SUBMIT

Before Anyone Tells You to Submit Again, Let Me Speak to You First

Perhaps you heard the word “submit” from a pulpit, across a kitchen table, or in a quiet conversation that left you feeling smaller than when it began. Perhaps you were told that silence was holiness, that honest questions were rebellion, or that staying somewhere that was hurting you was simply what God required. If any of that sounds familiar, I wrote this book with you in mind.

The word behind our English “submit” is the Greek ὑποτάσσω (hupotassō, “to arrange under”). It is far stronger, gentler and more beautiful than the way it has so often been used. In these pages I trace hupotassō (“to arrange under”) through every place it appears in the New Testament. I let each passage speak in its own setting and draw on the Greek text, the ancient papyri and the grammar the apostles chose with such care. What we find together is a free and willing choice, the kind Jesus Himself made when He submitted to His Father while remaining fully God. It is a choice made from strength, and the Bible never asks for it from fear.

You will see why hupotassō (“to arrange under”) and hupakouō (“to obey”) were never meant to be confused, and how confusing them has treated wives as children and church members as subordinates. You will hear what Paul, Peter and James actually said to husbands and wives, to citizens, to workers and to whole congregations. Above all, you will discover that no passage of Scripture asks anyone to accept abuse, enforced silence or blind obedience in the name of submission.

So I am asking you to do something today. Let one misread word stop defining your marriage, your church life or your sense of worth before God. Take this book home, read it slowly with your Bible open beside it, and let the text speak for itself. Then think of the one person you know who is still carrying the weight of this word, perhaps in silence, and put a copy into their hands as well.

Someone near you needs to hear that God never called them to be crushed. Let them hear it from you, and let it start here.

With every blessing,

Promise Ave