Pauls's Epistle to the Ephesians
Chapter XIX
THE GENERAL DUTY OF MUTUAL SUBMISSION.
"Submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of God"- Era. v. 21.

THIS verse stands in a sort of double position. The injunction which it contains may point backwards to those excesses or abuses of social fellowship which are apt to follow being "drunk with wine," or excited and exhilarated by carnal or worldly stimulants. The characteristic of them all is that, in the tumult of spirit which they occasion, however well they may be ordered, those engaged in them are apt to become heady and headstrong; obtrusively opinionative and intolerant; self asserting; self-glorifying; more or less noisily. But the injunction may also point forwards ; in the line of those familiar household relationships on which the apostle Paul is about to bring to bear the practical power of Christian principle and motive, according to the highest measure of Christian doctrine.

In this view, it is noticeable that the only exactly parallel passage is to be found in the First Epistle of Peter; where it occurs at the close of lengthened exhortations, having reference to the discharge of relative duties in the constitution of society, and in the fellowship of the church. "Likewise, ye younger, submit yourselves unto the elder; yea, all of you submit yourselves" one to another; and be clotbed with humility. For God resisteth the proud, and giveth grace to the humble."

The idea of our "submitting ourselves" is familiar and frequent in Scripture. But, for the most part, what or whom we are to submit ourselves to, is specified. Thus, Christ was "submitting himself" to Mary and Joseph, being "subject unto them." The Jews, again, are blamed or pitied for not "submitting themselves" unto the righteousness of God. And the carnal mind is charged with being enmity against God, because it does not and cannot "submit itself" to the law of God.

I need not quote more instances of our "submitting ourselves" being spoken of, with reference to particular parties having a claim upon us otherwise for obedience. The peculiarity here, and in the passage quoted from Peter, is that the admonition is quite general and indefinite. It is a universal order or injunction. And Peter gives it, one would almost think, with some slight feeling of impatience or indignation. It is as if he were weary of details, and glad to take refuge, before closing, in the general rule universally applicable, "Yea, all of you be subject one to another."

Paul begins with that wide maxim, but it is in the same mind in which Peter ends with it. This is seen to be so through the appeal which Paul makes formally, as Peter makes it virtually, to the highest warrant and authority; "Submit yourselves one to another in the fear of Christ." For that being the reading here it introduces a very high model and sanction.

"The fear of Christ!" It is a strange expression; singular and unique; representing the loving Saviour almost as an object of dread. For we cannot understand the phrase otherwise; we cannot explain it away. It is the fear of Christ. He is to be feared. Yes, certainly! He is to be feared; greatly to be feared. That is a solemn and appalling warning for unbelievers;-"Be wise now, therefore, 0 ye kings; be instructed, ye judges of the earth. Serve the Lord with fear, and rejoice with trembling. Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and ye perish from the way, when bis wrath is kindled but a little. Blessed are all they that put their trust in him." So also is that other warning -"And they said to the mountains and rocks, Fall on us, and hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb ; for the great day of his wrath is come; and who shall be able to stand ?"

But the peculiarity here is, that "the fear of Christ" is brought forward as a Christian motive. It is not merely used in the way of pressure, as it were, from without; shutting men up into Christ, or plunging them in despair if they refuse to be found in Christ. It is as an inward principle of the new man, the new nature, that it is appealed to and called into play. It is "in the fear of Christ," as a feeling or affection within us, as being ourselves in him, that we are exhorted to observe this rule of holy living ; "submitting ourselves one to another."

I. One very simple explanation of this way of enforcing the duty in question may be found in the consideration of our Lord's special, and as it were personal, dislike of the opposite frame of mind - the opposite mode of conduct. I say his personal dislike of it, for it was really that. It was more than disapprobation; it was distaste and disgust. The questioning of his disciples among themselves as to who should be the greatest, gave him deep and sore offence. It was a personal annoyance. It very specially vexed and wounded him. It showed so little intelligent apprehension of his character, and work, and mission; so little appreciation; so little sympathy. So also the assumption by Peter of superior faithfulness and courage above all the rest of the apostles occasioned, as it would seem, real personal discomfort, and a sort of personal recoil, of which his words somewhat savour : "I tell thee, Peter, the cock shall not crow this day, before thou shalt thrice deny that thou knowest me."

