who then reigned had snatched possession of the monarchy by tyrannical force.

Peter therefore forbids all these things to be brought into debate, for he shows that subjects ought to obey their rulers without hesitation because they are only made eminent by being raised by God’s hand. He confirms this by saying that they are God’s ministers and those who refer the pronoun him to the king are greatly mistaken. There’s a common reason which extols the authority of all magistrates to it: that they rule by the command of God and are sent by him. It hence follows that as Paul also teaches us, those who do not obediently submit to a power ordained by him resist God. This in short is what Peter means: that since God keeps the world in order by the ministry of magistrates, all those who detract from their authority are the enemies of mankind.

Now, those are some pretty telling words. What he’s saying is that Paul in Romans 13 and Peter in the passage before us cuts off debate about how the Caesar or the general governor received his power. The fact is he is in power and he is in a position of preeminence in terms of civil rule over you as a subject of that particular governmental unit. And because of that we recognize that in whatever way he may have ascended to that power whether by killing people or by whatever it was. Still, God’s ordination is involved and God has put that man in preeminence over us.

It reminds me of something that Judge Beers used to tell me. He said that problem with radical tax protesters who want to base a case on constitutional law is that the judge will sit there and say it’s a very well-reasoned argument, very constitutionally and historically sound, five years in jail. See, he has the power. And what 1 Peter tells us is that for those men who have the power, we’re to submit. We’re to be in an attitude of submission to those men. Not because they have the power, but because God has placed that power in their hands through whatever agency. Okay? And that’s one reason why there are two separate terms here. They provide an all-inclusive set of categories for civil rulers is what’s going on.

Now, this has immediate application for us obviously in many ways, but I wanted to talk about one application specifically in terms of an area that has come up repeatedly in conversations in the church. When we were down at Chalcedon several weeks ago, one of the things we specifically raised was the question of the homeschool law that we now have in the state of Oregon. And it was interesting his comments on that. He said, first of all, that may be just exactly the sort of law we want long term. Now, I’m not sure I agree with him, but I’ve pointed out before that the Plymouth laws of Plymouth Plantation, Plymouth colony required the civil magistrate to find out if a person had indeed educated his child.

If he taught him to read and if he taught him a vocation and if he hadn’t, he would be fined. And if he still didn’t refuse to teach his child and the child would be removed by the civil magistrate who was attempting to found his authority on the word of God explicitly, he’d be removed and placed with the family who would. Now, I’m not saying that’s right, but I’m saying that godly men, both today, as I just mentioned, and also in the history of this country, have thought that what we now have in terms of the law in Oregon is basically what God would want ideally.

Now, that may not be true. I’m not convinced it is. But the point is that there is a rebellion against that particular portion of the statutes of Oregon that has to be thought through. Do we submit to that law or don’t we? And what Peter tells us here is if we have men in authority, we’re to have an attitude of submission to those men and to those laws. Now, there are limitations on that and we’re going to talk about that in a few minutes.

But what Reverend Rushdoony, he said at Chalcedon was the problem with so many Christians today is that they want an instant perfection or they’re not going to obey or they’re not going to get involved in the legislative process. If you have a bill that isn’t 100% of what we want, they refuse to get involved in working for that bill. They reject gradualism. Now, I think that part of that’s kind of a hangover from a rapture orientation that wants immediate answers from God. And I suppose it’s partly due to the instant coffee and that sort of thing. But the point is the point is that if you understand what Peter is doing here and what Paul did in the book of Romans, you’ll see that to base arguments upon, you know, what the constitution was 200 years ago is a little off the mark is the point here.

If they’re in authority, you have an attitude towards submission toward their office. Now, we’ll talk about some limitations about that as we go on. By the way, one of the ways in which the disobedience to that particular statute in the state of Oregon is talked about is when people say that they’re afraid of what might happen eventually if the state gets their name on a list. Well, fear is a motivating factor and God calls us to have fear as a motivating factor, but he calls us to have fear of him.

