There is no sales hype; just a simple fact.

The Amazing Principle that Will Instantly Increase My Spiritual Growth

Ephesians 5:21

Pastor Kerry Kinchen, Bridgeway Bible Church

Please turn to Ephesians 5:21. I've said it before, and I think most of us here know that the greatest advertising campaigns in the world are found in a revelation recorded in the Bible. They are run on motivations of all that is in the world. I did not say that the greatest, and most effective advertising campaigns are good, or holy, or are pleasing to God. I'm just saying that they are found in the Bible. We have visited them before in our studies through God's word. We are confronted with them everywhere we turn. They are in marketing techniques meant to entice us. I am talking about the big three. Do you remember the big three? We find them in 1 John, where we read,

"... all that is in the world,

[1] the lust of the flesh and

[2] the lust of the eyes and

[3] the boastful pride of life,

is not from the Father, but is from the world." 1 John 2:16

These are principles that have to do with the foundation of selfishness. The structure that builds upon this foundation is unsatiated desire. The world is driven by whatever the flesh lusts after to satisfy itself; Hunger for foods; Hunger for sex, in the form of sexual sins of every kind; Hunger for the latest car, or electronic gadget. The belief is that if you get these things, you will have instant happiness. Closely related to this, the world is driven by whatever someone else has. It is called lust of the eyes, but it has other names. It is envy. It is covetousness. It is greed. Lust of the eyes, is where you've just got to have what you see, because you think that when you get it, your life is suddenly going to be better. In fact, it doesn't matter if your life really becomes better, the lust is still there. It is lust of the eyes, and it promises instant gratification, and instant success. Another one is boastful pride of life. The lie is that if you can raise the opinion of others concerning you, then you have achieved success. If you have certain things, or you have a certain income, then you can take pride in what you have done for yourself, but the boastful pride of life isn't satiated with its lonely view of itself. What matters is that in the boastful pride of life, the prideful person must impress the world with who they are, or, at least, that they think they have impressed the world with who they are. In the boastful pride of life, to impress the world with one's self, is considered the height of instant gratification. A poll that was conducted a few months ago by the Pew Research Center reveals this trend. The poll revealed that eighty-one percent of young people between 18 to 25 years of age said that getting financially rich is their most important, or second most important, life goal. Over half said that being famous was their most important life goal. The belief is that if you become rich and famous, then you have achieved instant success. But, this was the point I started out with--the deception of thinking that we will achieve instant success by feeding our selfishness. The marketing strategies of the world focus upon the big three that we are told are not from the Father; lust of the flesh; lust of the eyes, and the boastful pride of life. They are from sin, and sin wants instant gratification. In this introduction this morning, I want us to consider that whenever the world offers something that they claim will bring its own definition of success, and tells us that it will come instantly, there is usually a converse to it in God's word. In other words, God says that true success is to put away the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life, and further, God gives us His principles of both instant, and long term, success. There is no advertising hype to it at all. It is simply God's precepts of truth that are eternal principles, or laws, of the way things are. We are going to look at one of them this morning, as we study God's word. Please read our passage with me at this time, starting in verse 18,

"18 And do not get drunk with wine, for that is dissipation, but be filled with the Spirit, 19 speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody with your heart to the Lord; 20 always giving thanks for all things in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to God, even the Father;

[and now our primary passage--verse 21]

21 and be subject [be submitting] to one another in the awe and reverence of Christ." Ephesians 5:18-21

Please prepare your heart to go verse to verse with me in the sacred preaching of God's word this morning, in this sermon titled,

The Amazing Principle that Will Instantly Increase My Spiritual Growth

Without exaggeration, there is an amazing principle that will instantly increase our spiritual growth if we will do it. Actually it will instantly increase our spiritual growth now, and it will continue to increase our spiritual growth in the long term. This is not advertising hype. It is the plain truth from God's word. It has to do with being obedient to verse 21, which is our primary passage under study this morning. The principle is; be subject, which means, be submitting, to one another in the awe and reverence of Christ. According to the context, this command is something that we are to do as those who make it our ambition to be being filled with the Spirit. To be being filled with the Spirit is to have more of the manifestation of the Holy Spirit, growing in your life and from your life in overflowing fullness, than you do of yourself. What I mean is that it is to manifest more of the Spirit's thoughts, desires, and actions, than the old thoughts, desires, and actions of selfishness. It is spiritual maturity made manifest in living the out the word of God. This is what spiritual growth is; it is spiritual maturity. As we look into this amazing principle that will instantly increase our spiritual growth when we do it, we need to take a moment to explore what this command does not mean. After doing so, we will explore what it does mean.

