One of these days I was praying and asking the Lord for answers and guidance. Apparently, God’s not worried about the same things I sometimes am! Instead of responding to the issues that I felt were so pressing, the Lord said “Go to the park and do a video teaching. You haven’t made a YouTube video for a while.” So I did! I felt that I needed to share about submission in the fear of the Lord.

Godly submission in the fear of the Lord, not the fear of man.

Ephesians 5:21 (NKJV) Submitting to one another in the fear of God.
1 Peter 5:5  (NKJV) Likewise you younger people, submit yourselves to your elders. Yes, all of you be submissive to one another, and be clothed with humility, for “God resists the proud, But gives grace to the humble.”

Many today are teaching submission in the fear of men instead of submission in the fear of the Lord. Let’s make the difference clear to help the church stop continuing in the same destructive cycles. Scripture says all of us are to submit to each other in the fear of the Lord, and then that those who are younger should submit to their elders. Many people wrongly assume that submission implies a hierarchy of authority between the individual believer and God, but that is an error. The command for all of us to submit to each other shows that submission doesn’t always imply hierarchy. There was no place for a spiritual hierarchy between the individual Christian and God in Jesus’ teaching. He forbade it.

Matthew 23:8-12 (NIV) “But you are not to be called ‘Rabbi,’ for you have one Teacher, and you are all brothers. And do not call anyone on earth ‘father,’ for you have one Father, and he is in heaven. Nor are you to be called instructors, for you have one Instructor, the Messiah. The greatest among you will be your servant. For those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.

Authority in the church isn’t derived from position in a hierarchy but is derived from service and humility in submission to Christ. It only goes so far as that elder is submitted to Christ! It is Christ’s authority, not the authority of one person in the church over another.

The Bible says to submit to elders, but that’s not based on hierarchy. Rather, the elders are supposed to be those with more experience who we recognize as walking closely with the Lord and submitting to the Lord. Submission to them is not unquestioning obedience, but it is recognizing their example of following Jesus. If they’re living in rebellion against the Lord, they shouldn’t be our leaders! Many leaders are living in rebellion against the Lord. If that is the case, we need to have the fear of the Lord and not the fear of man.

Authority from God or from men?

Some are placed in a position by men, yet they lack spiritual authority because they are not submitted to Jesus. There are often also those who function as elders in the church, yet the institution does not recognize their eldership because “pastoring” has become more about a position in a hierarchy than about what the person is actually doing! Think about it! How many people call someone “My pastor” who they rarely even talk to!

Many people think that hierarchical submission is what’s going to protect the church from error. They say you have to have someone above you who you’re submitted to. But the history of the church shows that hierarchical submission in the fear of man is what actually leads whole groups into error and heresy. When the leader is in error, nobody wants to question anything. There have been many situations when the pastor was in adultery and people hid what was happening. I’ve seen pastors teaching blatant heresy and nobody dares to say “This isn’t what I read in the Bible!” Most of the church keeps following them. Why? They care more about what the pastor and other people think than what the Lord thinks. They are submitting in the fear of men, not the fear of the Lord.

Proverbs 29:25 (NKJV) The fear of man brings a snare.

So many Christians forget that the Bible says we must obey God rather than men. We can’t go astray just because leaders are going astray! We have to have the fear of the Lord! When you submit to leaders, it should be because they’re submitting to Jesus Christ. When you listen to what elders are saying, it should be because they’re saying what Jesus is saying and what the Bible is saying!

Submission in the fear of man leads the whole church into error.

A young man told me about a guy walking in supernatural power who became demonized and fell into error. I’m pretty sure he was referring to Jason Westerfield, who began teaching heresy and didn’t submit when Bill Johnson corrected him. The young guy used what happened with Jason as an argument that we must submit to someone in a hierarchy above us as our “head” to protect us from error. This young man doesn’t understand that there is only one body of Christ, and only one head, and the head is Christ. Scripture is clear about this, yet much of the religious church today talks as if there were many bodies and many heads. The body of Christ is not a many-headed monster. Every individual believer is directly under the authority of Christ.

Submission in a hierarchy in the fear of man doesn’t protect people from error. On the contrary, we can give many examples of a leader going into error and the whole church went into error by “submitting” to their leader. This is typical when submission in the fear of man is taught. The whole church imitates the error of the leader! But the fear of the Lord keeps us out of Satan’s snares.

