Kingdom Ready Blog

I was listening to Christian Radio the other day, to a broadcast by “Revive Our Hearts” by Nancy Leigh DeMoss, entitled, “What Submission Does and Does Not Mean.” I am posting an excerpt out of her transcript below, and do so, because I found it absolutely incredible what she had to say about Jesus’ submission to His Heavenly Father and God.

“The submission of Christ to His Father, that is a fascinating thing to study in the Scripture. It’s a humbling thing to study. Because Christ is co-equal, co-eternal with God, in no sense inferior to God the Father. They are one. But Jesus says, and it’s written in Psalm 40, “Behold, I have come; in the scroll of the book it is written of me: I delight to do your will, O my God; your law is within my heart.” Jesus said He came to earth to do the will of His heavenly Father, to submit Himself to His heavenly Father voluntarily, not under coercion. John 6:38, Jesus said, “I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of Him who sent me.”

The submission of Christ. We read about it in Philippians 2. Christ “humbled Himself by becoming obedient.” Humility and submission go hand in hand. He became obedient even to the point of death when His Father said this is what I want you to do for the sake of My glory and My redemptive plan on earth. Jesus said, “Yes, Lord. Yes, My God. I will do that. I will submit eagerly, willingly, gladly to Your will. I delight to do Your will.” Not only in coming to this earth in the incarnation and not only in going to the cross, but for all of eternity Jesus will be in submissive relationship to the God with whom He is equal. WE CANNOT DO THE MATH ON THAT, but it’s what the Scripture teaches.

I love this passage in 1 Corinthians 15 that pictures this in the end time. Then comes the end, when he delivers the kingdom to God the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and power. For he [that is Christ] must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. . . . When all things are subjected to him, then the Son himself will also be subjected to him [that is to his father] who put all things in subjection under him that God may be all in all” (1 Corinthians 15:24-25, 28). Jesus says for all of eternity, My God, I delight to do Your will. When we submit to God-ordained authority, and as women to God-ordained male authority, we are picturing to the world the beautiful, powerful, passionate submission of Christ to His heavenly Father, that God may be all in all.”

I found it profoundly disturbing how mindful DeMoss was to make sure she stated the church creed of an incarnated god into man, which was still co-equal and co-eternal and not inferior to God the Father, yet at the same time, build a very logical case about how Jesus was actually inferior to His God and must submit to His greater authority in all things, to the point of death.

DeMoss actually defines submission as the following:

The word submit comes from a Greek word, hupotasso. A compound word. Hupo means “under;” tasso “to line up or to get in order or to arrange.” To arrange under. It’s a military term that means to rank beneath or under.

The first thing we need to realize about submission is that God has established order, headship, authority and submission in every sphere of life. In the home, in the church, in the workplace, in the government. Submission is not just for women. Submission is for men. Submission is for young, for old, for married, for single. Everybody has to be under submission to one or more human authorities in their lives and all of us under submission to God’s ultimate sovereign authority.

Yes, indeed.  Submission means to be under rank of another.  The mere definition of this is great evidence that Jesus, the Son of God, is under the authority of the Heavenly Father, God.  There is no co-equality in this relationship.  There never was, and as DeMoss said so herself, “for all of eternity Jesus will be in submissive relationship to the God with whom He is equal. WE CANNOT DO THE MATH ON THAT, but it’s what the Scripture teaches.”

DeMoss’s teaching is wonderful proof that what churches are teaching and clinging to – the traditional creed that Jesus is a third person of a co-equal, co-eternal godhead of a Trinity – is in direct conflict with Scripture!  DeMoss attempts to teach Biblical Scripture and teaches it, yet it is does not line up with what her church has determined is the litmus test for all Christianity:  that we must accept Jesus pre-existed as God, before he became a man-God on earth.  It is an absolutely preposterous, illogical teaching, and the very definition of submission rips this doctrine to shreds.  I don’t even have to argue my case.  DeMoss has done it for me.