II. Another consideration, and the principal one, explanatory of this peculiar way of illustrating and enforcing the duty of mutual submission, may be found in our Lord's personal walk and conduct. It is an appeal to his example. Let the grace of reciprocal subjection be manifested and exercised in the fear - the reverential, admiring, adoring, loving fear - of him who himself manifested and exercised that grace so constantly, so wonderfully. Submitting himself to others is the rule and ruling principle of his life; its essential characteristic; as viewed in its relation to his fellow-men. For it is not his submitting himself to the Father, as his chosen servant, that I here speak of. That cannot come under the head of the command - "Submit yourselves one to another." It cannot, therefore, be brought in as a motive, or precedent, or example, bearing upon that command. In his submitting himself to the Father there can be no room for reciprocity. It is only with reference to his manner of dealing with those whose equal he condescended to become, that that element can be recognised - the element, I mean, of mutuality or reciprocity : Submit yourselves one to another : Let there be submission on both sides. Alas ! In his case this element could be recognised practically, for the most part, only on one side; on his own side. For by far the larger number of those with whom he had intercourse were dead and insensible to any feeling of a corresponding obligation on their side. Still, one-sided as its exercise might be, this element of reciprocity or mutuality entered into the Lord's manner of submitting himself, in all his fellowship with his fellow-men. He submitted himself to them as one expecting, desiring, willing, that they should submit themselves to him.

Nor do I speak here of that submission which he authoritatively claims as the Son, and as appointed by the Father to save them that obey his voice and believe in his name. I speak of his common manner of intercourse as a man with his fellow-men. I speak of him as in that manner of intercourse illustrating and fulfilling the command: Submit yourselves one to another.

For it is not necessary to a full and hearty compliance with the spirit of that command, that both of the parties who may.be held to be concerned in it actually conform to it. I may obey it in my dealing with you, though you refuse to obey it in your dealing with me. I may submit myself to you, though I cannot reckon on your submitting yourself to me. Still my submitting myself to you proceeds upon the hypothesis or supposition of your submitting yourself to me. I act thus toward you, on the faith, as it were, of your acting in like manner towards me ; or as if I might expect you to act in like manner towards me.

And this materially affects the whole character and spirit of my intercourse with you: For one thing, it quite divests it of all assumption on my part of superior worth or authority. There is no air of affected condescension. I recognise you as doing to me all that I do to you. I bend no more to you, than you, with entire self-respect, may bend to me. And I am quite as ready to accept kindly your submitting of yourself to me, as I would wish you to be ready to accept kindly my submitting of myself to you. For this I take to be an essential feature, a vital characteristic, of the grace or virtue now in question. This gives it its excellency and charm.

There is a style or mode of submitting one's-self to another which, lacking that gracious element of reciprocity, is apt to be painful and offensive. I come down to you from a high position, and I make you feel that I am coming down. With elaborate and ostentatious humility I bend and stoop to you. You see that I am patronising you. When I bow my head to enter your lowly hut, the very courtesy of my act puts you in mind of the hut's lowliness. When I pour oil and balm into your wounds, it is with an air that makes your spirit smart even when your flesh is soothed. Why? Why but because I mean my submitting of myself to you to be altogether one-sided; I mean it to be understood to be so; or, at least, I act so that it can scarcely be construed otherwise.

Not such was the manner of Jesus. None to whom he submitted himself could ever imagine that he was patronising him; or condescending to him; or doing a great service of humiliation. No, he always proceeded on the principle and in the spirit of reciprocity ; as one showing that he considered himself to be obliged in the very act of obliging others; as one willing to be indebted to those whom he was making his debtors ; as one ready to accept gracefully, as well as to bestow, a service.