/1/
First of all, what this command, in manifesting the Spirit filled life, does not mean is that we are to be horrified with Christ, and so, because we are horrified with Christ, in fright, we submit to others. What I mean is that some translations put the word, fear in this verse, in respect to how we are to have our attitude toward Christ. The Greek word, here, is more accurately translated as awe and reverence. This is the way that the ESV, NET, NIV, and others render the word. So, we are not to be afraid of Christ. We are to have awe and reverential respect for Him as our Lord.

/2/
Secondly, what this command, in manifesting the Spirit filled life, does not mean, is that we submit ourselves to one another because of awe and reverence for individual men, or women. There are a couple of reasons for this. If you submit to other members of the body of Christ because of awe and reverence for them as individuals, then you have opened yourself up to be manipulated by those very same people in ungodly ways. This happens because your awe and reverence is misplaced, and so, in your awe and reverence of such people, you will do things, and you will believe things, or you will act in certain ways, simply because you want to please the people you hold up in awe and reverence. For example, you might say that you hold to their beliefs, but you only do so because you have looked to their opinion of you, over God's opinion of you. You want to please them, so to do so, you believe what they believe. Think about how many traditions have infiltrated the church over the centuries. Every generation has traditional strongholds, and every generation has people who start new ones. When we submit ourselves to certain people out of awe and reverence for them, it is easy to come under religious bondage to groundless and wrong doctrines, and traditional practices. Usually, when you trace extra biblical traditions that have been accepted as the right way to do things, you can follow the trail back to one person who started it. Another reason why this is so important not to do, is because men and women are imperfect, and so, if you hold them up in awe and reverence, in respect to submitting to them, and then they fail, (and sooner or later they will fail you) then what happens is that we no longer hold them in awe and reverence, do we? This is a trait of our natures, where we are both judgmental, and we also tend to make heroes out of certain people. It is the tendency of humans to do this; But what happens for us Christians is that we based our relationship upon shaky ground, and so now that the ground has shaken because of someone's perceived failure, we decide that since our awe and reverence for them is gone, we will not submit to them anymore.

Do, you see how easy it is for us to do this kind of thing?

But God never told us to do this. He told us to do the opposite, by submitting to one another in the fear, awe, respect, and reverence, of our Lord, Who is Christ Who never fails us, and Who we must always obey when it comes to this command.

/3/
This leads us to recognize the next reason I will give for not submitting to one another according to awe and reverence for humans. It is the ultimate reason. It is because Christ is worthy of His glory, and so Christ is the one who is worthy of our awe and reverence. This is why we are told to submit to one another out of awe and reverence for Christ, and nobody else. So, in learning about this amazing principle that will instantly increase my spiritual growth, we must recognize that we do not submit to other members of the body of Christ out of awe and reverence for them because we do not want to rob Christ of His glory as Lord.

/4/
Now this leads us to the final thing that this command, in manifesting the Spirit filled life, does not mean. This command does not mean that woman are to exercise authority over men, or that husbands are to submit to their wives. Liberal theologians of the last century have sought to reinterpret this passage to mean that the woman's liberation movement was started by Paul the apostle as a revelation of God. What they are saying, then, is that feminism is a manifestation of being filled with the Spirit. Such an assertion is the height of demonstrating the futility of the Gentile mind that Paul mentioned earlier. One of the arguments that the liberals use is that since Paul says that we, as Christians, are to submit to one another, then Paul must necessarily mean that men are to submit to women, and further, that Christian marriage is a supposed authority-partnership, in which husbands submit to their Christian wives. Such a view is wrong, and can be recognized as being wrong on many fronts. The primary one being the clear biblical mandate, where Paul says concerning the church,

"11 A woman is to learn quietly with all submissiveness. 12 I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet.

