Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.
Therefore also God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those who are in heaven, and on earth, and under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. So then, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure.
Do all things without grumbling or disputing; that you may prove yourselves to be blameless and innocent, children of God above reproach in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom you appear as lights in the world, holding fast the word of life, so that in the day of Christ I may have cause to glory because I did not run in vain nor toil in vain. But even if I am being poured out as a drink offering upon the sacrifice and service of your faith, I rejoice and share my joy with you all. And you too, I urge you, rejoice in the same way and share your joy with me. Philippians 2:5–18.
This is probably the most classic passage in the New Testament dealing with the humility of Christ. In His submission to the will of the Father, He did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, even though He was God. But He humbled Himself and came down to become obedient to the Father as a bond-servant, even ready to die the death on a cross. Therefore God highly exalted Him and decreed that every knee shall bow and every tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.
This is speaking of the whole process of submission. We have no greater example of submission anywhere than the submission of Jesus Christ to the Father, and the way He submitted to the will of the Father. He said, “I do always those things which please the Father” (John 8:29). Likewise we find the Father decreeing that everything shall be in submission to Christ. However, not everything is going to be submissive on the same level.
Every knee is going to bow, and every tongue is going to confess that Jesus is Lord. Probably the first and lowest level of submission is represented right there: every knee shall bow. The first and lowest level of submission is the submission in defeat; there is not a willingness in the person’s spirit, nor is it his intention to be submissive. He has fought against it. Just think—even the devil himself will bow to Jesus Christ. It is significant that in the resurrection even the most ungodly sinner will have to bow in submission to the Lord Jesus Christ. The first level of submission, therefore, is a submission on the level of defeat.
There is a second level, higher than that, which I would call a half-hearted submission. It is a submission to God which is reluctant, which tends to argue and is somewhat unwilling to submit. We have an illustration in the Scriptures of this half-hearted submission in the person of Jonah and how he was “persuaded” by the Lord. Do you remember how the “submarine” intercepted the ship that was sailing in the wrong direction? After this bit of divine persuasion, Jonah went to Nineveh to preach the word of judgment that God had given him to preach. But he did it very reluctantly; he did not intend to be submissive.
There are always those who find themselves in a position where they go along with something very half-heartedly and reluctantly; their hearts are not really in it. Jonah is certainly an example of that. He was reluctant right up to the end; the last chapter in the book of Jonah shows him sitting under a big gourd until a worm smote it and it withered. He was left sitting out in the sun, getting sunburned and wishing he were dead. He was very upset that God had not destroyed Nineveh, that Nineveh had repented and God had shown mercy to them. What a reluctant, unworthy man. Such half-hearted submission is on a second level.
The third level involves a submission to command. As far as we know, dedication is not necessarily involved; a person moving in this kind of submission could simply understand the letter of the word and be submissive to it. But a great deal can be said about that level. Look at the faith of the centurion who came to Jesus and said, “Lord, will You heal my servant?” (The margin reads “boy.” He was probably something beyond a servant. He could even have been an adopted son.) The man said, “He’s about to die, but don’t bother to come down. Just speak the word and my servant will live.” As a centurion in the Roman army, he understood authority; “I say to this man, ‘Go,’ and he goes, to another man ‘Come,’ and he comes, so You just speak the word; that’s all that is necessary.” And Jesus said unto him, “I have not found such great faith, not even in Israel” (Matthew 8:5–10).
He was pointing out that this man dared to believe implicitly in the authority of the word that Jesus spoke. He had a militaristic submission to Christ. But anyone who has ever been in a barracks full of G.I.’s knows that they may salute, snap to attention, and do everything they are told; yet you have never heard a bigger bunch of gripers in all your life. You see, on this level there is a submission to the command. It is a level of submission that may involve a lot of faith and a lot of obedience; but there are levels of submission that are even higher and better than that.
These first three levels can often be found in marriages. There is the lowest kind of submission a couple can give each other, one of pure defeat; a kind of half-hearted submission that is given reluctantly; and that submission which follows the letter of the command, simply doing what it has to do.
The fourth level is submission just to a request or a suggestion. It is not that the person feels a negative and/or a binding obligation, but rather that the submission is so complete in his life that he responds to the least suggestion or hint as though it were the law of his life. Do you remember David sighing in his tent when they were in battle in the field? It was a hot, bitter day, and he said, “Oh, that I could have a drink from the wells of Bethlehem.” Three of his mighty warriors heard the sighing of David in his tent for a drink of water. So great was their allegiance and submission to David that they fought their way through all the ranks of the Philistines, came back, and presented him with the water (II Samuel 23:15, 16). They heard a mere suggestion and were submissive to it. It was something beyond the call of duty; it was something in their hearts. This level is something that prepares you to be like little Samuel in the flickering lights of the tabernacle so many ages ago. When he heard the voice speaking, he said, “Speak, Lord, for Thy servant heareth” (I Samuel 3:10).
“Give me the suggestion. Let me hear the whispers of Your heart. Let me learn, O Master, what You really want me to do, and I’ll be quick to do what You say.”
The fifth of these seven levels is still a little higher than that. I would describe it as a submission that has an eager anticipation in it. It is a little more than just a desire to serve; it is the cry of the beautiful woman of the Song of Solomon, as she sings to her beloved, “Draw me and I will run after thee.” It is an eager anticipation that just excels anything else. It is the kind of submission that sees the need or anticipates the position of service and takes it humbly and gratefully before the Lord.