Okay? He tells us not to fear in the sense of being frightened of the rulers because they’re in God’s authority. And we’ll talk about that more in a minute, too. But that fear is both misplaced both in a principled fashion and in a practical fashion. First, because in a principled fashion we’re to fear God first, but then there are also practical problems with that. If you don’t act in compliance to a law that is very good in the sense of homeschooling laws in the nation, the submission to that particular authority that’s been denied will have results in the rest of your life.

First, it will have a result in how you homeschool your children. You’ll be afraid to let those children go outside. And secondly, if somebody finds out that you are homeschooling and haven’t complied to a law and have no good biblical justification for not complying and they come knocking on your door the next morning after you see your child playing outside, believe me, your fear is going to increase dramatically.

And it’s going to increase even more dramatically if because you’re not obeying the law of the state and as a result in terms of education of your child, which is child abuse in this state and CPS comes to your door, now you’re really going to be frightened. You see, the way to avoid fear is to obey God and to be submissive when you can under the restraints that we’ll talk about in a few minutes.

I thought as I was thinking about this the last couple of days about the reforms of Joseph and how many Christians today uh would reject when Joseph called for the reforms that he did in terms of preparing for the drought and the famine in the land. How many Christians would say we don’t like that law. It’s not 100% in accordance with God’s commandments. We’re not going to obey it. See, or what if they said well Joseph’s law is okay but still it could provide we might give that grain to him and then an emperor or a pharaoh might come along that doesn’t aren’t such good friends with Joseph and they still disobeyed Joseph what would be the implications of that in their lives would they be in a position of blessing or cursing before God and his ordination brought Joseph to that empire for a specific reason at that time to save people and people through those illegitimate bases of disobedience and lack of submission would put themselves under the cursings of God then.

And of course, another pharaoh did arise who knew not Joseph, right? That’s just what happened. They were right. But God still would have called them to submit. And as Reverend Rushdoony pointed out when we were down there, that other pharaoh arose that knew not Joseph for a specific reason to remind the people that they were Israelites and not Egyptians. Well, in any event, 1 Peter, if it says anything, it says we must submit to civil authorities in a very general sense all civil authorities that are over us again within certain limitations we’ll talk about in a couple of minutes there.

Implications also for civil for ecclesiastical authorities in 1 Peter 5:1-5 we won’t look at that in any detail now but suffice it to say that verse 5 talks about the elders the younger submitting to the elders that has familial implications but if you look at the first four verses that lead up to that verse it also has ecclesiastical implications and so there’s another area of submission in our lives to God’s order in terms of ecclesiastical authority in verse 18 of the text after talking about civil submission.

In verse 18, he goes on to talk about vocational submission, submission to employers. Verse 18, servants be subject to your masters with all fear, not only to the good and gentle, but also to the froward. And there’s implications here for us in terms of our employment relationships. And this is quite important. When you talk about servant master relationships in scripture, I’m convinced that one of the reasons God gives us those categories is to help us to understand labor relations in the marketplace.

Because in a sense, a man is working for another man is his servant to a certain degree in a contractual way. And many of the servants that are addressed here had that same sort of contractual obligation to their master. It wasn’t like slavery that you think of in the south at the time of the civil war. But in any event, I just wanted to mention briefly here, this also is another very important area of submission.

If you work for some man, then you have to believe that God in his providence has brought you under the order of that man, the authority of that man, and you should work good. You should work as unto the Lord as it says in scripture. You should realize he’s been placed there for a reason. You’ve been placed there for a reason. And how you work that out in terms of what you do begins with a submissiveness to that order, to your being employed by that man.

You submit to that. You yield to that willingly and voluntarily because you know that God and his providence has brought this to pass for your good. Okay. Rebellion against employers, no matter how manifested, again, has long-term cursings from God inherent in it.

And then third, it goes on specifically after talking about masters and servants. And then it gives the example of Christ. Then it goes on in verse one of chapter 3 to talk about the wife’s submission to the husband. Titus 2:3-5 says the wife is to be obedient to your husband. And that word for obedient in Titus 2:3-5 in the King James translation is actually the same word here in terms of submission that we’ve been talking about this morning. 1 Timothy 2:11 also says that women are to learn in silence in all subjection, okay, to their husbands.

