An Unpopular Word

When the Apostle James wrote, "Submit yourselves therefore to God..."  (James 4:7), he could not have imagined that he was using a word which would become so unpopular.  When was the last time anyone of us heard someone else speak of "submitting."  Of course, it is a common practice, but no one speaks of the action described by the verb.  We do it as we submit ourselves to the laws of the highway, as we work to accomplish the purpose of our employer, and as we live inside the marriage relationship.   

Submission requires a voluntary action of putting ourselves under the authority of another.  Making our will secondary to the will of another does not fit well inside our individualistic world view.  When the Scripture speaks of submitting ourselves to God, it has to do with voluntarily putting the whatever of the divine will ahead of our own personal desires for ourselves.    

It may be something that our religious tradition calls us to embrace and it may be something we regard ourselves as doing, but usually there is a wide gap between submitting ourselves to God and our insistence on being in charge of our life.  Whenever we find ourselves dealing with sin in our life, we find ourselves facing a situation where His will was not as important as our will.  Sin is about choosing not to submit our life to God in a particular set of circumstances and we will do anything to avoid seeing ourselves in that mirror.