Submission and Love

Everyone in the church is supposed to submit to one another.

In the church, leaders are servants. The reason for our mutual submission in the church is because Jesus, our King, came to serve us. Therefore, no one in the church is exempt from the call to service – the call to submission.

H. L. Mencken once said that an “archbishop” was an ecclesiastic who had attained a position higher than that of Christ. But anyone who refuses to submit to one another is in fact claiming a position higher than that of Christ!

Because Christ himself learned obedience through what he suffered.

Indeed, the PCA has considered this point so important that it has made it into our membership vows that all of us have taken before God: “Do you submit yourselves to the government and discipline of the Church, and promise to study its purity and peace?”

And we have included it as well in our ordination vows for officers: “Do you promise subjection to your brethren in the Lord?”

So no one is exempt from the call to submit to one another in the fear of Christ.

And this is especially true in the relationship between the sexes.