Do you not know that when you present yourselves to someone as slaves for obedience, you are slaves of the one whom you obey

Romans 6:16, portion

Although Paul here was speaking of submission to sin, he spoke of a general principle which holds true in all things.  When we submit our spirits to any thing, we become its slaves.  This is true, whether it is to a job, a spouse, an organization, or any other thing.

Jesus said that, for believers, we are to call no one Rabbi, Teacher, Father, Leader, or Master, for God alone is all of these things (Matthew 23:1-12).  In fact, Jesus Himself said that the Gentiles even consider it to the benefit of those they are leading when they do so, and call themselves their subject’s “benefactors” (Luke 22:25).  But, He said,

But it is not this way with you, but the one who is the greatest among you must become like the youngest, and the leader like the servant. For who is greater, the one who reclines at the table or the one who serves? Is it not the one who reclines at the table? But I am among you as the one who serves.

Luke 22:26-27

The problem is that none of us are perfect, and, in fact, leaders fall.  There are spiritual principles and God-ordained dynamics that happen whenever one person willing yields themselves to another.  Whether in a pastoral setting, in a sermon, or in any other place or time, the spirit of another, and the spirits they are under, begin to operate through the person who submits to them.  In other words, if you are under someone else, you get all of them, including their junk.

If they fall into adultery, you will battle with adultery.  If they slip into rejection, you will be faced with their rejection.  When they get in a wrong spirit, it will affect you.  What you submit to, in the measure that you do, you are slaves to obey.

Yet, we have the choice.  As believers, Christ has set us free, and we can choose whom we will serve.  This is, indeed, why Paul wrote the following,

For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.

Galatians 5:1

This, indeed, is how all of witchcraft operates, including the Jezebel spirit.  When you submit your will, and your authority, your decision making capacity to another, you subject yourself spiritually to all they are.  When you allow your will to be ruled by another, you become subject to everything that is on them.  With a Jezebel spirit, it works on the basis of fellowship.  In a slow and methodical manner, a Jezebel spirit will win trust or favor in a person’s life, preying upon the insecurities and weaknesses, or loneliness, of an individual.  Once trust comes, it then tries to being the process of usurping authority.  Because it is a power-hungry spirit, looking for control, it tries to begin to make your decisions for you.  For the weak-minded, this begins to be manifested through ‘fighting your battles for you’.  Yet, for each battle that you allow a Jezebel to fight, your authority is slowly eroded away, and ground is given to this spirit.  Eventually, it will attempt to take your life completely from you, effectively making you a ‘eunuch’, so far as the Kingdom is concerned, with no authority, no power, and no liberty.

What is the solution for witchcraft?  Guard your heart, and do not submit even an ounce of your authority to let someone else fight your battles for you.  Do not have fellowship with darkness.

Consider this from another perspective.  When God formed the nation of Israel, He did not want them to have a king.  God alone was their King, and He was their identity.  Their sense of who they were as a nation was to be derived from Him alone, and not any particular leader.  But, when they begged Him for a human king, what did God say?

And the Lord told him: “Listen to all that the people are saying to you; it is not you they have rejected, but they have rejected me as their king. As they have done from the day I brought them up out of Egypt until this day, forsaking me and serving other gods, so they are doing to you. Now listen to them; but warn them solemnly and let them know what the king who will reign over them will claim as his rights.”

1 Samuel 8:7-9

God was to have Samuel tell them what a king over them would mean.  They had rejected Himself as their true King, their true sovereign, and, by asking for a human king, someone to rule over them, this is what they were going to receive.

Samuel told all the words of the Lord to the people who were asking him for a king. He said, “This is what the king who will reign over you will claim as his rights: He will take your sons and make them serve with his chariots and horses, and they will run in front of his chariots. Some he will assign to be commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and others to plow his ground and reap his harvest, and still others to make weapons of war and equipment for his chariots. He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive groves and give them to his attendants. He will take a tenth of your grain and of your vintage and give it to his officials and attendants. Your male and female servants and the best of your cattle and donkeys he will take for his own use. He will take a tenth of your flocks, and you yourselves will become his slaves. When that day comes, you will cry out for relief from the king you have chosen, but the Lord will not answer you in that day.

