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Spiritual Formation
Lecture 11 Study Notes – November 11, 2008
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Fasting
1. What is fasting? Lynne Baab defined fasting in her book Fasting: Spiritual Freedom as: “voluntary denial of something for a specific time, for a spiritual purpose, by an individual, family, community or nation.” (page 16) In our handout, Calhoun defines fasting as “the self-denial of normal necessities in order to intentionally attend to God in prayer…” (page 218) For the most part, fasting is seen as the temporary self-denial of something for a short-period of time for spiritual purposes. I say spiritual purposes because some people can confuse fasting with dieting or some other reason and lose sight of the true purpose of fasting.
2. The focus of self-denial is usually food. However as we will see, other things can be the subject of denial rather than food. Fasting can be about many things.
3. According to Richard Foster, fasting can also be categorized in different ways. He distinguishes between a normal fast, a partial fast, and an absolute fast. The normal fast “involves abstaining from all food, solid or liquid, but not from water.” A partial fast involves “a restriction of the diet but not total abstention.” And an absolute fast means “abstaining from both food and water.” (pages, 56-60)
4. Time-wise, a fast might last between twenty-four hours and thirty-six for most fasting periods, once or twice a week. For beginners, according to Marjorie Thompson, “it is helpful to begin after the evening meal, fasting until the next day’s evening meal, so that only two meals are missed.” (Soul Feast, page 75) Richard Foster also talks about a “super natural” fasting time of forty days. (page, 59)
5. Reasons not to fast! One, because of pride in doing something that other people cannot or don’t want to do. In addition it is not context to see who can fast the longest or the most extreme. True fasting is strictly a spiritual exercise.
6. Two, losing weight may or may not be a byproduct of fasting, but again, fasting is not about dieting. Thompson quotes one of the desert fathers that I enjoy, but don’t necessarily practice: “Abba Joseph asked Abba Poeman, “How should one fast?” Abba Poeman said to him, “For my part, I think it better that one should eat everyday but only a little, so as not to be satisfied.” (page, 70, Soul Feast) What other reasons have you heard for fasting?
7. Health benefits- like cleansing poison and chemicals out of our bodies, like caffeine.
8. Biblical examples of Fasting!
a. In ancient Jewish tradition, fasting had two primary purposes.
One, it was to express personal or national repentance for sin; fasting was a form of humbling oneself before God in the face of personal and national disasters.
Two, fasting was to prepare oneself inwardly for receiving the necessary strength and grace to complete the mission of service in God’s name (Moses, Elijah, and Jesus). It prepares one to be of service to God in what one is being called to do.
b. The only public day of fast described in Mosaic law was at the day of atonement (Leviticus 23:26-32).
c. Some fasts were called in times of national emergency, such as Joel 2:15, 2 Chronicles 20:1-4; and Ezra 8:21-23.
d. By the time of Zechariah four regular fasts were held (Zechariah 8:19)
e. Jesus fasted Matthew 4:2;
f. The boast of the Pharisee “I fast twice a week” (Luke 18:12) indicates a common practice during Jesus’ day.
g. Jesus also states: “when you fast…” (Matthew 6:16-18) as if He expected everyone to fast, and wanted it done correctly. He especially didn’t want it to be done as a matter of showmanship. Also, it is clear by where this teaching is (following the Lord’s Prayer in Matthew) that fasting and prayer should be connected together. Notice how Calhoun places fasting in with prayer in the table of contents of her book.
h. Another example of Jesus and fasting is when in response to a question by the disciples of John the Baptist “why they fasted but Jesus’ disciples did not. His response in Matthew 9:15 was “Can the wedding guests mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them? The days will come, when the bridegroom is taken away from them and then they will fast.” Foster calls this the most important reason in the New Testament on whether or not Christians should fast today. Surely if there is a time to fast, it is now. Jesus expected His disciples to fast.
i. Paul fasted (2 Corinthians 6:5;11:27 KJV)
j. 2 Corinthians 6:5 also mentions going without “sleep” in which people today have referred to as “watchings.” In which it stems from Paul’s use of suffering for Christ in order to attend to prayer or other spiritual duties. (Celebration of Discipline, page 51)
k. One of the oldest examples of fasting goes back to the book of Genesis. (Even though the Book of Genesis is not the oldest book of the Bible.)