If the church were teaching submission in the fear of the Lord, many other people would have corrected Jason Westerfield before Bill Johnson even talked to him. Maybe some did. I don’t know, but I know that the tendency is that people ignore error because they think they are “below” the man in error so they have to put up with his error, and only someone “above” him like Bill Johnson can correct him, or “Let God deal with it.” So we have a system based on the fear of man, which is a snare.

The fear of the Lord is wisdom (Job 28:28) and a fountain of life by which we avoid the snares of death. (Proverbs 14:27) Don’t be a man-pleaser, but seek to please Him who is the Judge of the living and the dead. For some, that has meant having to walk alone and being outside the religious camp!

Submission in the fear of man was the reason Mike Bickle acted as a sexual predator for decades and people hid his sin. It is the reason a pastor can make a blatantly heretical statement and most of the church keeps following him. Submission in the fear of man makes it taboo to ask questions. This doesn’t protect the church from error. It leads the church into error.

When leaders are not submitted to God, do you obey them or obey God?

There are whole Christian movements and people groups coming to know Christ now because a Christian disobeyed their pastor to preach the gospel. YWAM wouldn’t exist if Loren Cunningham hadn’t obeyed God’s voice even when his leaders weren’t with him. People have received miracles when I disobeyed a religious leader who thought I needed his permission to obey Jesus!

Jesus disobeyed the religious leaders of his time. The apostles disobeyed the religious leaders of their time. It was about a position for those leaders, but their authority was devised from a place in a hierarchy and not from their own submission to the Lord. They were rebellious. The religious leaders of that day said “Stop preaching in the name of Jesus!” and they responded “How can we stop talking about what we have seen and heard!”

Jesus is our example of submission. He became like us in every way. He submitted to his parents, submitted to God the Father, and submitted to baptism by John the Baptist. But Jesus didn’t submit in the fear of man. He submitted in the fear of the Lord. Jesus frequently disobeyed the religious leaders of his day, because what they were saying was against what the Father was saying.

When the church does not repent of submission in the fear of man, it ends up in apostasy. And there’s a danger of many churches today ending in apostasy because they’re following men and not God. They are following those men even when they rebel against God and rebel against God’s Word. They are turning away from the truth because they’ve been taught submission in the fear of man.

Titus 1:5 The reason I left you in Crete was that you might put in order what was left unfinished and appoint elders in every town, as I directed you.

Yes, we do recognize and “appoint elders.” But if we read the whole passage, Paul shares qualifications for those elders as ones who hold fast to Christ’s message and are examples for the church. Yet some churches don’t appoint elders who have those qualifications. They appoint people who want to be first, who gain influence by flattery and manipulation.

You don’t need to be recognized in some position to have spiritual authority. What you need is to submit to the Lord and say what the Lord is saying! Ananias was a man who the Bible simply describes as a “disciple,” not a leader or elder, but the Lord sent him to ordain Saul. Ananias didn’t need a position in a hierarchy to walk in divine authority by obeying God. And Paul later said he was sent not from man or by man, but by God.

We often have situations like that of Saul and David. The Lord was no longer with Saul, but a large part of the nation followed him as king because of his position. Saul was recognized by men but was not walking in God’s authority. God appointed David as king, but for a long time he was not recognized by men. Yet there were a few who recognized the spiritual authority that comes from submission to God and joined with David. It started with a few, but in time that number grew.

What is important to you? Is it a position in a manmade hierarchy, or it is how that person is actually functioning in the church? Is it a person’s title, or an example that you want to imitate? Is it man’s approval, or God’s? Who do you recognize as elders in the faith? Do you call someone “my pastor” just because you’ve heard it’s important to be “under authority,” even if you barely even talk to that person and they aren’t really functioning as a pastor in your life? Or do you recognize elders because you know they have a faith that you want to imitate? Did you ever obey someone in the church just because of a position even when they were not submitted to God? Or do you submit to elders because you recognize their submission to Jesus and the Spirit of Christ speaking through them? Have you ever had to disobey man in order to obey God? Have you ever wanted to ask an obvious question when someone used a scripture verse totally out of context, but failed to do so because it would be seen as “rebellious?” It’s so sad that quoting the second part of a Bible verse would so often been seen as “rebellious!” Break free from the fear of man and walk in the fear of the Lord!