Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body, just as Christ does the church— for we are members of his body.

My wife, Mary, and I had the best wedding. I might be biased, but I think that’s a pretty objective statement. We had been to a lot of weddings where the couple felt pressured to do things a certain way. But we took all the things that we didn’t like about weddings and just didn’t do them. No strict guest list; we invited way more people than we intended. No classical wedding music; we walked out of the ceremony to Drake. No long, drawn-out reception; the entire night lasted for only 2 hours from the ceremony to the send-off.

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The one traditional aspect we did keep was a formal ceremony. One of our pastors officiated, and he had been a huge part of both of our lives. But one of the most memorable parts of our wedding for me was when he read from Ephesians Chapter 5.

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As he talked about mine and Mary’s new life on which we were embarking, he spoke to each of us specifically. He told Mary what God had for her in marriage and what Ephesians 5 says about wives submitting to husbands. Then, he looked at me and said, “Your role as a husband is to be a man worth submitting to.”

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That short sentence made me stop in my tracks. I still think about it at least once a week. I knew marriage would bring a different kind of responsibility into my life, but that made it all so clear. And he didn’t know it, but that pastor also unlocked something in my mind about what it looks like for me to follow Jesus. For me to be a man worth submitting to, I first had to be a man that was submitting to Jesus.

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We’ve been sold the lie that we should be in control of our lives. But what if the key to seeing more of Jesus in our lives is giving up control?

Most of us probably have an aversion to the word “submit.” We can tend to think of it like a wrestling match: submitting means you lost a fight because you chose to quit. I can’t think of anyone that wants to experience that day after day. But that is an inaccurate idea of what submission really is, especially when it’s talked about in the Bible. Submitting doesn’t mean we let someone else take something from us; it means we willingly give up something to someone because we trust them.

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I think one of the biggest barriers to embracing the word “submit” is because that’s the opposite of control. What’s interesting, though, is that we were never in control in the first place. The reality is, we are either unwittingly controlled by something or we are willingly submitting to something else.

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We are either being unwittingly controlled by our own aspirations, or we are willingly submitting to Jesus for a greater purpose. We are either being unwittingly controlled by our finances, or we are willingly submitting what we have to Jesus. We are either being unwittingly controlled by a desire to be accepted, or we are willingly submitting in obedience to Jesus no matter what the cost is to us.

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Paul illustrates this kind of submission as he explains what a God-honoring marriage should look like. For the wife, he writes that submitting is a form of respect toward her husband, and, for the husband, submitting is a form of responsibility to care for his wife. But for both, submitting is choosing to not be unwittingly controlled by selfish desires, but to willingly submit for the good of one another.

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Jesus was the perfect example of giving up control for the sake of God’s call. Philippians 2:8 says, “He didn’t claim special privileges. Instead, he lived a selfless, obedient life and then died a selfless, obedient death—and the worst kind of death at that—a crucifixion” (MSG). This was the most unfair death in history–Jesus was completely innocent and sinless, yet he chose to give up his life for the sake of being obedient to God’s purpose. He chose to willingly submit all of himself to God rather than gain anything for himself.

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The greatest life we could live is a life that reflects Jesus, and Jesus chose a life of submitting to the Father. And if submission is good enough for Jesus, then it’s good enough for us, too.

God, we thank you that you are a Father worth submitting to. We pray for your forgiveness for the ways we’ve tried to hold onto control of our lives. We recognize that we never have as much control as we think, and you have more control than we sometimes realize. We want to give up the things we hold on to and trust that you are working, even if we don’t see it right now. You are a perfect, loving God, and you want what’s best for us–bringing us closer to you. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.