Do you remember the story of Ruth? Customs have changed a great deal, but in the old days, before modern mechanization, the threshing of grain was a very laborious process. As they were threshing the first grain of the harvest, a young widow, who was a near kinsman to Boaz, came to the threshing floor. After they had been dancing and singing, she came, and lifting the robe that covered Boaz, she lay at his feet (Ruth 3:7). I suppose the modern mind would place a rather suggestive or obscene emphasis on that, but it was not so. It was a gesture of a serving girl: “I am here, ready to serve you. I’m ready to be a foot warmer. Whatever you desire me to do, tell me. I will run any errand. I will do anything. I am placing myself completely at your service.”
That eager anticipation to serve is a level of submission that I think must be found mutually in a young couple who is getting married. It is not a concern with what is required of them as a husband or a wife. It is not saying, “I insist that you fulfill your obligations to me.” But it is that loving attitude spoken of in Ephesians 5 where Paul writes that husbands ought to love their wives as Christ loved the Church and gave Himself for it. He encourages wives to love their husbands with the same kind of love, even as the Church loves Jesus Christ and is submissive to Him. Whenever love can take on that particular phase and quality of eager anticipation to serve, it almost seems to border on worship; yet it never does become idolatrous because it is a deep and beautiful form of love.
The sixth level, though not the highest, is the level that most of us should aspire to. It is the silent support and ministry in submission. It is exemplified in David. In his submission to God, there were times when he did not know what to do, but his submission had a quality about it that could wait; it was a silent waiting and supporting ministry. David says, “My soul waiteth on the Lord.” David prophesied more of the events that transpired in the life of our Lord Jesus Christ and more of His sayings than all the other prophets combined. Where did this great amount of Messianic prophecies come from? Did David realize what he was doing? I am persuaded that he did not. In singing a psalm like the twenty-third Psalm or the second Psalm, because the Spirit was upon him, he prophesied things that I am sure he had no clear revelation about.
Once David went out to battle and he did not know what to do. The Word says that David inquired of the Lord, “What is the sign? What are we supposed to do next?” And the word came from the Lord, “Wait until you hear the sound of the wind blowing in the tops of the mulberry trees and then go out against the Philistines” (II Samuel 5:24).
He was very obedient, but he did not have too much revelation. His limited revelation caused him to always inquire of the Lord. But he had something that men of greater revelation never had; he had a heart that was fixed, and he would cry, “My heart is fixed, O God; my heart is fixed on Thee.” He had an eagerness to be submissive and to wait before God. Though he did not know what to do, he was ready to do anything he could. It was that loving support and ministry that gave everything it could.
The alabaster-box memorial in the life of Jesus also illustrates this sixth level. A woman came with an alabaster box of precious ointment worth a fortune, representing the savings of a lifetime. She broke it and anointed the Lord Jesus Christ. The disciples were indignant. They said, “Think of how much this could have been sold for.” But He said, “Let her alone. She is come to anoint My body ahead of time against the day of burial. What she has done is going to be spoken of as a memorial for her in all the world, wherever the gospel is preached” (Matthew 26:6–13). In a few days He was to die. He probably carried that precious scent on His body when they were spitting upon Him and beating Him, and when He carried the cross up the hill to die on it.
What a tremendous thing! She had the submission that comes out of a loving devotion. That kind of devotion could exist, at least in a measure, between a husband and wife. It is not a bondage or a coercion. It is just a set, fixed love that serves and is submissive. We should not get the idea that this love is weak and vacillating. It is not. We tend to think that there is something of weakness between a husband and wife who really love each other. Oh no, there is a great deal of strength—a kind of strength that waits before the Lord and says, “I don’t know what’s going to happen, but I know this is the one whom God gave me. I’m not looking upon her as a ball and chain, but as God’s gift to me, and we’ll walk together.” With a set and a fixed purpose, with the integrity of love, it assumes the attitude with which a person says, “I do not decide on this every day; it is decided once and for all: I love this one. It is for better or for worse. I don’t know what will happen or what the fortunes will bring, but I know one thing: this is the one I’m going to love.”
I think this is the kind of love that the three Hebrew children had when they were told, “When you hear the sound of the music, boys, you fall down and you worship that image.” These three Jewish boys stood up there, looked at those big potentates of Babylon, and said, “We don’t know whether our God is going to deliver us or not, but one thing we do know: we’re not bowing down to that idol” (Daniel 3:17, 18). This is a beautiful level of submission.
Of course, the highest level of submission of all is found within our Lord. In the garden, sweating blood and facing the cross, Jesus said, “Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from Me; nevertheless, not My will, but Thine be done” (Matthew 26:39). This is a submission that does not say, “I will do this thing if it seems reasonable to me. I will filter it through the great big ‘I’ that sits on the throne of my life. And if I decide that it’s right, I will be submissive to it.” That is no submission at all.
We desire to come to the place where we humbly say, “Lord, only this I would determine: What is Your will? What is Your purpose?” This is the level we all aspire to—to be able to say yes to the will of God like that, to be able to really do the will of God in the earth. In this day, it seems as if everyone is motivated by ambition and greed, fears of many kinds, insecurities, and uncertainties. These motivations drive them to everything except the kind of submission which involves a total commitment—the total commitment that Paul had: “I’m ready to be offered up, ready to die”; the kind that Isaiah had when he said, “Here am I, send me. What do You want? How long will I prophesy?” God said, “Until the land is without inhabitants and the cities are forsaken” (Isaiah 6:8, 11). “Lord if that’s what You want, that’s what I’ll do. I’ll do whatever You want me to do.” It is a complete submission to the will of God.
This message on the seven levels of submission can be applied to every heart. Do you find yourself trying to measure where you stand? Are you still struggling with that first level, just pure defeat? Do you only bow the knee when a ball bat hits you in the head hard enough? Let us all try to work up to the highest level possible and become completely submissive to everything the Lord has for us.