1 Samuel 8:10-18

God warned them ahead of time of what a king would entail.  He would lead them, and bring them into battle.  Take their possessions, and rule over them.  Remember what the state of the nation was.  Before, in the book of Judges, while the nation had failures and breakthroughs, they were each doing what they thought was right.  Yet, when a king was in place, all through the books of Kings and Chronicles, you can see the fate of the nation described by the faithfulness or failure of their leader.  Because they had submitted themselves to another ruler, their state as a nation was determined solely by the faithfulness of that one man.

Notice, further, that in so doing, God no longer raised up judges in His people.  Because the people wanted a king, they no longer had their Sampson’s.  They no longer had their Barak and Deborah.  They no longer had their Gideon’s.  The only of this sort was Elijah, who stood out, and, in the midst of gross darkness, began the process of turning the nation back to God.

But, God said He didn’t want a king.  Yet, having asked for a king, He told them that when they finally wished to be delivered, He Himself would not hear their cries.  This is indeed exactly what happened.

Yet, don’t think that just because they had a ‘good’ leader for a time that it was necessarily a ‘good’ thing, either.  No, God wanted sons.  He wanted individuals, with their own will, able to make their own choices.  He wanted people unique, and separate, and not with a ‘group-think’ or ‘group mentality’, or any other thing.  He wanted us each to seek and find God on our own.

But, you could also think of the corporate world.  Does a man have a job, or, as certain corporate types have desired, does the job have the man?  When you think of certain individuals, it is as if they have completely become the company.  They are a ‘company man’.  This is because they have fully yielded themselves to the company.  They are its slaves.  It does not matter whether the company does good or evil, they will follow it, regardless.  They won’t even think twice, more than likely, because they are submitted to it.  They won’t even see it coming.

So, too, the church fails when it elevates man.  The surest road to deception is hierarchy.  When one person, no matter their gifting, character, calling, or whatever, is regarded as higher than any other.

Two things need to be considered, then.

First, we must submit ‘one to another’, out of reverence to Christ, according to Ephesians 5:21.  As well, God has given gifts to the body, and we are to obey our leaders, according to Hebrews 13:17.  We are to learn from them, for God has given us teachers in the body, so that we can grow the full statue of Christ, Ephesians 4:11-13.  Yet, we do not submit our ‘headship’, and our authority to them, even as it says in 1 Corinthians 11:3, the head of every man is Christ.  This difference must even show up in today’s work place, even as Paul admonished the slaves of his day to obey their earthly masters according to the flesh in Ephesians 6:5.  Yet, again, there is not, here a spiritual submission of one’s will, personality, or being to another.

Each man must stand before God alone, and the work of his own life will be judged and merited.  The world, the corporate world or any other part of it, will always attempt to control, and externally govern.  And, in fact, remember, this is exactly what Jesus Himself said, they say they are doing good for those they are controlling (‘benefactors’).  Yet, this is always detrimental; it is always at the expense of personal liberty.

Of course, perhaps, in a fallen world, there may be no other way to restrain the a general populace who by and large has not been made a new creation through the Gospel and is wholly evil in their thoughts and intent of their heart.  But, even as the Law of Moses did nothing to actually produce righteousness, in the people of God, all external attempts to control anyone do nothing but contain and manipulate the flesh.  In the work of God, all such is worthless for the production of righteousness.

Second, we must address discipline and growth.  True Christian growth comes only by faith.  When we hear a “Word of the Kingdom”, then faith comes as a result of it.  When that seed of the Kingdom falls upon a good heart, and they act upon it, the individual sees the production of the fruit of Christ.  Whether this be in salvation at the first, or the continued obedience to the ‘ever-proceeding Word of God’, this is the only growth of the Kingdom there is.

This, also, then, is submission to Christ’s Spirit.  In the same way that submission to a human spirit, or a corporate spirit, or any other thing of the Earth, submission to the Holy Spirit results in spiritual slavery to righteousness, Romans 6:18.  This slavery, however, works on the laws of love, and not fear.  It produces life, and not death.  And, in that slavery, a greater freedom than any have ever known is experienced.  This is Eternal Life, to know the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom He has sent.