[Why? Why does Paul, who is not a feminist by any stretch of the word, say this? He tells us in verse 13,]

13 Because Adam was formed first, then Eve; 14 and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor." 1 Timothy 2:11-13

Paul is giving us God's revelation to us of His order. He is referencing the original order, where God made woman for the man, as a helpmate. God did not make man to be woman's helpmate. Now, listen to me. What this means is that men have a high calling of accountability to God. A man has a huge responsibility to answer to God in the way he governs his home in respect to God's will. But, my main point is that Paul is giving us God's revelation to us of His order. Throughout all of church history, until the feminist movement of our contemporary age, the church has recognized that the same Paul who says that the body of Christ is to be submitting to one another in the awe and reverence of Christ, is the same Paul who says that a woman is to learn quietly with all submissiveness, and is not permitted to teach or exercise authority over a man. Clearly, men are not to be submitting to women as authorities on spiritual matters in the body of Christ.

This brings us to the place where we need to consider the God ordained roles of wives and husbands. The scriptures are consistent in declaring the roles and the authority submission structures that God has designed. It does not matter if the wife thinks the husband is a spiritual failure. It does not matter if the wife has a higher IQ than her husband. It does not matter if the wife does not like her husband. And it does not matter if the wife does not think her husband consistently loves her the way he should. The scriptures are consistent in declaring the roles and the authority submission structure of marriage as being that the wife is to submit to the husband as her responsibility to God.

Does this mean that God say a husband can act in an unbiblical manner toward his wife with no consequences?

Does this mean that the husband has free reign before God?

No, quite the opposite. The husband is to love his wife as his responsibility to God. In his marriage, the Christian husband is accountable to God for all his thoughts, and actions. But the problem is that the spirit of our age has sought to redefine the clear design and mandate of God.

I remember some time ago, counseling a husband and wife who were on the brink of divorce. Their marriage was a wreck. Both people proclaimed Christ. At one time, they were both in biblically defined fellowship with the saints. Eventually they dropped out of meeting and uniting in biblical fellowship. Over the years, the husband had neglected his spiritual responsibility toward his wife and children, and at the same time, the wife had been nurturing traits of feminism in respect to submitting to her husband. When the husband finally began to change his ways, and made attempts to operate as the spiritual leader of their household according to God's calling, the wife rebelled against his attempt on the grounds that he was not progressing along in the way that she wanted him to do. Therefore, she concluded that he needed to submit to her.

Now where did she come up with this philosophy?

She reasoned that, after all, she was his sister in Christ, and she was his help mate, and so in her philosophy of what being a wife who is a sister in Christ was going to do to manifest being a proper help mate, she thought that her husband needed to submit to her and her managing spirituality. She was being defensive because she did not want her feelings to be hurt anymore. Her husband made mistakes, and so she was not going to be one to submit to a husband who had an imperfect walk with Christ, so she thought he needed to submit to her, and in that way he would get his walk straightened out. The problem was that she had no right to demand that her husband submit to her in a philosophy of mutual submission. What was right was that God demanded that she submit to her own husband, which means that she had no right not to submit to her husband.

So, I ask again, where do you suppose she came up with her philosophical doctrine?

Here's what happened; she took her errant stand upon this verse, and what she did was use it as a proof text to claim her right to fix her marriage according to the false philosophy of mutual spousal submission. Stuck in a type of feminism that she never recognized as being her mental state, she never progressed, and he never progressed down the long hard arduous road that lay ahead of them. They dropped out of biblical fellowship as she dictated to her husband what she wanted to do. His biblical role in leadership was despised, and their marriage regressed back to a state that reflects the diseases of our age and culture;

1) fathers who will not take up the banner of Godliness in spiritual authority that they have been called to, and

2) women who have allowed feminism to taint their thinking, will not submit to their husbands.