Now, in 1 Timothy 2:11, let’s just look at that for a minute. Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection. But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence. For Adam was first formed, then Eve. Now goes on to say in verse 14, “And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression.”

I don’t know, we don’t want to get into this morning about what verse 14 means. We will later in this series. There’s sufficient to say there’s a good deal of dispute over exactly what the implications of that are. But the point I wanted to have you look at this passage for was to show that the submission that’s required in 1 Timothy 2 and in Peter that we just looked at in chapter 3:1 is based 1 Timothy 2 tells us explicitly upon the creation order itself prefallen. Okay, the submission of the wife is based in verse 13 on Adam being formed first and then Eve.

Now, he goes on to talk about some other things in the next verse which we’ll get to at a later date, but he starts with saying that submission is based upon the creation order itself. And see, that hits right at what I’m trying to get across this morning. It’s God’s order that we’re discussing in terms of submission. And it’s the understanding by the wife that because Eve was created after Adam as a help to him that her role in terms of the marriage relationship is one of submission to the authority that God has placed covenantally over her in that relationship. You see it’s a creation order.

It’s based upon God’s order and God’s institution and then God’s providence. This verse is very significant. It reaffirms God’s order and God’s creative order as being the basis for the submission here required. The basis is not abilities. The basis is not who sinned first. The basis is not that as some people would say that some people have stronger minds and people have stronger hearts. It’s not what he talks about.

He doesn’t talk here about how some creatures are more lawful generically in terms of their sex than other creatures being more lawless. None of those forms are talked about here. Now, those things may or may not be true. I have many questions about many of those sorts of statements. But the point is that the submission required is based upon the creation order, God’s ordination, God’s order.

The marriage relationship involving the submission of one to the other in the Lord and the special submission of the wife to the husband as the covenant head and the special love of the husband for the wife involving guarding and nourishing aspects as we’ve said before reflects and teaches us about many things. And the scripture specifically says that marriage relationship teaches us about Christ’s love for his church and the submission of the church to Jesus Christ and also a believer’s love one for another.

Marriage I think in a sense humanizes us. It brings us into a relationship with another person in which we become sensitive to the requirements of that person and how easily they trip and stumble and have problems and we have if nothing else I’m sure that marriages are reflected by a desire to build each other up in the Lord. You become sensitized. You probably don’t start that way necessarily. I can sensitize to it very quickly.

The marriage relationship is important because I think it humanizes us. It teaches us the attitude we’re to have to all believers in terms of building them up in the Lord. It helps us to realize that things we may have assumed were one way once you get to know a person very intimately and in the way we do with our wives and husbands that really what you at first thought about that person wasn’t really correct. That there are other reasons for why they do certain things. They become sensitized to their needs and their need for love and acceptance. And so that then reflects in the way we treat each other in the churches.

For instance, it’s interesting that in Daniel 11:36 and following verses that refer to evil political forces. And I want to get into the specific interpretation of who that was. But the point was that evil political force is said to have no regard for the God of his fathers nor the desire of women. And several commentators have remarked here that under the desire for women is included all man’s relationships with other created beings. Other people that is other of God’s creatures that were made in his image are summed up in that.

You know, we’ve talked about the first and second tablets of the law. And here we have a political force being defined as evil because he rejects his obligations to God and he rejects his obligations to man as well. And that’s summed up in the marriage relationship itself. It’s a sensitizing, humanizing institution from God. But it is an order and we have to keep that in mind as we go through these verses.

The submission of the wife, which is a vital part of the marriage relationship, is as we talked about the servant not to give the man-pleasing variety and that is a lot of implications for us in verse 19 of the text in terms of the servant here again it says that this is thankworthy if a man for conscience toward God endure grief. See for conscience toward God women if they’re going to be in submission to their husbands they obey not ultimately to please their husband. That’s not the point. Not ultimately to get praise from him ultimately, but as pleasing to God.

In Matthew 6:16, our savior says that if we do things for the praise of men, we have our reward in full on earth, no reward in heaven. And the same is true with women who think that their motivation should be to please their husbands. If that’s your motivation ultimately, to please your husband, then you receive a reward fully here on earth. But we’re called to have a different sense of the motivation. We’re said, it’s said in 1 Peter 3:4 again talking about the marriage relationship and the submissiveness of the wife let it be the hidden man of the heart and that which is not corruptible even the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit which is in the sight of God of great price.

