Submit = Obey?

Submitting is more of a frame of heart and mind. An attitude, as it were.

Obeying can be from fear of authority.

Our children obey because they know we mean business but to submit, obey when we aren't looking....

 

Submission is the reason for obedience. When you have arranged yourself under the authority of another, you will and ought to obey that authority.

Andy

 

Entry: submit
Function: verb
Definition: comply
Synonyms: abide, accede, acknowledge, acquiesce, agree, appease, be submissive, bend, bow, buckle, capitulate, cave, cede, concede, cry uncle, defer, eat crow, eat dirt, endure, fold, give away, give ground, give in, give way, humor, indulge, knuckle, knuckle under, kowtow, obey, quit, relent, relinquish, resign oneself, say uncle, stoop, succumb, surrender, tolerate, truckle, withstand, yield
Source: Roget's New Millennium™ Thesaurus, First Edition (v 1.0.5)
Copyright © 2004 by Lexico Publishing Group, LLC. All rights reserved.

 

There is the condition of submission "As to the Lord."

 

Exactly. Unfortunately, to many that means "when it's convenient" or "if it conforms to my own opinion."

 

"As to the Lord", means He comes first. That may mean you stand against wrongs, standing with God alone.

Submission to a man is to be always "as to the Lord." "As to the Lord' does not give license for a man to do whatever he wants. His allegiance is ultimately to God not man. My first allegiance is never to man but to God. He is my judge and comfort.

I think the issue of submission has often been distorted to the point where it is a milquetoast idea rather than boldness and strength standing before God. Only a weak whimpy man would want a wife who rolls over and plays dead like a door mat.

Biblical submission is honoring the person in authority, but it draws the line at what is clearly wrong. Biblical submission means I honor each person in authority but it does not mean I do not take a stance against wrongdoing.

Biblical submission refuses to do wrongs. We are never obligated by God to roll over and play dead and honor an authority which clearly violates scripture. Anytime a man asks his wife to violate scripture then he is asking her to be a partner in sin. She must resist, that is biblical submission "as to the Lord."

 

gb93433

So well put. I obey God because he loved me. It would be an awful thing to submit out of fear. It may cause me to submit to a number of sins. I submit as an expression of the love shown me, it extends the grace I received. People who dictate are afraid. Perfect love casts out all fear. It occured to me why fear and worry are sin. It is not of faith.

 

What "submit" means in english is not a person's first concern when it comes to scripture. The first concern is what the original language and context meant. If we fail to do this, we end u[p adding to scripture, which is something we're forbidden from doing.

In the case of the word "submit", the Greek word is hupotasso a passive ternse word (as opposed to an active tense) which differs from “subjugation” (which is what the english word "submit" implies). The context is also generally one in regards to the headship role. The tense of the word also implies volunteerism. That is, the subject of hupotasso is not to be compelled to do so by the person in the headship role.

The idea that sunmit = obay is not scripturally supporable, because that would require the husband's headhip to be arbitrarily authoritative, which is not a scriptural requisite of headship. It has been said in a previous post that there is the condition of submission which is "As to the Lord." That is absolutely correct. Both headship and submission are specific to certain spiritual conditionals.

Keep in mind that there are three caveats in order to have a Biblical understanding of submission:

1 - Submission does not imply inferiority (Gal3:28)
2 - Submission is not absolute and there may be times when a wife must refuse to submit to her husband’s desires because they violate God’s Word.
3 - The husband's headship is not to be exercised in an authoritative, overbearing manner, but in the context of a loving relationship (1Pet 3:1).

 

Just because obey is a synonym, that does not mean every time you see the word "submit" it is the same as obey. You can do this all day long with other words and you run into the same problem. There's a reason for having different words -- they don't all mean the same in all cases. If that were the case, then everytime someone said "submit," we could replace it with any of the synonyms listed above, such as "eat crow," "eat dirt," or "buckle."

Listing these synonyms does not help your argument.

 

Doesn't matter, Marcia, since "obey" is NOT a synonym of the Greek word that is translated "submit". By replacing the word "submit" with "obey", one ends up adding to scripture.

 

(John bows low, doffing his hat.)

Agreed. On that point, if a husband "commands" his wife to do something, he is sinning by abusing the headship role. Hence, the wife is not required to comply, since that would make her an accessory to his sin. It's not a sin for her to be in noncompliance, since compliance here is not a requisite of the sole of wifely sumbission.

Agreed. However, don't forget that the roles between government and citizen is not the same as between husband and wife. A husband and wife are one flesh, and are in a covenant. This is not the same as a government-citizen role. Hence, the rights, rules, and limitations are not the same. For example, the government generally guarantees us the right to sin if we so choose, so long as it does not affect another person. In a marital relationship, spouses don't have the right to sin.

 

Timtoolman, you have yet to prove that a wife is to obey the husband as a child obeys the parent. This is not the way it is in scripture.

You also seem to assume that the way the gov't has authority over you is the way you have authority over your wife. The Bible does not say that. The gov't can make a law for its citizens but nowhere in the NT is the husband given the right to make laws for his wife.

You are trying to make one-on-one correlations with
Gov't and citizens
Parents and children
Husband and wife

These are different relationships.

 

So somehow you have come to the conclusion that there is a difference between submit and obey, because the bible was originally written in Greek? That is amazing. If the greek word means submit, then it means obey, because submit does mean obey. If God doesn't mean submit then you should figure out what He does mean and write a new bible. You can't accuse me of adding to the bible because I require my wife to obey me.

Was Christ 'abusing his headship' when he commanded us not to sin? If submitting to the Lord means anything other than obeying His commands, I would like to see that from scripture, not just vain emotional arguments about how you think you can submit to the Lord without obeying His commands. If a wife is to submit to her husband 'as unto the Lord' then she needs to obey him. If she won't obey her husband, she won't obey and isn't obeying the Lord either.