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    Submission is an inflammatory word in our modern times. In the modern mind, submission is seen as being weak and subservient. In a culture so worried about independence, privacy, and image, submission is an anathema. Yet, here is this difficult teaching. Peter and Paul both write that wives are to submit to their husbands, but we rebel against this notion, wanting to believe that this is a teaching of some foreign time and place that does not apply to us today.
    However, submission is the very thing that we Christians celebrate in the life and death of our Savior, Jesus Christ, to fulfill the law and achieve the redemption of our sins. In Jesus’ death on the cross, He submitted to the Will of the Father, taking our place in the punishment that sin must bring so that we could be saved and have the promise of eternal life in Heaven.
    And, as Christians, our entire lives are to be ones of submission- to God, to Grace, to each other, to our governments, to the pastor’s called to shepherd us- not because we are weak or dependent, but because we know that each of us has our place, and this place is not here on earth but in Heaven. We submit because we live in Christ’s example and because such submission is a witness to our faith in Christ’s submission on our behalf.
    Now, for wives, such submission is the greatest testament of their love, not for their husbands, but for their Savior. By submitting to their husbands, they reflect the selfless love that Christ has for His Church. In the same way, husbands, who have submitted to Christ will treat their wives like their own bodies, just as Christ cherishes and protects His Church.
    Submission is the life of the Christian, not the exception of some male-chauvinistic religion toward servile women. We all submit, we all serve, and we all sacrifice because that is what Christ did for us, and we know that, by our faith in Jesus Christ, we preserve our faith by following His example.
DLH
