Relationships

King of the hill. The mound in my backyard.

What happens when you win? Do you really think everyone sticks around?

They go home!

Winning king of the hill is the loneliest prize I can think of

Yet we tend to play it everyday.

here’s the thing about winning in a relationship. You’re usually just left alone.

God calls us to another kind of relationship. Where we learn from Him the ways of submission.

God calls us to submit to Him, to yield willingly our lives to Him. And it is in Christ that we learn how to flourish in relationships with others.

Our position before God defines our submission before others

What is submission?

Define submission

To submit means to make oneself open to the influence of another.

Now we are going to make some caveats today. Anytime we use the word submit, I mean a voluntary submission to another. If you make someone submit then that is not submission

Mutual Submission is no problem when there is trust

Submission works under two fronts:

Trust

Fear

If we demand something for another using fear as a tactic, it is a rebellious heart. If we give something to another, it is an act of submission.

If you use fear as a means for submission

This is abusive

The submit that we are talking about today means a willing openness to the influence of another.

That takes trust/ .

Our culture does not tolerate any talk of mutual submission because it does not tolerate any discussion where the self, yourself is not in the center and the primary authority.

The problem is and I’ve said this before, that no relationship can survive long term if both people are trying to be central.

King of the hill

No relationship can sustain itself if submission is not foundational to it.

We have misrepresented mutual submission to the detriment of relationships.

Divorce rates are at about 40%

There is a literal epidemic of lonliness that has been compared to the opioid epidemic (https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/20/nyregion/loneliness-epidemic.html)

adolescent mental health issues are skyrocketing

So here’s the reality. We are going to talk about what it will take to flourish in relationships. And I will likely step on your toes a little bit this morning.

However, based on what we are facing in the culture, likely we don’t have a better option.

Mutual submission starts closest to home

The household

Most of the time when people want to criticize Scripture they go here. But they go here without ever reading it or understanding context.

This is unbelievable liberating to Paul’s contemporary audience.

The only people who would normally get any kind of recognition is the male. It is patriarchal.

However here we get other parts of the house represented. And it is not just simply submit. It is how each member of the house is called to be honored.

- There is order in the oikos. In a culture where when and people were property and less than, the Scriptures actually lift people out and prioritizes relationships. It upholds the household as a place of honor and recognition. This structure protects members of the family within a corrupt culture in Ancient Rome.

Ephesians 5:22–23 ESV

Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior.

If you want to honor your husband.

respect

Ephesians 5:25–27 ESV

Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.

If you want to honor your wife

Love

Ephesians 6:1–3 ESV

Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. “Honor your father and mother” (this is the first commandment with a promise), “that it may go well with you and that you may live long in the land.”

If you want to honor your parents

obey

Ephesians 6:4 ESV

Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.

If you want to honor your kids

don’t provoke to anger but instruct and discipline.

The focus is not on what you want others to do, it’s on what you are to do. There is agency in submission to others.

Ephesians 6:5–9 ESV

Bondservants, obey your earthly masters with fear and trembling, with a sincere heart, as you would Christ, not by the way of eye-service, as people-pleasers, but as bondservants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart, rendering service with a good will as to the Lord and not to man, knowing that whatever good anyone does, this he will receive back from the Lord, whether he is a bondservant or is free. Masters, do the same to them, and stop your threatening, knowing that he who is both their Master and yours is in heaven, and that there is no partiality with him.

The issue with bondservants and masters is different. We reject all forms of slavery, both historical and present. And we read this and think yikes.

But this is not slavery like we think. Paul is not accommodating to a slavery like we think. This is an economic agreement. Someone who works for the family based on debt or some other arrangement and who would be let go of that employment every 7 years.

But the fact that Paul addresses bondservants and masters is shocking. No one would care how bondservants were treated.

What we see is an intentional relationship that offers vulnerability through trust.

What would it look like for our households to offer relationships that seek vulnerability through trust?

Mutual submission begins with adjusting your identity.

and because we don’t trust we refuse to budge on our identity. We stand on the top of the hill and refuse to move.

Now I want to mention that I have learned a lot from a theologian named Miroslav Volf. He has written a number of books but the one I want to reference is called Exclusion and embrace.

Our call as Christians is to learn how to embrace the other as Christ has embraced us. But in our culture that is hard to do. And instead of being counter-cultural as Christians should be we simply throw up our hands and think that if no one else won’t then we won’t

To embrace another is to make room in your life for them. It is to adjust your identity so that there is room for them

How do we embrace another? How do we begin to practice mutual submission.

Realize that Christ adjusted His identity for us.

Philippians 2:3–11 ESV

Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

invite in [

To embrace another means to be able to adjust your identity. It means being able to submit parts of yourself in order to love another. But we often have difficult times doing that. .

- “the will to give ourselves to others and “welcome” them, to readjust our identities to make space for them, is prior to any judgment about others, except that of identifying them in their humanity. Exclusion and Embrace

We easily make the mistake to think that if they just saw it our way we would love to embrace them

If they agreed with us then we would embrace

How often do you think embracing would happen.

We need to adjust to make room for others.

Romans 12:10 ESV

Love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honor.

go first.

If we always waited for the other person to go first, we would not get anywhere.

Christ went first for us.

Romans 5:8 ESV

but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

If Christ went first then we should be running to submit

Christ didn’t wait for us to get it right.

He didn’t wait for us to clean up.

He went first.

And our response is always to His first move.

maybe you need to ask for forgiveness,

Maybe you need to offer forgiveness

Maybe you need to ask more questions than you answer

maybe you need to discuss sin in the system.

We can’t wait for someone else to move for our relationships to get better. Because as long as they are on prideful foundations, there is always a fissure in the system.

I am not necessarily too afraid of natural disasters except for tsunamis. I am unnaturally afraid of the possibility of a tsunami. Not here, by the way. But when we lived on the West Coast we would vacation on the pacific ocean and there is a fault line in the pacific ocean called the Cascadia subduction zone. It is about 500 miles into the ocean and it is huge.

Because of that there is always the threat of a tsunami. In fact I have read articles that the WEst coast is 500 years behind a massive quake and tsunami that is supposed to hit.

And there is awareness of that. Every beach you are at, at least in OR has these signs. (show tsunami warning sign).

And in case there is a tsunami you are supposed to go to higher ground. There are even signs that will show you where the routes are.

If your relationships are built on something less than mutual submission, you are staring at a tsunami hazard zone sign. It may not come today or tomorrow.

Our role in our relationships as Christians, especially in the household, is to submit to one another. Show preference to one another. Adjust your identity to make room for others.

Mutual Submission to one another is what will put us onto safe land.

Communion is an act of recognition and submission