To keep from manifesting more of ourselves than the fullness of the Spirit filled life, we must understand what the Bible proclaims concerning God's fundamental principle of wives submitting to their husbands in the awe and reverence of Christ, and we must know what it means to submit to one another in awe and reverence for Christ. To do this, we need to look at the parallel epistles that Paul wrote. They are Colossians and Philippians. Most scholars are pretty sure that Paul sent them out at the same time as this Ephesian epistle during his second imprisonment. In Colossians 3, Paul says almost exactly the same thing, where he speaks of us who are in the body of Christ, singing to one another, and then giving thanks to the Lord. He says,

"16 Let the word of Christ richly dwell within you, with all wisdom teaching and admonishing one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with thankfulness in your hearts to God. 17 Whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through Him to God the Father. 18 Wives, be subject to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord. 19 Husbands, love your wives and do not be embittered against them." Colossians 3:16-19

Immediately, we notice how the wording of Colossians is amazingly similar to that of Ephesians 5:18-21, but did you notice something that is glaringly different? Look between verse 17 and 18. What's missing from Colossians that is present in Ephesians? Notice that directly after Paul gives the instruction to sing and give thanks, that Paul does not say for the Christians to submit themselves to one another. In Colossians, Paul goes directly to Wives submitting to their husbands, as is fitting in the Lord. In Ephesians, Paul says this to, but he says it after our verse under study. He says,

"21 and be submitting to one another in the awe and reverence for Christ. 22 Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. 23 For the husband is the head of the wife, as Christ also is the head of the church, He Himself being the Savior of the body. 24 But as the church is subject to Christ, so also the wives ought to be to their husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her," Ephesians 5:21-24

Clearly, then in the same context, we see that husbands are not to submit to wives, but rather wives are to submit to husbands.

Keeping all that we have covered in mind, when we look at the context of Colossians coming into the parallel passage that matches Ephesians, we see some very important things. We identify Paul's major concern for both epistles. In Colossians 3:1, Paul urges all the Christians to live in such a way as to be seeking the heavenly things. The urging is for all of us to set our minds on the things above, not on the things that are on earth, Colossians 3:2. In 3:5, All of us are to consider the members of our earthly body as dead to immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed. In verses 8-9, all of us are to put them all aside: anger, wrath, malice slander, abusive speech, and lying to one another. In 12-13, All of us are to put on a heart of compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience towards one another. All of us are to be forgiving each other. In 14, beyond all these things we all must put on love, which is the perfect bond of all of us in our unity. In 15, all of us need to let the peace of Christ rule in our hearts, to which we were all called in one body. These are the things that Paul is exhorting all of the Christians to do together as the body of Christ as he comes directly into where he urges all of us to let the word of Christ richly dwell within us, with all wisdom, teaching, and admonishing one another with singing. Then after all of this spiritual activity that manifests Christ who is in you, Paul finally says, wives, be subject to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord. Herein lies the key to what Paul means in Ephesians, where he wants all the Christians to be submitting to one another in the awe and reverence of Christ, and then goes on to show that wives submitting to their husbands is part of being spirit filled. Follow what I am saying here, because when we come back to Ephesians, Paul is saying to submit to one another in awe and reverence for Christ. But, what he is doing is setting the stage for various relationships that he lists afterwards where submission is required for Christians in each kind of human relationship. The key to this command when applied to the wider church community, is that it is in respect to some particular contextual areas that Paul has been concerned with throughout the whole epistle. What are the areas? It is simple. The areas are

a) unity,

b) edification

and

c) growth.

It is unity as the body of Christ, so that we will be accountable to each other for our thoughts and actions, and we will be edified, resulting in spiritual growth. Again, the area of submission is in unity, as the body of Christ, so that we will be accountable to each other for our thoughts and actions, and we will be edified, resulting in spiritual growth, which is to be being filled with the Spirit. The applicable point is,

Are you being united?