9. Examples of Fasting in church history.
a. One of the best ways to understand fasting is to explore what Lent means to the church. Lent is the season of prayer and fasting in preparation for Easter. It is the great fast of the church calendar year.
b. I don’t really understand lent, but I need to in order to make more sense out of Easter. First off, Lent is not a voluntary six week period of inconvenience and self-imposed denial in order to please God. (See Thompson, Soul Feast, page 71-74) It is as Thompson says the opposite of self restrictions and self-torture. It is the opportunity to return to the normal life—the life of natural communion with God that was lost to us in the Fall. (page 72)
c. In the Garden of Eden there was a God-imposed fast on Adam and Eve. Forbidden fruit—it was a calling or a commandment to accept limits, as a way of recognizing that human beings are dependent of God.
d. In fact today, we live as if there are no limits. There is nothing that we shouldn’t do, in fact if we can do it then that is our license to do it. Our desires and appetites are given free rein to do what they want. It is considered our right to use every resource and creature on earth for our personal enjoyment or personal gain.
e. However, a life that recognizes no limits cannot recognize the sovereignty of God. You might say that death, sin, suffering entered into creation because Adam and Eve couldn’t keep the fast.
f. The word “lent” just means spring. It was a spiritual spring time, by which the early church attempted to return to the “fast” that Adam and Eve broke. We are able to do this because the early church, Paul in particular, found the reversal in Adam’s sin in Christ’s life, suffering, and death. (For a comparison of Adam and Christ see Ronald D. Witherup, “101 Questions & Answers on Paul” page 122) Our fasting during Lent is a preparation for the true freedom that comes in Christ. Fasting is another way of celebrating the freedom we have in Christ. The freedom that has set limits on our life and freed us from the slavery of our desires and appetites. (Hence the title of Baab’s book “Fasting: Spiritual Freedom Beyond Our Appetites)
g. Calvin commended fasting for the following reasons:
One, to subdue the needless desires of the flesh.
Two, prepare for prayer and meditation; and
Three, express humility before God in confession.
10. What is the purpose of fasting?
a. Perhaps the best scripture to describe what fasting is and does is Deuteronomy 8:3.
b. We do not live by bread alone. Jesus set us and His disciples straight about the proper place of God’s creation in our lives. (John 4:31-34) We do not live to eat, but eat to live. “Fasting brings us face to face with how we put the material world ahead of its spiritual Source.” (Soul Feast, page 71) John Wesley wrote: “First, let fasting be done unto the Lord with our eye singly fixed on Him. Let our intention herein be this, and this alone, to glorify our Father which is in Heaven…” That is the only way we will be saved from loving the blessing more than the Father.
c. A secondary spiritual purpose is that more than any other of the spiritual disciplines fasting reveals the things that control us. We cover up what is inside us with food and other good things, but in fasting these things surface.” (Foster, page 55) If pride controls us…then like David writes: “I humble my soul with fasting.” (Psalm 69:10) Fasting is the means which the Holy Spirit, through prayer and self-denial, attempts to get control over our lives.
d. Matthew 4:4, Jesus reminds us that we are sustained “by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.” Therefore, in fasting we are not so much abstaining from food or something else, we are feasting on the word of God. Feasting in the most spiritual sense in feasting on God.
e. Fasting helps keep balance in our lives. Over indulgence is the spiritual problem that we all have.
f. Fasting is cleansing. (Soul feast, page 80) It is interior spring cleaning.
g. Fasting is making space for God.
Journaling
11. Journaling - Calhoun writes: “Journaling is a way of paying attention to our lives- a way of knitting the vast ball of our experiences into something with shape that attest to the state of our soul.” (page, 56)
a. It is a tool for reflecting on God’s presence.
b. During times of stress, problems, difficulty, there are themes of coping and non-coping patterns that can teach us more about ourselves.
c. Over a period of time if we are faithful in journaling, we can learn repetitious themes of sins, compulsions, hopes, and desires. Our fears and insecurities might take on different shapes and forms but still reveal how insecure that we really are.
d. A spiritual journal catalogs and records the journey of the soul into God. What a wonderful legacy it would be to leave as a legacy for our children. (Read part of page 57 in Calhoun’s book. Look at what the practice includes and what the God-given fruit might be for those who journal. Share parts of your journal, devotion, and written prayers.)