The submission of the wife to the husband is in the sight of God of great price. And that’s the way it should be seen in your marriage relationships. The wife should be in a submissive position because she’s honoring not ultimately the man but ultimately God himself. God highly values your submission then when it is reflective of your desire to walk in the station to which God has called you to honor him by honoring his order and the secondary means which he has in his providence used to reflect that order which is the marriage relationship as well as these other relationships as well.

So a person’s life is characterized by submission to civil rulers, submission in terms of vocation, submission in terms of the marriage relationship in a special sense of the wife to the husband in a general sense of each to each other submissive being subject to one another in the Lord. And then it goes on in other portions of scripture to talk about our necessary submission to the parent.

I thought it was interesting here again Calvin’s comment the call to be submissive to one’s parents. In Luke 2:51, it says specifically that our savior was subject unto his parents, okay, as a child. So Christ gave us the example there, the model for submission to parents in his own life, recorded in Luke 2:51. Calvin and speaking of this submission to parents says the following and I’m quoting out of Ronald Wallace’s book, the doctrine of Calvin’s doctrine of the Christian life.

Calvin said that since submission to human authority is quote “repugnant to perversity.” End quote. God, in order to make it easier for us to soften and bend our minds to habits of submission, starts training us in humiliation by giving us in childhood and youth the amiable yoke of obedience to the father and mother. Even nature itself teaches clearly that it is abhorrent to refuse such a yoke, and such a yoke is often pleasant to have to bear. From that subjection, says Calvin, the Lord gradually accustoms us to every kind of legitimate subjection the same principle regulating all the submissiveness that are called to exhibit toward our parents from our very first days grooms us as it were for a submissive attitude to all of God’s authorities and God all of God’s order.

First Peter 5:5 and Ephesians 5:21 says we’re also to be subject or submissive to other believers in the Lord. We’re to be looking for correction, exhortation in terms of God’s order again in terms of the church and other believers. We’re to see subject one to another. And so in a marriage relationship, there’s a mutual submission that’s to occur as well as the special submission of the wife to the husband as the covenant head.

His decision is final, but his decision must involve the input of the wife and a submission to her understanding of scripture in various areas and the contribution she brings to the marriage relationship. Finally, there’s a submission to God and to his law. The first five areas of submission we’ve said are secondary in terms of submitting ourselves to God through his secondary means of his order. But finally, we say that God men are to be submissive to God and to his law in the verses I list there before you indicate that.

And I think that what’s important here is to realize that we’re talking about in terms of God’s order and authority, the general order of God’s world. The order of the Godhead is mediated as it were on earth by governors in the home, in one’s work, in the school, church, and state. Submission then is a malleable spirit, a docile acquiescence to the order that God has in his providence brought to pass in our lives.

It’s a trusting in God and his providence and a yieldedness to it, not ultimately to the dispensers or agents of that order but ultimately to God himself. This is a theological truth about submission that it is first to God and secondarily through his secondary means the agents to submissiveness to them meaning submissiveness to God. It’s a theological truth at heart then that our submission is to God.

But the theological truth has practical implications for it as well. As a result, there are also practical implications to a rejection of God’s authority in any of these other spheres. What we see in first 2 and going into three is a series of institutions of orders that God has given to us and a requirement to be submissive to them. They’re all of a piece. They’re all mediating God’s order, his justice, and his order throughout our relationships one with another.

And to deny that order in any point will have implications for the rest of our life. To resist the civil magistrate in an ungodly fashion and unbiblically will be to sow the seeds of rebellion in your heart and the hearts of your children. A disregard or a scorn for God and his spheres of authority, family, church, employers, and all other are connected to that particular sphere. To insult a civil authority in a continual fashion before your children then will in many cases lead them to lose respect for your authority.