If you are not being accountable to the body, then you are not being united with the body, no matter how much you merely claim that you are. Further,

Are you growing in spiritual maturity in ministry to the body, in the body?

If you are not submitting to the other members of the body of Christ, then you are not growing in spiritual maturity as a tool in God's hands. Paul knows this, so inspired by the Holy Spirit, Paul adds the great principle of accountability ability within the body of Christ, where we are all accountable to each other for what we do in our Christians walks.

Okay, I realize that going through the context of the parallel Colossians passage does not actually prove that this is what Paul means here in Ephesians. It adds to the premise, but we need more, so to get more, all we have to do is look at the immediate Ephesian context to see the more that Paul has made sure that we already have. It is clear. In 4:1, Paul implores all of us to walk in a manner worthy of our calling. In 4:2, he tells us all to do this with all humility and gentleness, with patience, showing tolerance for one another in love. Notice, the one another focus. Let me just say right now, that if your Christianity is all about being focused upon yourself, then you are going to find it to be difficult to understand what God is saying here. So, if that is you, then you need to prayerfully ask God to open your eyes to see the bigger picture that He is concerned with for your spiritual growth. God wants you and I to be about the one another focus. So, Paul goes on, and in 4:3, we find that all of us are to be diligent to preserve the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. In 4:4-6, there is one body and one Spirit, just as all of us were called in one hope. There is one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all who is over all of us and through all of us and in all of us; It is unity. In 7 through 13, God has gifted all of us--you, me; all of us--with people gifts. They are people like apostles, and pastors who are teachers. All of them are given to all of us for our equipping, until all of us together, (Paul says) attain to the unity of the faith, and maturity in Christ. Do you see Paul's concern?--It is unity, edification and growth. All of this Paul's great theme, which is God's theme, and so it better be our theme. In verses 14-15 we are no longer to be children who are carried about by every wind of doctrine; but rather, what?; speaking the truth in love, we are (all of us) to grow up in all aspects into Christ who is the Head of us, the body. We are all connected. We have all been designed by God to be interdependent. All of us are designed by God to need each other--actually to be used by each other, and to willingly serve each other. So, in verse 16, we see that we are all being fitted and held together, and each individual one of us causes the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love, which is what? It is the essence of spiritual submission. In verses 17-27 all of us are not to walk any longer as the Gentiles walk. In reference to our former manner of life, all of us need to lay aside the old self. All of us need to put on the new self, which in the likeness of God has been created in righteousness and holiness of the truth. All of us need to speak truth to one another, because we are members of one another. All of us are to be angry at sin that is among ourselves. In verses 28 Anyone among us who steals must stop. From the profit of our work, we are to then give to others of us who have need. In 29, all of us need to watch our mouths. We are to speak words that build up each other according to the need for the moment--giving grace to those who hear us. In verse 30-32, we are not to grieve the Holy Spirit. We are all to let all bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, slander, and malice be put away from ourselves. We are all to be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving each other, just as God in Christ also has forgiven all of us. In 5:1-4, all of us are to be imitators of God, walking in love, just as Christ also loved all of us and gave Himself up for us. Immorality or any impurity or greed must not even be named among any of us, as is proper among all of us saints; and there must be no filthiness and silly talk, or coarse jesting, which are not fitting. In verses 7-11 none of us are to be partakers with the sons of disobedience. Our fruit is supposed to be all goodness and righteousness and truth, trying to learn what is pleasing to the Lord. In verses 15-17 all of us must be careful how we walk, not as unwise men but as wise. None of us are to be foolish, but we need to understand what the will of the Lord is. And then our passage, where none of us are to get drunk, but rather, we are to be being filled with the Spirit, and singing to one another, which leads directly into the command to be submitting to one another in the awe and reverence of Christ. Now please listen to me very carefully: The point here is that since we are the body, we need to act like the body, to the body, in the body, for the body. For us to be able to accomplish all the unity things of the body that Paul mentions, and all of the edification things of the body that Paul mentions, for all the growth that God wants, where we don't go off and become cultic mavericks, or people with ungodly attitudes toward the church, or people who start living in sexual sins, or people who are unbalanced in our pet doctrines, or people who start developing heretical beliefs, and all these kinds of things that happen to maverick Christians who are not accountable for their actions, God says we need to, we must, we better, submit to one another. But we do not submit to one another in awe and reverence for anything other, than awe and reverence for Christ our Lord who tells us to submit. So, what we have seen is that there are improper ways to interpret this command, but there is a proper way to recognize what God means by telling us to do this.