Spiritual Formation
Lecture 12 Study Notes – November 18, 2008
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Spiritual Readings
1. Nature and Function of Scripture: For Christians, short of worshiping the Bible, it is hard to over-estimate the importance of scripture in the Christian’s life. As Southern Baptists, we have been debating the very nature of scripture ever since I’ve gotten out of Seminary which was 1978. Over the years, the Southern Baptist Convention has adopted the following statement about scripture in The Baptist Faith and Message by Hershel Hobbs:
“The Holy Bible was written by men divinely inspired and is the record of God’s revelation of Himself to man. It is a perfect treasure of divine instruction. It has God for its author, salvation for its end, and truth, without any mixture of error, for its matter. It reveals the principles by which God judges us; and therefore is, and will remain to the end of the world, the center of Christian union, and the supreme standard by which all human conduct, creeds, and religious opinions should be tried. The criterion by which the Bible is to be interpreted is Jesus Christ.”
2. My purpose this evening is not to debate Hobbs’ understanding of the nature of scripture, however, I do find that Hobbs has left out a very important aspect of Holy Writ—that is the value of scripture for Spiritual Formation.
3. The spiritual reading of Holy Scriptures has to be one of core disciplines for guiding our transformation into the image of Christ. Hebrews 4:12, “For the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.”
4. Scripture is not God, but it is the alive and inspired, active and productive representative of God’s will for mankind. It is not as some of our people choose to believe dull, dead, and boring. It is the written word of God that goes hand and hand with the Living word of God—Jesus Christ.
5. We all have our world view, our perceptual frameworks that shape our lives in the world we live in. The Bible refers to these frameworks of thought as the bondage of sin, worldly points of view, living in the flesh and not according to the Spiritual, the old sinful man or self, and etc.
6. These natural and sinful frameworks become our prisons. We are living in darkness and sin and we cannot even begin to realize just how hopeless our situation is apart from Jesus Christ. One of the roles of the scripture in spiritual formation is to liberate us from that bondage. But, as Robert Mulholland, Jr. says in his book Shaped by the Word: The Power of Scripture in Spiritual Formation (page 33), “Not only does scripture liberate us from the bondage of our perceptual framework, but at the same time it develops and nurtures within us a transformed and ever-expanding perceptual dynamic of wholeness wherein we find fullness of life in three primal relationships: with God, with, self, with other.” I might add with a fourth—creation.
7. Let’s look at some of the different meanings behind the “word of God” and how they form a theology related to spiritual formation. First is Genesis 1, how does God create his creation. His creation is always spoken into being: “Let there be… and there was….” God speaks everything into creation, including mankind. In case that is not as clear as we would expect it to be in Genesis, let’s fast forward to the New Testament.
8. In Ephesians 1:4 Paul writes: “For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight.” According to Mulholland (page 34), the word “chose” is composed from two Greek words, “ek” which is the preposition “out of” or “forth from” and lektos, which comes from lego, or “to speak.” Hence to “chose” is to “spoke forth.” God has “spoke forth” each of us, from the very beginning of creation. I remember as a child when we chose sides for a ballgame, each team would speak or chose the name of another player. Thus Paul is saying that God “spoke us forth in Christ before the foundation of the world that we should be holy and blameless before in love.” I guess we could say that God spoke us forth to be on “His team” before the creation of the world to be “conformed to the image of His Son.” (Romans 8: 29)
9. In a sense I am, you are, a “word” of God spoken into existence a long, long time ago. Someone once wrote: “You are the breath of God, and God is right now breathing you.” Genesis two uses the image of God “breathing” us into existence. So we are in a sense God’s breath or God’s word which brings us forth to be made into the image of God.
10. Another use of the “Word” with a capital w is one in which we are all familiar with. John 1:1, obviously patterned after the creation account of Genesis 1, is “Word” with that capital “W”. This is the incarnational word of God. The literal “Word” becoming flesh in Jesus of Nazareth (John 1:14).
11. Another scripture that bears this out is Jesus riding on a great white horse, and one of the names that Jesus is called is “the Word of God (Revelation 19).”
12. If you recall in this scripture, Jesus as the Word of God has a “sharp two edged sword coming out of his mouth.” It is no accident that our scripture in Hebrews 4:12 says that the word of God, the written word of God, is like “a sharp two edged sword” as well.
13. It is our belief that by believing in Jesus Christ, our “word” that represents us is being transformed and changed by the eternal Word of God. Our lives or our word is literally being shaped by the divine word, in the flesh Jesus Christ.
