Saturday, April 16, 2022

The Manner of Submission (Eph. 5:22b)

 

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 8/14/2019 10:46 AM

 

My Worship Time                                                                  Focus: “The Manner of Submission”

 

Bible Reading & Meditation                                     Reference:  Ephesians 5:22b

 

            Message of the verse:  “as to the Lord.”

 

            It is the manner or the attitude of submission is to be “as to the Lord.”  We are to do everything in obedience to the Lord, and this should also be done first of all for to the glory of the Lord in order to please Him.  MacArthur writes “Those to whom we submit, whether in mutual submission or in response to their functional authority, will often not inspire respect.  Sometimes they will be thoughtless, inconsiderate, abusive, and ungrateful.  But the Spirit-filled believer—in this instance, the wife—submits anyway, because that is the Lord’s will and her submission is to Him.  A wife who properly submits to her husband also submits ‘to the Lord’.  And a wife who does not submit to her husband also does not submit to the Lord.”

 

The Motive of Submission:  (Ephesians 5:23a) “For the husband is the head of the wife, as Christ also is the head of the church.”

 

            In my Scripture reading for today I was reading from the 11th and 12th chapter of 1 Corinthians and in the first part of the 11th chapter Paul writes things about submission:  3 But I want you to understand that Christ is the head of every man, and the man is the head of a woman, and God is the head of Christ.”  Paul is talking about the order of things, and states that it was woman who first came out of the man, and then after that all men came out of women.  I mentioned this in an earlier SD that in the Godhead there is submission as seen in this section. 

 

            John MacArthur writes “The wife’s supreme motive for submitting to her husband is the fact that he is her functional head in the family, just ‘as Christ also is the head of the Church (cf. 1 Cor. 11:3; Col. 1:18; and see Eph. 1:22-23).  The head gives direction and the body responds.  A physical body that does not respond to the direction of the head is crippled, paralyzed, or spastic.  Likewise, a wife who does not properly respond to the direction of her husband manifests a serious spiritual dysfunction.  On the other hand, a wife who willingly and lovingly responds to her husband’s leadership as to the Lord is an honor to her Lord, her husband, her family, her church and herself.  She is also a beautiful testimony to the Lord before in view of the world around her.”

 

            I mentioned that this would be a rather short SD, but it is packed full of very useful things to think about and to do.  Don’t worry wives the next section is for the husband, right after we do one more sub-section for the wives.

 

The Scripture that goes along with the quotation from Abraham Lincoln is from Proverbs 21:1 “The king’s heart is in the hand of the Lord, like the rivers of water; He turns it wherever He wishes.”

 

8/14/2019 11:05 AM

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