She states that she cannot do the math, when the Bible states that Jesus is going to be in submission to God for all eternity, because her Trinity doctrine teaches that Jesus is equal to the Father, yet, how can they be equal, when Jesus is obviously down a peg in the authority chain of command, for all eternity?  It doesn’t add up.  It doesn’t make any sense.  But, dear Miss DeMoss, I can do the math for you!!  I was a finance major in college, but I certainly don’t need a degree to know this simple math.  A preschooler can even do it.   One means one.  Not 1 + 1 + 1 = 3!  No, the truth is that 1 = 1.  There is only one God.  That God IS the Father.  Jesus is His Son.  When you understand this simple explanation, there is no problem.  There is no wondering, “hmmm, how will God the Son, who is co-equal with God the Father, be in submission to God, for all of eternity?”  Only people who are so entrenched in this Trinity doctrine have a problem with understanding this.  Others who see Scripture for its face value, and do no read the Church’s confusing, man-made up definition that Jesus is fully God, but yet a man, will see that it is very plain.

When Jesus turns over the Kingdom to His God, which will be established here on the earth in the age to come, and Jesus has ruled and reigned and been able to take every nation and government and put it under his feet, to make them in submission to his great authority over the world, that His God has given him, then God will come down to dwell with mankind (Revelation 21), and then Jesus will hand over the authority to his greater master, the one LORD GOD Almighty, Yahweh.  Jesus is clearly not God!  He is the SON of GOD!  They are two very distinct, separate individuals.  One is the Creator God, powerful, mighty, invisible, eternal.  The other, is Jesus, a man, supernaturally created in the womb of his mother.  Our mediator between ourselves and our God.  It’s certainly not complicated.  It’s so simple, even a child can understand it.  The only reason DeMoss cannot understand it, or her math is fuzzy and it doesn’t add up for her logically, is because she is presupposing a Trinity doctrine upon it, that makes the simple, become confusing; that creates errors and contradictions in God’s perfect and very easily understandable plan for mankind.

I wanted to post this excerpt today, to just remind people:  Don’t accept every teaching that you hear from the church pulpit, Christian television or radio as truth, without questioning it first.  Too many people sit in church, week after week, never truly thinking about what they are being taught and what their Church asks of them to accept as truth.  Sadly, if they do have questions, they are quickly silenced and told, “It’s a mystery.  No one can understand God.  You must accept this Trinity doctrine by faith, or you will no longer be accepted here.”  That type of handling by church leadership, does much to keep this Trinity doctrine strong and its grip on its membership is oppressive and majorly deceiving!  My answer is, you certainly do NOT have to sit under such false teaching!  It is high time that we stop this nonsense of the Trinity and get back to the real Jesus of the Bible!  You do not have to believe this Trinity doctrine to be saved.  You do not have to continue to sit under this false teaching and be made to feel like you are not a Christian for not accepting this fuzzy math!  You are not crazy for believing what the Scriptures and Jesus taught, that our God, Yhwh, is one lord, not two lords, or three.  And if you have never thought about this before, it is definitely time that you do!

“Christian believers whose spiritual lives should be shaped by the Master, if they have not wrestled in some mature way with the identity of Jesus, are in danger of constructing a fictional Jesus…most people answer the question of the identity of Jesus without any real struggle to gain precision about what the NT says.”  Raymond e. Brown, “An Introduction to NT Christology.”

Who is YOUR Jesus?

• Is your Jesus a fictional one, or the one from the Bible who is true?
• Is your Jesus, the one who must be God, so that you can say that you’re a Christian?
• Is he equal with God, yet submissive at the same time, creating a major conflict in logic?
• Or is Jesus, simply the man, who was born, miraculously by the power of God, to a virgin named Mary?
• Who lived a sinless life, to die for our sins on a cross, because he took the obedience and submission to His Father to the extreme, as an example for us in how to be obedient and submitted to God?
• Is Jesus the appointed, anointed Messiah who will return and set up a Kingdom reign over the earth, to hand it over to His Father & God someday?  Or will he be turning the Kingdom over, to just another part of his split self/essence, to support a Trinity- man-made doctrine of 325 A.D.?

These are questions you should ponder.  Pray over.  Study diligently.  See if your Christ is the same as the one in the Bible, or your Christ is the one made up by man, preached across the pulpits of most churches, and certainly does not line up with the man provided to us by God, laid out simply and beautifully as God’s plan for us, in the Scriptures.  My math works just fine.  Does yours?