“Love is Surrender” Pr. David Hewitt, KOG, April 10 & 11, 2010
A recent study was done that proved that those who claim to be the most moral people have a tendency to be those who are the most unethical. The writer of the article revealing these findings then added, dryly, “Stop us if this sounds familiar.” Let me quote from the article: “When asked to describe themselves, most people typically will rattle off a list of physical features and activities (for example, ‘I do yoga’ or “I’m a paralegal’). But some people have what scientists call a moral identity, in which the answer to the question [“Who are you?”] would include phrases like ‘I am honest,’ and ‘I am a caring person.’
“‘The principle we uncovered,’ said researcher Scott Reynolds, “is that when faced with a moral decision, those with a strong moral identity choose their fate (for good or bad) and then the moral identity drives them to pursue that fate to the extreme.’” In other words, to many people, the ends justify the means. It’s all right, in people’s minds, for a “good” result to be achieved through “un-good” methods.
“The researchers suggest an ‘ethical person’ could view cheating as an OK thing to do, justifying the act as a means to a moral end. As Reynolds puts it, ‘If I cheat, then I’ll get into [medical] school, and if I get into [medical] school, then I can become a doctor and think about all the people I’m going to help when I’m a doctor.”
I think the following conclusion said it all. “Students who scored high on moral identity and also considered cheating to be morally wrong were the least likely to cheat. In contrast, the worst cheaters were the [so-called] ‘moral’ students who considered cheating to be an ethically justifiable behavior in certain situations” – situations where they could get ahead!
This is what Jesus pointed out about the Pharisees and other hypocrites time and time again: He saw that they judged others, rather than looking critically at themselves first. (Matthew 7:1-5) One of the greatest pieces of advice someone once gave me was when he said, “David, you are good at analyzing others; analyze yourself,” for when we really look at ourselves more clearly, we are able to lay to the side the most dangerous tool in Satan’s arsenal – the high pedestal we each place our own selves upon; when we place ourselves so high, each of us – armed with rationalizations, justifications, and our ‘special excuses’ we create in our minds – feels that we are high above the blame and guilt that others around us must endure.
It reminds me of the parable that Jesus told of the Pharisee and the tax collector. Both were Jews. But they had both made choices in life that sent them in different directions. One of them, the Pharisee, had made sure he impressed others so that they would, in turn, lift him high in their esteem; he was so proud of himself! The other guy, the tax collector, everyone considered a scandalous man, and he knew it. Both now prayed to the same God at the same time. Jesus said, “The Pharisee, standing by himself, was praying thus, ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of my income. But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even look up to heaven, but was beating his breast and saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ I tell you,” Jesus adds, “this man (the tax collector) went down to his home justified rather than the other; for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted.” (Lk. 18:9-14) And what Jesus is calling “humbling one’s self” is also called “surrender” – “surrender to God…the act of surrendering to God’s will.”
For God wants to break our self-righteous sinfulness down before he can build us up again the right way, so that we can be more loving in this world and live more as we were created to be – for we were made in God’s image, and God not only IS love (1st John 4), but God loves both His friends and His enemies; as Jesus put it, “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for He makes His sun rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous AND the unrighteous.” (Matt. 5:44-45) God Himself will never bow down to the ways of Satan to get His own way; God Himself has surrendered some of His power in order to triumph through His love; He calls upon you and I to do the same.
But how do we “surrender” our wills? Well, first of all, we must realize how much your will and my will – “our (supposedly) free wills” – get in the way. John Ortberg, Christian leader, has written approvingly of how Twelve Step Groups like AA have helped people to “surrender” in order to triumph over their problems. “At the core of the steps,” he writes, “lies a great paradox: In which of the 12 steps does it say, ‘now try really hard to not drink’? In which of the 12 steps does it even say ‘now decide not to drink’?” Nowhere. “Amazingly,” Ortberg points out, “the most powerful tool against the most powerful addiction in the world never asks people to decide to stop doing what is destroying their lives. Instead of mobilizing the will, its followers surrender their will.” Ortberg shows us studies that reveal that if you “try to overcome the problem of your will, and it will beat you…. Surrender, which we think means defeat, turns out to be the only way to victory. This is not just the case with alcohol. It is also true with other addictions, with habits, with brokenness – and with sin in general.”
Then Ortberg asks the big question: why does the will fail? And, basically, the will fails…because the will thinks it can never fail! The will that is inside of us thinks it is God, when it is NOT God. God’s distinctive voice tells us, sometimes gently, sometimes not, that HE is God, and we are not. Do we trust that distinctive Voice? Do we put our faith in it, even when the world tells us not to? Let’s assume we do. Let’s assume we respond to God’s call, and we get off of our high horse and surrender to God, then many wonderful things begin to happen – things we didn’t cause, but are given, like gifts, from God to you and me.
Ortberg describes one of those gifts as “peace.” “If I live in the illusion,” he says, “the illusion that I am god, I will drive myself and everybody else crazy with my need for control. When I surrender, I don’t just let go of my will. I also give up the idea that I am in charge of outcomes.” He tells the story of when his children started driving, how he would sit in the passenger seat to coach them. “I tried to look relaxed, but if I thought they were taking too long to hit the brakes, my feet would start pressing into the floor on some imaginary brake…. My jaws would clench and my shoulders would hunch, as if my body believed that it could help slow the car by tensing up.”
