“Adopt the same attitude as that of Christ Jesus, who, existing in the form of God, did not consider equality with God as something to be exploited. Instead he emptied himself by assuming the form of a servant, taking on the likeness of humanity. And when he had come as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death – even to death on a cross.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

In our increasingly pagan culture, one of the gods we worship most supremely is the god Autonomy. Autonomy seems like a wonderful god at first glance. There is a reason our culture has become so taken in by him. He assures us that we should be able to be and do whatever and whoever we want. Whatever whim we have should be fulfilled. Whatever identity we want to embrace should be recognized and even celebrated. Autonomy insists that he only wants for us to be in charge of ourselves. The only thing Autonomy really opposes is someone else’s telling us what to do. In the face of this new-old god and his demands on our life, one of the gifts the God of the Bible offers us and which we can celebrate at this time of year is the gift of submission to someone else, namely Him. This sounds like a rather strange gift. Let’s talk today about why it is so good.

Autonomy has long been one of the modern pagan gods that is uniquely Western, and especially American. Most human cultures throughout the rest of human history have been primarily communal in their basic operating framework. What that means is that the community was understood to be the most fundamental unit of any society. What was good for the community was best. Always. If your actions contributed to the good of the community (even if that community only consisted of your own family), then they were good and right to pursue. If, however, your actions were going to take away from the overall good of the community, then they were wrong no matter how much you wanted to do them or how good they were going to be for you individually. No one ever bothered to question, much less even spend much time thinking about their individual value because that didn’t matter. Your personal worth was a function of your worth to the overall community. In these kinds of cultures, something like autonomy didn’t make much sense.

Then people began moving west. They crossed the Atlantic and discovered a whole continent waiting to be explored. Of course, they weren’t the first ones here nor were they the first ones to explore it, but that’s a conversation for another time. For them it was all new. Yet the frontier spirit isn’t for everybody. And so, those early settlers had to learn to depend not primarily on a community, but on what they could do for themselves. Now, some of this is more legend than history as the image of one family setting off for the uncharted lands on the western half of America almost never happened, but the legend carried great power in our imaginations all the same. And, it was true that the early settlers had to learn to do many more things for themselves than they had had to know before.

Out of this gradually grew up this historically unique devotion to the individual as the foundational unit of society. This could have gone in some very negative directions very quickly but for the fact that the driving force for so many of the earliest European settlers on this continent as well as the philosophical baseline for all of our founding documents was profoundly religious in its orientation, and specifically Christian. The individual was understood to be primary, but that individual was understood in theological terms. The result is that our culture is uniquely individualistic and stubbornly religious as compared with the rest of the world.

This created a tension. What we want as individuals is not always what God wants for us as His children. This tension was managed fairly well for a long time as the religious roots of our culture loomed large. But in the last couple of generations, as those religious roots have weakened as our culture has turned more and more to an embrace of secularism (if a curiously religiously-tinged secularism), the tension has become more and more pronounced. The result is a contradictory blend of beliefs and actions where we profess to believe certain things, but don’t advocate for their being enshrined into law, and in fact advocate for the opposite to be legalized so as not to infringe on the choices of anyone else. That is, we are honoring Autonomy who says we can believe whatever we want as long as we don’t force those beliefs on anyone else.

The result has been a chaos that is slowly growing and spreading throughout our culture, wreaking havoc everywhere it is unleashed. The brokenness it causes is leaving lives a wreck and making us feel ever more isolated and lonely even as our population is rapidly increasing year-by-year. When we are the end of ourselves, the weight of the world that necessarily places on our shoulders grows heavy over time. And being a god – as Autonomy assures us we can be – is a lonely affair. There’s a reason the God of the Bible is triune in nature. He is a community unto Himself. And His inherently communal nature is an indicator that we who are made in His image are inherently communal in nature too. The more we lean into our worship of Autonomy, though, the less engaged in community we become. And the bitter fruits of that loss are coming to bear all over the place.

In the face of all of this is one of the strangest, but greatest gifts of Advent God gives. This is the gift of submission. When Jesus, God the Son, came, He came in submission to the will of God the Father. He voluntarily lowered Himself because of His great love of and trust in His Father, to sacrifice many of the trappings of divinity in order to take on all the limitations of humanity. What’s more, He did not take on the trappings of humanity in splendor as He rightly could have demanded for Himself. He entered this world as a helpless baby and grew as a child who was obedient and submissive to His parents. He lived a life of relative poverty and was consistently submissive before the governing authorities even when those authorities used their power to harass and mistreat Him. Then, He willingly submitted Himself to the gravest injustice of all time when He was falsely accused of a crime and put to death on a cross because of it. Jesus’ whole life on this earth was a demonstration of the glory and good of submission, of submitting ourselves to the will of the Father.

This, my friends, is a gift to us. It is a gift because it lets us know for sure that submitting to God’s will at the expense of our own will always go better than doing what we want. Worshiping the God who is sovereign over all of creation leads to life and joy and hope and peace and the chance to be a part of the greatest community that has or ever will exist. Worshiping Autonomy leaves us isolated and lonely and struggling under the weight of the world we have created for ourselves. Yes, we will be able to have whatever we want, but only if we can produce it. And our capacity to produce our will is far more limited than we would like it to be for most of us.

My offer and invitation to you as we draw near the end of this Advent season is to receive the gift of submission. Receive the gift of putting yourself in a humble posture before the God who is good. Follow the example of Jesus as Paul calls us here. This road will not be easy and will at times be excruciatingly difficult. But it will lead to life and glory beyond what you could have ever imagined. Submit yourself to the Lord and live.