14. It is also believed that the written word of God cuts and shapes our lives as well. Look again at Hebrews 4:12, what does it mean when it says: “joints and marrow?” Joint is that which unites things, such an arm and shoulder. It holds our arm and our torso together in a proper working relationship. The word “marrow” stands for something which is at the heart of a matter, such at the center of our bones. The “word of God” is a sharp two edged sword that opens us up and exposes who we really are concerning the intentions of our hearts.
15. Look at verse 13, “nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account.” Hence scripture is like a divine scalpel which in the hands of a living God which “lays bare who we really are” so that the Living Word of God might bring healing and freedom to the ones in which have been spoken forth.
16. A definition of the Word of God in the broadest sense might be “the action of the presence, the purpose, and the power of God in the midst of human life (Mulholland, page 41).” It is God calling forth and sustaining all of life and creation according to His Word. His Word is His working, developing, moving, and creating life toward the purposes of His divine will.
17. Holy Writ is a distillation and therefore a concentration of this all encompassing power and will of God, in a wonderful living love letter written to a creation created in His image.
18. The purpose spelled out of the Holy Writ is seen in 2 Timothy 3:16. He writes: “All scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.”
19. It is interesting that the God breathing that has brought forth both you and scripture is now continuing to bring forth you in the image of Christ. There is a dual mode of moving us forward in Christ—scripture and Christ (Spirit). And when this occurs four things are present:
20. One, an encounter with the “Word”, but Christ and Scripture is profitable for teaching. For there to be teaching of any kind there has to be a letting down of barriers, or the breaking in of something intrusive so that we can learn. Not many of us are sponges that are willing to soak up anything and everything that God wants us to learn. In fact, most of the time we are really hard-headed and God has to break into our lives in order to teach us. Scripture is one way that cuts deep into who we really are, and begins to teach us.
21. Hence forth, we stand in reproof and correction. When we are sufficiently reproved, we begin to see who we really are and who God really is. The Greek word “correction” refers to the making straight or whole of something that was going in the wrong direction and by nature is deficient. Hence this presents us an opportunity for obedience that will get us moving in the right direction, experiencing the healing that we so desperately need.
22. Training carries with it the notion of a child being brought from infancy to adulthood, as a parent would train a son or daughter to become a mature and responsible citizen.
23. Look now in verse 17, “so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.” Literally so that you and I might be made complete. It means that we might be made to fulfill the function that we were created for. Thus the purpose of the “word of God” is to shape us into being all that God has spoken us to be—the heart of spiritual formation.
24. Now how do we go about reading the word of God? I’ve got a pet peeve when it comes to reading the Bible. In fact, as far as I am concerned, there is only one thing that is worse than not reading the Bible at all, and that is reading the Bible though in a year.
25. When it comes to reading the Bible, it is less how much or what someone reads, than how one reads it. We live in an informational society so that all we are looking for is to be well-informed. We seek more information (new facts, knowledge, new techniques, new methods, new systems, new programs) in order to improve our functional control of our environment.
26. Informational reading seeks to do a number of things: one, cover as much as possible as quickly as possible.
27. Two, informational reading is linear. Moving from a to z! Most interpreters of Revelation do not realize that the events of chapter 17-22 are intended to be seen as three facets of a single profound vision. Some feel John’s vision is a holistic revelation of consequences of God’s judgment in Jesus Christ seen from three different ways.
28. Third, in informational reading we seek to master the text. However, those of us who study the Bible know that the Bible can never be mastered. Even if we were to live a thousand lifetimes we wouldn’t know everything we need to know about the Bible.
29. Fourth, a characteristic of informational reading is that there is an object out there that we must know and therefore control. You can never control God.
30. Fifth, informational reading is characterized by a problem solving mentality. Hence, in many people understanding of the Bible and of God there is no mystery. Everything is knowable.
31. People who read the Bible informationally, or read it to get through it in 360 days, are not leaving enough space for God to speak to them. There is a race or a competition to get from one end to the other to master it. We can never master the word of God, it must master us.
32. Reading the Bible informationally is more like reading into it, the bias, and presuppositions that we bring to it. Thomas Merton wrote: “In order to read the Bible honestly, we have to avoid entrenching ourselves behind official positions (like believing only traditional Southern Baptist doctrine), whether religious or cultural, whether for or against the Bible itself.” This is a criticism of liberalism as well as conservatism—see other Merton quotes on page 52. This entrenchment, no matter what it is, will keep us from seeking the truth, no matter how it is for our spiritual well-being.
