Obey your leaders and submit to their authority. Hebrews 13:17 (NIV)
A Christian is a person who has learned to submit to God. That is one reason God places us in families. It’s not just so that you will be surrounded by love. It is also so that you will learn to submit. We must learn to submit in the following ways.
Parents
The first place we learn this is in the home. “Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. Honor your father and mother…that it may go well with you” (Eph. 6:1-2).
Marriage
“Wives, submit to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord” (Col. 3:18). “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her” (Eph. 5:25). How did Christ love the church? He submits His own interests, comfort, and pleasure to the benefit of the church, and gives himself to the church even when it is incredibly painful and costly.
Church
“Obey your leaders and submit to their authority. They keep watch over you as men who must give an account” (Heb. 13:17).
Community
“Submit yourselves for the Lord’s sake to every authority instituted among men: whether to the king, as the supreme authority, or to governors, who are sent by him to punish those who do wrong and to commend those who do right” (1 Pet. 2:13-14).
If we don’t learn to submit to others through our childhood and our youth, we may very well end up like misguided missiles throughout adult life, in which we operate by our own independent authority, accountable to no one, causing damage just about everywhere we go.
Can you relate to the “misguided missile” analogy? How so?
