On Submission
TL;DR
Submission for men is not weakness — it is the voluntary placing of oneself under rightful authority. James 4:7 commands submission to God as the precondition for resisting the devil. Romans 13 extends it to governing authorities. Men of the Republic treats submission as the second discipline because a man who submits to no one governs no one well. Authority exercised without the experience of submission is not leadership — it is untested pride.
The biblical word for submission — hypotasso in the Greek — means to arrange oneself under. It is a military term. It describes a soldier taking his place in the order of battle, not because he is forced to, but because he understands that the battle is won or lost by whether each man holds his position. This is not servility. It is structure. And it is the structure that makes coordinated strength possible.
James 4:7 is unambiguous: "Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you." The sequence is instructive. Submission to God comes before resistance to the enemy. A man who attempts to resist without first submitting is operating out of his own strength, which is insufficient. Romans 13:1 extends the principle: "Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God." Submission to earthly authority is, in this framing, an act of faith — not in the perfection of those in authority, but in the God who established authority as a structure for human life.
Paul's letter to the Ephesians frames submission mutually within the body of Christ (Ephesians 5:21) before addressing the specific submission of wives to husbands. The chapter that men often cite to establish authority begins with a command that applies to all believers: "submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ." A man who knows only how to demand submission and not how to practice it has misread the text.
Most men fail at submission because they have confused autonomy with strength. The culture around them — including much of the men's self-improvement space — frames independence as the highest masculine virtue. The man who needs no one, answers to no one, and defers to no one is presented as the ideal. This is not the biblical picture. The biblical picture is a man in covenant relationship — with God, with his household, with his community — each relationship carrying obligations that run in both directions.
The second failure point is pride disguised as principle. A man will resist submission to an imperfect authority on the grounds that the authority does not deserve it, when the real reason is that submission to any authority feels like diminishment. But submission has never been conditioned on the perfection of the authority. It is conditioned on the recognition that order is better than disorder, that a man under rightful authority is in a stronger position than a man answerable only to himself, and that God ordained structure for a reason.
The second chapter of Men of the Republic addresses submission directly and without apology. It opens by naming what the word has come to mean in modern culture — passivity, weakness, defeat — and then replacing that definition with the biblical one: voluntary alignment with rightful authority. The argument is not that submission is comfortable. It is that submission is required, and that the man who evades it pays a price he cannot always see.
The chapter covers the specific authorities Scripture places over men — God, the church, civil government, the legitimate structures of vocation — and what proper submission to each looks like in practice. It distinguishes submission from blind obedience and addresses the question of unjust authority directly. The reflection questions at the end are pointed: Where are the authorities in your life that you are currently refusing to submit to? What are you telling yourself is the reason? And what does that refusal cost the people around you?
Does the Bible teach men to be submissive?
Yes — but not in the way the word is often used. The Bible teaches every person, including men, to submit to God (James 4:7), to governing authorities (Romans 13:1), and within the church to appropriate leadership (Hebrews 13:17). This is not a call to passivity or weakness. It is a call to voluntary, willing alignment with rightful authority — the kind of alignment that produces order, trust, and the capacity to lead others.
What is biblical submission for a Christian man?
Biblical submission for a Christian man is the voluntary placing of himself under rightful authority — God first, then the authorities God has established. It is not blind obedience to every human command. It is the recognition that a man under authority is in a position of strength, not weakness. The man who has learned to submit well has learned something essential about himself: he is not the highest authority in the room, and pretending otherwise is not strength — it is pride.
How does submission relate to leadership?
Submission and leadership are not opposites. They are sequential. A man who has never been under authority does not know how to exercise it well. The best leaders in Scripture — Moses, David, Paul — all spent significant time under authority before they were given authority. Men of the Republic's chapter on submission argues directly that a man who submits to no one cannot govern anyone. Leadership without submission is not strength — it is untested pride masquerading as command.
Read the Chapter
Ten disciplines. Ten chapters. Submission comes second — because authority exercised without the experience of submission is not leadership.