This leads us now to recognize the wonderfully amazing principle; Without exaggeration, (with no sales hype). We have been talking about it. It is the amazing principle that will instantly increase your spiritual growth if you will do it. Further, it will continue to increase your spiritual growth in the long term, if you will do it. It is right here in the command. It is, be subject to one another in the awe and reverence of Christ. That's all there is to it. Now, the question that we need to immediately answer is;

How does applying this command to our lives, produce an instant increase in our spiritual growth?

OK, think about this for a moment.

Is not this a command for you and I to do as a matter of being Spirit filled?

Is this not a command for us to attain to the stature of Christ in spiritual growth?

If this be the case, then to immediately start submitting to one another in the body, is to immediately be taking steps to,

a) Recognize God's command here as existing

b) then believing that it applies to us

c) then becoming obedient to it.

Did you notice that these three things are manifestations of awe and reverence for our Lord?

Did you notice that these three things are the doing side of the scriptures that we claim are God's word?

Did you notice that this is obedience in discipleship?

This folks, is instantaneous spiritual growth in this particular area of our lives! So, you see, if you do this, there is no hype; there is no exaggeration, and there is no false promise. It is simply a fact. You are being filled with the Spirit in this practice. You are growing spiritually in this practice, made evident, first and foremost, in the fact that you have been obedient to the Lord, in being obedient to the command in the first place. So that is the first way that this principle is manifested--it is instantly.

The second way that this principle is manifested is in continued personal practice each and every day; day in, and day out. It's the long haul principle of maturity. Accountability ability is a very powerful principle that runs throughout the whole Bible. When we are lone rangers for the Lord, or mavericks for Messiah, we are clearly being unaccountable to the body of Christ, but more importantly, we are being disobedient to the clear commands of accountability and submission that God has made sure to preserve for us in His word. In the history of my own Christian walk, I have seen a lot of strange, bizarre doctrines being taught. I have witnessed a lot of people, who I can best describe as going way off into the deep end in the sea of strange when it comes to their theology and their practices that they claim are the proper forms of biblical interpretation. One characteristic that I have found with the majority of those kinds of people is that they are not accountable to others for what they believe, and for what they do. Christians who fall into grievous sins are the same way. The Christians that I have known who have had the worst marriages, have consistently been folks who have not had themselves, which means their marriage, in submission to godly overseers in the church, much less anyone else in the church. They think something is wrong with their marriage, but they don't think that biblical submission is part of the answer to fixing it. I can not begin to tell you how many times I have counseled spouses whose marriage is on the rocks, and I have told them to do specific things concerning basic biblical principles--things which are not my own personal opinion--and because they think that they have no need to submit in that area, they continue on down the dooming path that they were walking on while out of submission to God and His word to begin with. Listen, the problem is that they do not have a sufficient awe and reverence for Christ. You say,

What do you mean?

It's the same thing that I mean when I also say that the problem is that they are disobedient to Christ. You see, if they had sufficient awe and reverence for Christ, and were obedient to Him, then they would submit to those biblically minded Christians that God has providentially placed in their path who speak God's word into their lives. In virtually every case of marital mayhem that I have witnessed, whenever the couple begins separating themselves from biblical submission in biblical accountability, the road they are on has ended in divorce. Accountable submission brings long term benefits into your Christian walk that produce beautiful fruits of the Spirit filled life. It helps us to battle sin, and it helps us to battle personal problems that are wrecking our lives, like marital problems.