33. For more on the merits of formational reading of the Bible, see Mulholland page 53-60.
Spiritual Formation
Lecture 13 Study Notes – November 25, 2008
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Discipline of Submission
1. Our discussion tonight is about something very important in the Christian life. I’ve always thought that the Apostle Paul left out one very important characteristic of the Christian life when he did not include humility in his trilogy faith, hope, and love in 1 Corinthians 13. The greatest bondage of the flesh that we all suffer from is hubris or pride. Richard Foster, in his book “Celebration of Discipline,” says that purpose of Spiritual Disciplines is freedom (page 110). That the aim of everything we do is freedom in Christ Jesus. Perhaps there is no greater sin to free from than the sin of hubris.
2. The freedom to lay down the terrible burden that we all have of wanting to get our own way. If the truth is known, most of what we got through in the church and in our own homes is a terrible lust to satisfy the incredible cravings of our pride or honor.
3. One’s honor is another word for the power and status of personal and national pride. Honor defined “is the general, abstract word for the worth, value, prestige, and reputation which an individual claims and which is acknowledge by others” (Honor and Shame: In the Gospel of Matthew, by Jerome H. Neyrey, page 15).
4. Pitt-Rivers says “Honor is value of a person in his own eyes, but also in the eyes of his society. It is the estimation of his own worth, his claim to pride, but it is also the acknowledgement of that claim, his excellence recognized by society, his right to pride” (Neyrey, page 15). Honor is the preservation and elevation of the capital “I” in the eyes of the individual and especially in the opinion of one’s peers.
5. How does one achieve honor? According to anthropologists there are two sources: One, ascribed honor which refers to the granting of respect to individual from family or state—kinship or politics.
6. The other source of honor is by achievement or merits. It refers to the reputation and fame an individual earns by his own efforts in civil recognition, military exploits, athletic games, physical beauty, intelligence, and wealth, etc.
7. The ancients believed that the “love of honor” was what separated mankind from the animals. Xenophon wrote: “In this man differs from other animals—I mean, in this craving for honor. In meat and drink and sleep and sex all creatures alike seem to take pleasure; but love of honor is rooted neither in the brute beasts nor in every human being. But they in whom is implanted a passion for honor and praise, these are they who differ most from the beasts of the field, these are accounted men and not mere human beings” (page 17, Neyrey).
8. Along with honor comes shame. The simplest definition of shame is to say that it is the reverse of honor, that is the loss of respect, regard, worth, and value in the eyes of others. According to Neyrey: “People feel shame when they suffer such things as contribute to dishonor and censures and shame is imagination about loss of reputation.”
9. I believe that the problem that Jesus ran into in the Gospels and tension that contributed greatly to His crucifixion was honor and shame. In fact, Neyrey says that every time Jesus appears in public people engaged Him in honor challenges. Challenges of two kinds: one, positive in which they put the recipient on the spot but were no way meant to be ugly, hostile, or demeaning just enquiring minds. Two, many were negative where someone deliberately seeks to humiliate, show up, and shame the person that is challenged. Jesus came making claims about God, God’s kingdom, Himself, and how all should relate to one another. In doing so, His claims and Himself became a lightening rod of honor challenges.
10. How do our claims about God and His Kingdom become a source of honor challenges to us? How do we respond? How do they respond? In what ways can that get us in trouble?
11. I believe this, most problems we incur as ministers in our local congregations are the twin issues of “honor and shame.” Whether or not someone is acting shameful or not, or whether someone is challenging our honor or not, nine times out of ten whether they walk away offended or not depends on honor and shame—not on the truth.
12. If you and I can develop a sense of trust between our people and ourselves that conveys our love for them and they for us then honor is less likely to be the issue. Because they know that we love them and don’t really want to hurt or shame them, if it is at all possible. I say “if all possible” because some attitudes and behaviors are shameful and have to be named as such. Truth is important but it is not the primary reasons that so many in our churches do not get along. Usually, it is an honor issue.
13. If the purpose of the Spiritual Disciplines is to free us from the things that keep us from being transformed into the image of Christ, and offer us a clearer path to that means, then the discipline of submission is the pathway if not the cure for pride. Because submission, mutual submission, is the way to lay down the terrible load of always having one’s own way.
14. As I’ve said, most of all fights and battles in churches occur because people do not have the wisdom and the freedom to give in to one another. I know that some will say that a part of the problem is that too many people do give in and the right people, who need to, don’t. Maybe they do, and maybe the problem is that the wrong people are the ones who always give in to the bullies, while the bullies never seem to back down.
