Who Is God That We Should Submit?

I am God, and there is no other. By myself I have sworn…: “To me every knee shall bow, every tongue shall swear.” (Isaiah 45:22-23)

On the face of it, this passage seems exceptionally self-serving: it makes God sound like an autocratic medieval king. But there’s at least one good reason to “bow the knee” that has nothing to do with accumulation of glory.

To understand this, start with a definition of God that is disarming in its simplicity: God is love (1 John 4:8). It’s easy to gloss over those three little words, but their effect on our understanding of God can be life-changing. The image of God as the big judge in the sky fades; in its place, we are left with God as the ground of self-giving, a wellspring of extravagant love bestowed upon the universe.

If that’s the case, what are we doing when we “bow the knee” to God? Not just yielding our will to a larger will, but imitating that self-giving love. By doing so on a daily basis, we become more and more like Love himself—and from there it is an easy step to give of ourselves to others.

Perhaps this new perspective could make an impact far beyond us as well. If our primary view of God ceases to be the big judge in the sky, perhaps we stop seeking to judge and drawing dogmatic distinctions. If we relate to God as the ground of self-giving, perhaps we focus more on our own self-giving. If, as in traditional Christian thought, we see Jesus as God fully identifying with the human race, perhaps we too seek to identify with and understand the other. That might lead to more compassion and more peace.

Can God be reduced to three little words? Of course not. From what I’ve seen in the scriptures and my own life, God is so infinitely complex—and so impenetrably mysterious—that no words can capture the divine essence. Still, God is love, I suspect, gives us a glimpse into that very essence. And if we place that glimpse at the core of our understanding of God, we just might bear more of the fruit that the world so desperately needs.