Dear Brothers and Sisters,

You are invited to come to the Wednesday evening prayer meeting and pray for the church (and other things -- 7:00 PM Wed., LHF time).

Before I talk about this weeks passage (which is one verse, Eph. 5:21), I want to remind everyone, as I have promised before, that through faith in Jesus Christ who gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God, we are God's beloved children and his holy people. (I want to remind myself of these things also.) As God's beloved children and his holy people, he wants us to imitate him and live a life of love, just as Jesus did. (Eph. 5:1,2) God is our Father. He is perfect in every way. He is a perfect Father and is raising us to be like him -- to be his perfect children. (However, as the bumper sticker says, he's not finished with us yet. So, be patient.)

One of the ways God uses to raise us up toward perfection is through his word. Eph. 5:25 and 26 say, "Husbands love your wives as Christ loved the Church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the WASHING WITH WATER THROUGH THE WORD." God is sanctifying the Church -- us -- through his word. When we, as God's children, read the word of God or hear it spoken, we get a bath. The word is the water and we are bathed in it by the Holy Spirit. We finally will be completely cleansed and sanctified. This definitely will happen because God, who has all wisdom and power, is committed to making it happen. He knows how to do it.

Now for this weeks text, Ephesians 5:21. Here it is in three versions (the last one is my literal translation):

"Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ." (NIV)

"...and be subject to one another in the fear of Christ." (NASB)

"...submitting to one another in fear of Christ." (DSv - me)

The reason I've given three versions of this verse is that it's a little difficult to figure out how it's connected, grammatically, with what comes before it and what comes after it. As I've indicated in my translation, "...submitting to one another in fear of Christ," and by the NASB translation, this verse is not a complete sentence. It has to be part of either the sentence that comes before it or the sentence that comes after it. The sentence that comes after is verse 22 which says, "Wives submit to your husbands as to the Lord." However, in the opinion of the editors of the "Greek New Testament" (from which a lot of the modern translations have been made), the original sentence, as the apostle Paul wrote it, didn't have a verb. It actually said, "The wives to their own husbands as to the Lord." Without verse 21, "...submitting to one another in fear of Christ," wives wouldn't know what they were supposed to do to their own husbands "as to the Lord." So verse 21 and 22 definitely have to be closely connected in their meaning. (Verses 21 and 22 together would read, "...submitting to one another in reverence to Christ, wives to their own husbands as to the Lord")

Now, also, verse 21 needs to be connected to verses 19 and 20 to form a complete sentence. So it would tell us to, speak to one another with psalms, hymns and spiritual songs, to sing and make music in our hearts to the Lord and to always give thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, submitting to one another in fear of Christ." The NIV translators made verse 21 a separate paragraph and even started a new section with a section heading for verse 22 onward. But I believe from the way Paul originally wrote these verses (20, 21 and 22), that he meant them to be very closely connected together, flowing from one to the next to the next.

So, we are told by Paul to be filled with the Holy Spirit (v 18), to speak to each other in psalms, hymns and spiritual song, to sing and make music in our hearts to the Lord, and to always give thanks to God in the name of Jesus all the while submitting to one another in fear of Christ. From verse 22 on, Paul talks about specific examples.

But what does it mean to submit? The original word Paul used, in the active voice means to subjugate, that is, to cause to submit. In the passive voice it means to be subject to or to submit to. It's a pretty strong word. It's used around 38 times in the New Testament. Here are a couple of examples: Eph. 1:22 says, "And God placed all things under his (Jesus's) feet and appointed him head over everything for the church." Literally, it says that he SUBJUGATED all things under Jesus's feet.

The word Paul used in Eph. 5:21 (today's text) and in Eph. 1:22 he also used repeatedly in the passage in 1 Cor. 15 where talks about Jesus reigning until all his enemies are under his feet. Literally, 1 Cor. 15:27 says, "He has SUBJUGATED everything under his feet." Also, 1 Cor. 15:28 tells us that, "the Son (Jesus) will be in SUBMISSION to the one who SUBJUGATED everything to him so that God may be all in all."

So we are told by Paul to be filled with the Holy Spirit with the result that we will sing God's praises in our hearts and out loud to each other, all the time giving thanks to God in the name of Jesus and submitting to one another in fear of (or out of reverence for) Christ. This is God's will for his Church.

Well, fallen man doesn't willingly submit to anything, let alone to his friends and the people around him that have no humanly-enforced authority over him. Fallen man is very independent and doesn't let anyone tell him what to do, unless it is enforced by human power -- that is, by muscle or guns or by threats of some bad consequence if he doesn't submit. Fallen man decides for himself what he will do and what he won't do. He makes all his own decisions. But we are not "fallen man." We are God's holy people. We don't need to think that we have to be independent and make our own decisions. We can trust each other and submit ourselves to one another because we trust God who says that we should submit to one another, and who is our Father, who has all wisdom and who loves us as his children and sent Jesus to save us from our sin by his blood which he shed on the cross.

If, after all this, you still feel "independent", remember that we are all part of one body with Christ the head. We are not remotely independent from him. And we are not independent of each other. If you have doubts, believe that God's Spirit, through the word of God, has power to cleanse us completely and fully sanctify us -- to remove doubt. Come and let's pray to be filled with the Holy Spirit, to sing psalms in our hearts and to each other -- with thanksgiving -- and to submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.

Come on Wednesday and pray for the Church. The Church is the overflowing abundance, the wealth beyond measure and the full and perfect nature of God who fulfills and completes everything in every way.

Grace and peace,
Dean Svoboda

PS: You can also bring you own prayer requests and pray for them with your brothers and sisters in Christ (i.e., with the Church). Bring your requests to God with thanksgiving and receive his peace.

PPS: Pass this invitation along to others in your household or to someone who doesn't have an e-mail address in the LHF directory