15. But a healthy congregation realizes when they are standing on sacred principles, and when just battling because they don’t want to give in. Spiritual babies don’t have the wisdom or the freedom to realize the difference.
16. Only submission and corresponding spirit of Christ can free us from this demon to compete and win the battle of honor and pride.
17. The touchstone for the biblical understanding of submission is Jesus’ statement in Mark 8:34: “If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up the cross and follow me.” Biblical submission is based on the mark of practicing self-denial. The type of self-denial that Jesus practiced despite His defending His honor. Why did Jesus defend His honor when the Apostle Paul wrote that Jesus emptied Himself and humbled Himself to become a human being? See Philippians 2:5-11. Because the honor of Christ stands upon sacred principles in which the Kingdom of God and the fate of the salvation of the world undergirds. If you shame and dishonor Christ, then who He and what He says, and what He stands for falls.
18. Our honor (except we dishonor God) does not usually rest on such a lofty pedestal.
19. Self denial is not self-hatred and many people have twisted it to mean that. Self-denial is simply a way of coming to understand that we do not always have to have our own way. Our happiness is not dependent on always getting what we want, in or out of church. Our personal challenge in such cases is not to let issues in our church become issues in which our personal pride and honor are at stake.
20. In fact, self-denial, according to Jesus, is the only way we really can love ourselves. Matthew 10:39 states: “He who finds his life will lose it, and he who loses his life for my sake will find it.” Self-denial is the freedom to love. It is the freedom to give way to others. When we live outside of self-denial, we demand that things have to go our way.
21. Jesus’ teachings are radical because they turn everything upside down. Life is found by losing it. The first shall be last and the last shall be first. “If anyone would be first, he must be last, and the servant of all” (Mark 9:35). The cross itself is Jesus living out His teachings, whereby Paul reminds us in Philippians 2:8 that Jesus “humbled himself and become obedient unto death, even death on a cross.”
22. According to Foster and of course the Apostle Paul, Christ not only died a “cross-death,” but he lived a “cross-life.”
23. Jesus commanded that kind of life for us to live when He said in Mark 8:34 “If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.” What does taking up the cross mean to you?
24. The cross life is voluntary submission and death for the sake of freely accepted servant-hood. As ministers, we forget that God has called us to be servants, instead of bosses. I was once asked how does it feel to be the boss of a Baptist church? My response was and still is: “Are you kidding; I am not the boss of our church, instead I have 140 bosses, plus my divine boss who I am trying to serve.” That is the nature of servant-hood.
25. According to Foster (page 117), “Submission is an ethical theme that runs the gamut of the New Testament. It is the posture obligatory upon all Christians: men as well as women, fathers as well as children, masters as well as slaves. We are commanded to live a life of submission because Jesus lived a life of submission, not because we are in a particular place or station in life. Self-denial is a posture fitting for all those who follow the crucified Lord.”
26. Paul says this in Philippians 2:3-4, “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should not only look after your own interests, but also the interests of others.”
27. Perhaps the most interesting and controversial teachings of Paul when it comes to submission are found in Ephesians 5. Let’s look at that for a moment; the heading “Wives and Husbands” in most of our Bibles is at a terrible place to divide subject matter. You realize that verses and paragraphs are not in the original language. For example, when most people start reading about wives and husbands, or for that matter submission, that begins at verse 22. However, they should begin with verse 21 where Paul gives everyone at Ephesus the commandment to “Submit to one another out the reverence for Christ.” To me, everything that follows has to do with submission, if not mutual submission.
28. The command for women “to submit” is obviously very clear, especially to men who are tired of women bossing them at home and the work place. I am confident that many men in our churches have bosses who are women at home and at work, and they feel like they must draw the line at church.
29. However, what they don’t realize and often fail to think clearly through is the ramifications of Paul’s commandment to the men to love their wives like Christ loved the church. I believe what you love is exactly what you serve, and vice a versa. Furthermore, the very thing that you love the most is what you are going to submit yourself, your time, and your energy to. That’s the reason many wives who feel neglected because of the lack of time and presence with their husbands feel unloved. No time, no attention, no commitment, and no accountability leaves anyone feeling like they are not cared for. But how far does submission go? According to Foster, what he calls “revolutionary subordination commands us to live in submission to human authority until it becomes destructive.” Married couples until one is harming or destroying the other…. Divorce I believe can become the lesser of the two evils.