So, when the Word is spoken, faith comes.  Yet, when we do not live by the faith within us, we find ourselves submitting to another spirit.

Yet, both faith and sin works by communion, even as the metaphor of yeast is used of both sin and the Kingdom.  So, Christ warned His followers,

Be on your guard! If your brother sins, rebuke him; and if he repents, forgive him. And if he sins against you seven times a day, and returns to you seven times, saying, ‘I repent,’ forgive him.

Luke 17:3-4

Jesus knew the power of communion.  He knew that if He let people in to His heart, who couldn’t be trusted, that it would spell disaster for Himself.  As it is recorded, He didn’t trust His heart to anyone, because He knew what was in the hearts of all men (John 2:24).

Sin works in four ways.  Obviously, the temper can simply come and tempt you, as he did in the Garden to the couple.  Secondly, it can be already within you, as David cried out in Psalm 51, “In sin my mother conceived me”.  Remember, the iniquity of the fathers is passed down to the third and fourth generation, and, four generations up was Rahab the harlot.  Quite literally, this iniquitous root within David was laid within himself three generations prior.  Hence, while the power of the curse of iniquity is passed down to us today, it is broken by the power of the cross.  Hence, we apply the blood of Jesus over our lives, taking authority over every iniquitous root, and shut the door to it, and break it off our lives.

Third, then, sin comes through wrong submission.  Thus, if we submit to any headship other than the Lord Jesus, we are in violation of God’s Word.  While we submit one-to-another, and we obey those with authority over us, we do not put our lives into a passive mode, and allow anyone to make decisions for us.  Since we will stand and fall solely upon our choices, we must take responsibility for our own lives.  Not taking ownership of our lives is a decision in itself, and until we stand up in ourselves, we will continually be at the mercy of the world around us.

But, finally, sin comes as ‘yeast’.  As Paul wrote, a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump.  The reason certain sins had to be dealt with by death and excommunication is the Old Covenant is that the demonic element in sins resulted in those evils being spread throughout the entire camp of Israel.  In the same way that an adultery can work its way through a work-place, so too, it can work its way through an entire nation, if left unchecked.  Yet, this leavening power of sin, through the invisible demonic agency, continues today, yet, through deliverance in the power of the Kingdom, we see that instead of needing to kill the sinner in our midst, through repentance and forgiveness, the unbelieving sinner can be brought to wholeness, instead of stoning, and the believer who stumbles can have their feet washed again.  When one sins, we must rebuke them quickly, not harshly.  They must be corrected, and brought back to obedience, not only for their sake, but for the whole.  If we truly desire to have a pure work before God, even little things matter, and this is why Ananias and Sapphira were fell dead, because of the urgency of a right heart before God.

There is such life and liberty in the power of the Spirit of God.  And, it is is your connections to others where most of our failings arise.  We find ourselves in subjection to many things, in the course of our lives, and as we seek the Lord, and many of them are not the will of the Lord.

The Lord would want to open our eyes, and to see the things we are serving, that we might, as it is written, Worship the Lord your God and Him only shall you serve (Matthew 4:10).

This is proper headship.  This is the sovereignty that God desires for each one of us to walk in, yielded to Him alone.  In Daniel 4:31 NASB, it says “sovereignty has been removed from you”, regarding the King.  When this was removed, he went mad. Proper authority is always broken by sin, and when we allow something to cause us to sin, or to provoke our spirit in an ungodly manner, as Israel did to Moses (Psalm 106:33), our ability to rule is taken from us.  Only through prayer and the mercy and grace of God is it restored, through properly acknowledging our sin and His Lordship.

May God open our eyes, and see the other things that we serve.  May He reveal to us the places where we have yielded our authority and our sovereignty to another.  May He restore the the crown upon our head, and the hedges around our lives.  May He reveal to us every place that we have been tempted and failed, every root from our past, every wrong act and pattern of submission, and every unrighteous relationship within our walk.  May He show us how to cleanse and remove each one, applying the efficacious blood of Christ, and the authority of the victory of the cross and resurrection over our lives, that we might be kept in perfect peace.

Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee: because he trusteth in thee.

Isaiah 26:3