He went on: “What a relief it is to believe there is someone more competent than me behind the wheel, [God,] so that I do not have to control the outcomes of my life. I love my children the best I can, but I am not in charge of their destiny. I work the best I can, but I am not in charge of the results. I try to make wise choices to save for retirement, but I am not running the stock market. I find,” Ortberg found, “that every moment I [might] worry is a chance [instead] to practice letting go of the need to control outcomes. There is a God. It is not me.” And surrendering means “that I will seek to handle the problem facing me in a way that honors God” – not in a way that tries to control, to win at all costs.
When Thomas found out from the other disciples that they saw Jesus risen from the dead, at first he refused to surrender. “Unless I see the mark of the nails in His hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails, and my hand in His side, I will not believe.” An important element in any faith decision is the element of surrender. I remember when God was trying to lead me to be a pastor, I refused to give in to it for a long time. I even gave up my conscious belief in God in order to evade God’s distinctive voice, to avoid going with the flow of the Spirit. When finally Jesus DID convince me, I was, at first, NOT a happy camper. For I had surrendered. Later, I realized that I had opened myself up to joys that would not have come to me in any other way, partly because God made me to serve Him in this particular way. He had led me to my purpose.
Ortberg mentions that often, when athletes win a victory, they do something with their arms. Do you know what it is? That’s right. They raise them in victory. How about the losers? Some of them fall down, their faces to the ground. “Exalted high in victory. Bent low in surrender. The two postures seem opposite, but Jesus understood that if you want to experience victory, you must start in surrender. Surrender brings power [God’s power], and the need to surrender is deeply tied to Jesus’ offer [to you and me] of living in the flow of the Spirit. You receive power through the act of surrender that you cannot obtain any other way; you receive freedom through submission [to God, freedom] that you will otherwise never know.” And remember: surrender…surrender to God…is a way of life, a continual experience, day by day by day.
Surrender means admitting, in prayer to Jesus, the greatest areas of sin in our life, the greatest areas where we seek to be in charge and in control. That’s the first step on the road to joyful discipleship. As Luther wrote, “A man cannot pray against sin and about sin, or have a desire to be free from sin, unless he [or she] is already godly. The Spirit, who has just begun His work [in your life] and grace are so constituted that they work against the sin which remains….Those who have never begun to be godly do not struggle or lament or pray against their flesh and sin.” So, you see, surrendering is, first of all, confronting one’s own particular kind of sinfulness.
But remember: there is no self-righteous, self-propelled method to winning this struggle against sin. As Paul says today, “Do not let anyone …insist on self-abasement …[saying to you,] ‘do not handle, do not taste, do not touch.’” He says we must avoid “dwelling on visions” of our own making, getting “puffed up without cause by a human way of thinking,” doing things that have only the “appearance of wisdom in promoting self-imposed piety, humility, and severe treatment of the body,” for “they are of no value in checking self-indulgence.” (Col. 2:16-23) You see, these religious works are often done, as the Pharisees did them, for show – to show others how religious we are, just as those people at the beginning of my sermon thought all they needed to do was claim they were “very moral” and oila! they were moral, in their own minds, no matter what they did wrong. You see, being a Christian is not having to prove anything to anyone else, except to God Himself, surrendering our will to Him. As the song says,
Talk about love, how it makes life complete
You can talk all you want, make it sound nice and sweet
But the words have an empty ring, and they don’t really mean a thing
Without Him love is not to be found, not to be found
For Love is surrender…You must surrender to His will
You must surrender to His will.
Sing about love, and the strength it can give
You can sing how you’re ready to face life and live,
But you know as the years go by that no matter how hard you try
Without Him love is not to be found, not to be found
For Love is surrender…You must surrender to His will
You must surrender to His will.
It sounds, harsh, doesn’t it – that word ‘surrender’? “But here again,” Ortberg writes, “we are never on our own. The Spirit is always available [to us]. One of the most amazing teachings of the Scriptures is that in Jesus, God Himself knows the pain of surrender. Jesus knelt in a garden and prayed, ‘Let this cup pass from Me. Nevertheless, not My will, but Yours be done.’ And just as surrender led to resurrection for Jesus, so it does for all of His followers. The apostle Paul wrote, ‘For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with Him in glory.’ (Colossians 3:3-4)”
A great Lutheran thinker and theologian of the 1800s was a Danish man named Soren Kierkegaard. In his book “Fear and Trembling,” Kierkegaard contrasts two medieval, knightly figures, and asks, which one will we be? Will we be the Knight of Faith or the Knight of Resignation? They both surrender, but in different ways. The Knight of Infinite Resignation gives up everything in return for infinite, eternal life, but in the years before he dies, he is always sorrowful and continually dwells on the pain of his loss. The Knight of Faith, however, also relinquishes everything, BUT he trusts that he will receive it all back someday, because he trusts in and loves his Lord and Savior completely. “Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and all these things shall be added unto you.” Amen!