You see, your authority and the civil authority are the same. They come from God, part of his order. And to reject God’s authority in terms of the civil magistrate not based upon a submission to God’s other laws. We’ll talk about that in a second here. But to reject it out of hand will be to cause your child to reject your authority over them as well. To go home and to talk about ecclesiastical authority and the functions that are exhibited through the eldership and the diaconate to undermine that authority in the church also will lead your child eventually to have an undermined sense of authority of your order as well.

And it will of course affect your life and all these spheres as well on the reverse side of the coin. To fail to submit to your husband, to fail to have that regard, respect, and reverence for him in terms of the order that God has in his providence brought to pass. To fail to submit to your husband in this fashion, to resist God’s agent for order in the home will also bring about a grudging obedience in the home, but it will result in affecting your relationship to God’s order and his other agents for order in the world as well.

It’ll produce alienation from God’s order in the church and from civil government in your children. To fail to show a submissiveness to God’s order in the home will teach your children and will breed in your own heart a contempt for God’s order in the church and God’s order in the civil government and in vocational calling as well. All these things are of a piece is what we’re trying to say here. All of our relationships are seen in terms of submission.

Now, because all of our relationships are determined by God in his providence. So in verse 12, the text and this section starts, it says to have our conversation honest among the Gentiles. Our conversation, our walk, the way we live our lives, honest meaning good, perfect, a beautiful course of life. All of our life involving submission to various levels of authority in terms of a relationship to other people as it were is to be linked with submission to God and exhibit that submission to God and our submission to his agents for order in the universe.

So submission is necessary. We’re going to look briefly at the basis for submission. Now the basis for submission is not men acting correctly. And we’ve read some of these verses already, but verse 12 talks about how they’re going to talk against you for accuse you of being an evildoer. Verse 15 says so is the will of God that with welldoing you may put to silence the ignorance of foolish men in terms of the civil rulers for instance in verses 18-23 this is spoken of very clearly in verse 18 servants be subject to your masters with all fear not only to the good and gentle but also to the froward you see frowardness in the part of the master does not mean you have no need to be submissive so our submissiveness is not based upon men acting correctly and then of course we have the model of Jesus Christ and his submissiveness in terms of in the very crucifixion itself Christ’s submissiveness was not based upon those men act correctly.

The general principle of submission is that we must submit because it’s God’s order. It’s God’s institution that we’re talking about. If we submit to the master who is froward, then what about the civil ruler who does things that are wrong? Does the civil ruler’s doing those things wrong or not in full accordance with God’s word means we don’t have to have a submissive attitude toward him? No, it doesn’t mean that at all.

What about a husband who is froward? If the servant whose master is froward still is due submission on the part of the servant, then the civil governor who is froward and the husband who is froward which means to be crooked or not to be doing what he is supposed to be doing correctly also requires a degree of submission still on the part of the people in covenantal subordination to them. You must submit to the authority because it means to value his position and function before God accordingly.

It’s not based on him doing what’s correct. This is very important. I thought about another term for Watergate would be floodgate. And I’ll tell you why I said that in just a second here. Auto Scott, if you’ve read Roberta Piar, the voice of virtue, you’ll recognize that Autoscott’s one of his primary themes in that is that revolution is preceded by a tearing down of respect for authority, civil authority, family authority, church authority, all these institutions of God.

These are the things that knit society together. And as you sever those things one at a time, you produce a floodgate, as it were. a torrent of rebellion and insurrection and that’s what led to the French Revolution and that is what unless there’s revival and reformation in this land will lead to terrible things happening in our country as well. Watergate proved to be a floodgate because it began a whole series of incriminations against the civil government that we live with to this day.

It was interesting when we spoke with Otto a couple weeks ago that he said that he thinks that once you get past the situation there’s no sense in going back historically and having a commission to investigate why somebody didn’t perform in a different way in terms of causing a war to come to pass through his not doing his job correctly. Those sorts of hearings, he said, into past activities in the part of a nation or a country in the recent past, all they serve to do is again undermine the authority structure that God has put in place.

And they’re very dangerous because of that. And so to insist that submission is only to those that operate correctly according to God’s order is a very dangerous precept because people aren’t going to do that in all their lives. They’re going to act froward on occasion and that doesn’t mean that God’s order should be just overturned at that point.