Surrender
It seems this word is becoming more and more of a buzzword within the Christian community.
The idea is that the problem with the church is a lack of surrender. Usually, that implies a list of do’s and don’ts ministers carry in their thinking that are not being met.
However, this prevailing notion of surrender often leads to a culture of accusation and condemnation within the church, which is a concern.
From my perspective, the real issue lies in the lack of surrender to the correct understanding of righteousness.
The Bible very clearly speaks about this.
Romans 10:1 Brethren, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for Israel is that they may be saved. 2 For I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge. 3 For they being ignorant of God’s righteousness, and seeking to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted to the righteousness of God. 4 For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.
What these passages reveal to me is that a person can be very zealous for God and yet way off the mark in terms of true surrender to God.
In the minds of the ones spoken of here, surrender was a way of life. If you were to ask the Israelites Paul is speaking of whether or not they were surrendered to God, they would likely have emphatically responded absolutely.
They were engaged in a misplaced zeal! Today, many suffer the same dilemma. They try their best to surrender all the points of moral behavior only to find that they still feel something isn’t quite right.
Being ignorant of God’s righteousness leads to self-effort that is often disguised as zeal-fueled devotion. But anytime anyone seeks to establish their own righteousness with God or maintain it with Him in a way other than what He has deemed to be the ay, they are in no place of surrender at all.
If we fail to conclude that Christ is the end of the law for righteousness and are not firmly convinced that we are the very righteousness of God now because of Christ, we have not surrendered anything to God as we ought. If we refuse to submit to God’s righteousness, it means automatically that we are trying to establish our own righteousness.
Righteousness comes to us by way of faith in Christ. We are made righteous by faith in Christ alone.
Christ is the end of the law for righteousness for everyone who believes. Merely agreeing without believing it will not make it so. Someone might hear this and agree but not truly believe it. They just know it would be difficult to argue against it, seeing it is stated so clearly in Scripture. But the real work of it, the ability to embody it, comes when it is truly believed. For me, this is the real place of surrender to which God is inviting all of us.