True, he came not to be ministered unto, but to minister. But his way of ministering was such as could not wound or mortify the most sensitive sensibility; for he ministered as not refusing, but consenting - though that was not his aim - to be ministered unto. So he ministered, as willing to be ministered unto, when he introduced himself to the woman of Samaria by asking her to minister to his thirst. So also when he welcomed the good offices of her who ministered to his weary head, soon to be bowed on the accursed tree, by anointing his body unto his burial. Scarcely anything, indeed, is more remarkable in the whole of our Lord's intercourse with those to whom he spoke, or among whom he went about doing good, than the perfect simplicity, and, if one may dare to say so, the unstudied and unassuming naturalness of his manner. It was such as to put them at once at their ease in conversing with him, and receiving benefits at his hand. It was such as, while it commanded respectful homage, disarmed or charmed away all jealousy and suspicion. It made all who had any sense of what true manhood - genuine humanity - is, feel that he was among them, not as a patron among clients, or a benefactor among dependants on his bounty; or a visitor from a higher sphere condescending to notice an inferior race; but as desiring to be a friend among friends; a man among men needing, accepting, welcoming for himself the sympathy and the service which he manifested and rendered towards all. It is in the reverential and loving fear of Christ, thus submitting himself, that you are to submit yourselves one to another. It must, therefore, be after his manner, according to his example, that you are to do so. Our way of submitting yourselves must be like His; for the spirit of it must be in your case what it was in his. There must be no reservation of self-complacency, or even of self-consciousness. There must be the entire abandonment or renunciation of any thought of self. There must be Christ's own losing of himself in those he longed to save, if you are to submit yourselves one to another in the fear of Christ.

III. The fear of Christ, in which you are to submit yourselves one to another, may have, and must have, a higher reference. It may and must point not merely to his manner among men, but to his mission from God. He was subject, he submitted himself, to the Father. It was always as submitting himself to his Father in heaven that he went about on earth submitting himself to his fellow-men. The one submission explained and characterised the other. His humbling himself to be obedient to the Father left really no room for any other humiliation. The first step being accomplished; his taking upon him the form of a servant, and becoming obedient; the entire amount of possible subjection was, as it were, exhausted. All other submissions were swallowed up in that one. For him, who has submitted himself to the Father so willingly, so unreservedly, so joyfully, to reckon any other submission a submission worthy of the name; except as it implies possible if not actual reciprocity ; how incongruous and intolerable an anomaly! Nay, rather; submitting himself to the Father once for all and always, for the great work of salvation among the children of men, covenanted in the eternal counsels of the Godhead, - Father, Son, and Holy Ghost - being therefore found in fashion as a man - he cannot feel that, as a man among men, he has any high state to surrender, or any honour or dignity to compromise, when he renders the humblest offices and services of friendship simply as he would accept them if rendered to himself. He is acting for his Father; submitting himself to his Father. He knows of no other submission but only what he would have to be mutual and reciprocal. For it is joint submission to his Father and your Father, to his God and your God.

Let your fear of Christ, then, in which you submit yourselves one to another, be of the same sort - shall I say - as his fear of the Father. Let Christ be to you, in this matter of submission, what the Father is to him. Let that be the type and model of your exercise of this grace. Let your submitting of yourselves in the first instance to Christ be as reverential, as thorough, as cordial, as was his submitting of himself to the Father. Be you, in this matter, Christ's; even as Christ is God's.

