Submission may require confrontation or silence, but in both cases, it results in peace

The pursuit of God’s purpose will require you to increasingly engage others in an attempt to persuade them to do their best.⁴ Paradoxically, as you grow in your desire and capacity to make the world a better place, you will also find yourself increasingly submitting to the actions and desires of others. The more effort you exert in pursuit of God’s purposes, the more often you will discover the limits of how willing others are to do the same. In all outcomes that require the participation of others, you will be limited by the choices they make.

Respecting the choices of others is an important form of submission to God, and a critical one to master in order to receive the peace he promises to give those who serve him fully. While you can’t receive God’s peace without proactively seeking out all potential opportunities to help others improve, you likewise can’t receive God’s peace without learning to recognize when you have done everything you can under the present circumstances.⁵

The Lord is the ultimate example of learning how to do all you can to help others, recognizing when you have done all you can, and feeling peace in doing all you can. Despite the fact that the Lord Jesus enjoyed more supernatural power and advanced knowledge than any man who had ever lived, his life portrays a seemingly unlimited allowance for the agency of those around him.⁶ He did everything he could to help persuade everyone he could to improve as much as he could, but he did not force anyone to do anything. How was he able to be so yielding to the agency of others in spite of his awareness of the benefits that they could obtain if they would simply yield to his view?

God is in ultimate control of the world he created.⁷ We ought to assume that the situations in which we find ourselves are ordained by a perfectly knowing, loving, and capable deity for our own benefit until and unless we have good reasons to believe otherwise. He provides us with the opportunity to do all things that lie in our power to bring about the greatest outcomes, but he also asks us to recognize and honor the choice of others to reject our best effort. As Jesus submitted to Herod,⁸ Pilate,⁹ and the crowds wanting him killed, we too should recognize situations when there is nothing more we can do to help the situation.

Part of submission to God is being able to recognize and willing to admit when there are others who control what we cannot.¹⁰ No power held by man exists outside of what God has given.¹¹ Our attitude towards those who exercise authority over us reflects the level of trust we have in God.¹² When the Lord was imprisoned, he told Pilate that all his perceived power was actually just from God.¹³ One way that the Lord showed obedience to his Father was by submitting to the people that the Father had ordained to cause him strife.¹⁴ Just as doing all you can to advance God’s purpose requires faith in God, so does submitting to those who continue to oppose God’s purpose in spite of all you can do.

Beyond developing and proving our faith in God, our patience in the situations God has ordained can also provide a witness to others of God’s goodness.⁷²⁶ Calmness can offer a louder argument in favor of your cause than any reasons you might provide.⁷²⁷ Peter taught this principle in the specific context of wives married to husbands that do not believe.⁷²⁸ Furthermore, being able to formulate and deliver convincing arguments requires you to be in a rational—not emotional —state. Defaulting to an emotional state will rob you of your ability to think clearly, make good arguments, and will cause you to make consequential mistakes. If you can’t remain in a rational, impartial state, you are better off remaining silent.

In issues of submission, it is important to avoid allowing the good desire to respect others’ agency to mask the evil desire to avoid confrontation. Submission becomes a righteous option only after you’ve done all you can to make your best argument in favor of what you see as best. It is abominable to God when people who pretend to believe in him hide their cowardice in a cloak of pretended godly patience or false submission.