Finally, when we submit to one another, what we are doing is encouraging the one anotherness that God requires. This is where we need to look in Philippians for the principle of spiritual growth that is magnified in mutual submission. Actually, this last point this morning is the key to biblical submission. It has to do with Christ as our example, which has to do with our attitudes. Without this high example of Christ, we won't submit to anyone but our own selfish selves. Without the high standard of Christ, our lack of humble submission will lead to disunity, and discord in the body, and that is not what God wants. So, let's ask ourselves a very probing question:

Do we sit here this morning, and claim to hold Christ in awe and reverence?

Okay, if we say "yes" then we must submit to Him accordingly, by submitting to one another accordingly. What we find in Philippians is that beautiful but quiet, and unassuming power that we all need, is called

humbleness.

Humbleness is the enemy of the soul that won't submit. But humbleness is the precious friend and helpmate of the one who submits according to the Spirit filled life. The humbleness I am talking about is what God is talking about when He tells us all to look at each other as being better than ourselves in the great attitude of Christ. It is the power of yielding to others, thus creating the bond of unity of the spirit filled life. Even though, to the eyes of the world, (or I should say), to the eyes of our sinful flesh, humbleness may seem like the opposite of power, it really is the atomic energy for achieving the high standards of the Christian walk that mutual submission is meant for. It all becomes crystal clear, as the great truth is illumined for us by Paul, where he says to be,

"2... of the same mind, maintaining the same love, united in spirit, intent on one purpose. 3 Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves; 4 do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others. [It's mutual subjection] 5 Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, 6 who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, 7 but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant. [Yes, Christ submitted to others for the higher good]" Philippians 2:2-7

The whole point is that to be united and intent upon one purpose, we absolutely must be humble and look at one another as better than ourselves. This is the only way we will submit to one another in the awe and reverence for Christ. When we recognize that this attitude of personal emptiness is what Christ the God-man did in His great mission of love for us to bring about a united body in salvation, we look at Him in awe and reverence, and recognize that He is our high standard, and so we should be saying,

"Yes Lord, I have been prideful. I have not seen a need to submit to the body of Christ. I have not been acting like you my Lord."

But we are only going to say this through humble submission to the actual revelation from Scripture. The key is simple:

We aren't going to nurture unity when we are full of ourselves.

And so folks, I can not stress enough that we all desperately need to mutually have this attitude which was also in Christ, Philippians 2:5. I was looking for an illustration for this, and found one by a man who related his experience. He tells the story and I quote,

"Driving down a country road, I came to a very narrow bridge. In front of the bridge, a sign was posted: YIELD. Seeing no oncoming cars, I continued across the bridge and to my destination. On my way back, I came to the same one-lane bridge, now from the other direction. To my surprise, I saw another YIELD sign posted. Curious, I thought, I am sure there was a YIELD sign posted on the other side. When I reached the other side of the bridge I looked back. Sure enough, yield signs had been placed at both ends of the bridge. Drivers from both directions were requested to give right of way. It was a reasonable and gracious way of preventing a head-on collision. When the Bible commands Christians to 'be subject to one another (Eph. 5:21) it is simply a reasonable and gracious command to let the other have the right of way and avoid interpersonal head-on collisions."

The question for us this morning is;

Are we letting Christ have the right of way, by letting our brothers and sisters have the right of way in our lives through biblical submission?

The amazing principle that will increase our spiritual growth is for all of us. There are not exceptions. I urge you to have this attitude in yourself which was also in Jesus Christ. Instead of doing things from selfishness or empty conceit, have humility of mind. Regard one another as more important than yourself. It is the way of Christ. It is to truly hold Him up in awe and reverence as we submit to one another. And so that is what I urge you to do. Submit to the body of Christ. Die to that old stubborn self reliance, or that less than biblical idea that you don't need the body of Christ, and the body doesn't need you. Such thinking is from some other kind of book, but it's not from the Bible. Submission is not a cheesy sales pitch. We don't say, "Submit and grow rich." We don't need to say that. What we have is the principle. It is The Amazing Principle that will instantly increase my spiritual growth. So I leave us with this strong urging this morning. Let's be submitting to one another in the awe and reverence of Christ--amen.

(1) S. Beck