You cannot go among your fellow-men in that character and capacity, with anything like the assumption of a right to put on an air of gracious condescension; as if you were coming down, in a very self-humiliating and self-sacrificing way, to them. Ah, no! In your case, even far more, if possible, than in Christ's, any such idea or feeling is precluded. Your submitting of yourselves to Christ, in your relation as believers to him, involves in it what must shut all that out - even more than his submitting himself to the Father, in his relation of son and servant, on your behalf. He submits himself to the Father- the righteous one, fulfilling all righteousness. You submit yourselves to him as guilty ones, redeemed by his blood. He submits himself to the Father as coming down from heaven to sound in your stead the lowest depths of hell. You submit yourselves to him, as taken by him out of the horrible pit and the miry clay, to have your feet set upon a rock; upon himself; the "Rock of Ages cleft for you." There is infinite merit in his submitting himself to the Father for you. These is no merit at all in your submitting yourselves to him; but only obligation to grace, rich, sovereign, and free. Surely then, if his submitting himself to the Father influenced and determined the whole manner of his submitting himself to his fellow-men ; much more may your submitting yourselves to him do that for you.

Ah! when he went abroad on the mission for which he submitted himself to the Father; and he never went anywhere without having that mission in his eye and in his heart; he had no leisure for calm self-inspection - nay, not even for self consciousness, in his dealings with those to whom his Father sent him. There was no thought of himself, but only of the mission for which he was submitting himself to the Father, when he let the penitent woman's tears wash his feet, or when he girded himself to wash the feet of his disciples. Engrossed, absorbed, engulfed, or swallowed up, in the single and exclusive consideration of that great and blessed work for which he submitted himself to the Father, his soul could admit no selfish thought, either of superiority over those to whom he ministered, or of a surrender of that superiority in his ministering to them. The higher, heavenly, motive carried all before it.

And should it not do so in you, when you first submit yourselves to Christ, as Christ submits himself to God? Should not that prior and primary submitting of yourselves to Christ make your submitting of yourselves to any other be felt by you as really no submission at all? If it is indeed as submitting yourselves to Christ, in the view and for the ends of the very mission in which he submits himself to God, that you mingle with your fellow-men; if you make conscience of that being so, always and everywhere, in all companies and on all occasions; what heart can you have for standing upon your own dignities and rights, or making a great work or merit about your consenting to hold them in abeyance? Dignities and rights indeed! Why, you have none. You have surrendered all to Christ. Tou are the servants of all men, being the servants of him who served for all men. You submit yourselves to Christ. And in the fear of Christ, you submit yourselves one to another.

IV. One more thought I simply notice, as suggested by the expression "in the fear of Christ." Understanding the term fear to mean, as applied to Christ, what it means ordinarily in Scripture as applied to God, I find in it an affecting and affectionate motive. It seems as if Christ himself were brought in by the apostle as adjuring you, and beseeching you, to abound in this grace, and so to avoid offending him. It is not merely I that exhort you; but he whose name I invoke, and whom I know that you reverence and love. In his name I speak. He speaks by me. Hear, not me, but him: -

By your fear of me; by all that I have done and am doing for you and in you to awaken your fear of me; by the dread awe my cross is fitted to inspire; by the deep, dark terror of Gethsemane and Calvary; by all that is moving and melting for the conscience, the mind, the heart, in the solemn spectacle of my self-surrender and self-sacrifice for you; above all, by the love I poured out with my life-blood when I died for you, I implore you to lay aside all pride, vainglory, superciliousness; all self-seeking; all self-consciousness in your condescension; to be meek, not self-asserting, but submissive; and to be so in all simplicity. I make this my personal request to you, as you fear me. Yes! as you fear me. For surely I am to be feared. I do not indeed desire to be the object of any fear on your part having in it anything of the element of torment. I do not assert any harsh or tyrannical lordship over you. I submit myself to you. I have called yon not my servants but my friends. I welcome you as my brethren. I admit you to closest and most confidential intimacy. I would have you to lay aside all feelings of reserve and constraint in your intercourse with me. I would have you to be at home with me ; leaning on my bosom. But surely not the less on that account - nay rather all the more - I am to be feared. Especially when you consider how and at what a cost I have won and bought you to be mine. The thought of displeasing me must be intolerably painful to you. That is always to be feared. And you cannot displease me more than by not submitting yourselves one to another.
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