BitterSweetLife

Christ’s life may have looked servile to some: an ultimately fruitless attempt to avoid offending the local authorities. Certain revolutionaries would say his life displayed a girlish distaste for violence. That he died because he couldn't bring himself to kill.

Such explanations overlook the obvious.

Jesus had nerves of steel and his words reflect it. He tolerated no challenges to his chosen course of action. By way of warning off interferers, he constantly emphasized the fact that his actions hung on the word of his Father.

Because Jesus was so obedient, no one could push him around.

Christ never did anything "merely" because someone wanted him to. His acquiescence to local authorities was a suspension of force in lieu of a higher reality. When the schemes of the establishment fit nicely into the Master plan, Jesus went along. When the blood streamed from his body, it was not coerced. As Christ said, “No one takes my life from me. I lay it down of my own volition…”

He was a train en route, unfailingly on time. Sometimes the tracks ran parallel to human institutions, sometimes they ran through them. But whether Christ was obeying Caesar or demolishing the Pharisees, he was, without exception, submissive.

Christ’s obedience, magnetized to his Father, turned out to be the irresistible force. When his submission encountered the religious leaders’ accusations, it was they who turned tail and ran.

Paul, the first-century theologian, writes of this same phenomenon when he states, regarding a group of religious hypocrites, “I did not submit to them for one instant.” In his defiance, Paul was unerringly obedient.

This submission is more profound and simple than any so-called pacifism or “humility” that we can impose on ourselves. Complete deference seems awful to us because we’ve placed it in the wrong context: Capitulation to man’s whims is slavery. Conformity with God’s plans is an uninhibited dance, resulting in a revolutionary life like Christ’s. To submit, ultimately, is to defy whomever you must.

So then, submission is for the very strong, not for pansies.


For an earlier post on freedom as it relates to submission, read this.