Sometimes we think
we couldn’t possibly yield to God because it feels like there are too many
things we still struggle with. However, what if we are like someone who has
fully surrendered to the care of a doctor, but is still full of sickness? Being
sick does not nullify our surrender to the doctor’s care.
What is
becoming clear to me is that many people have a view of surrender to God that
is really law-based rather than gospel-based. Complete surrender under the law has
to focus on finding the ability to do everything right. Complete surrender
under grace is turning to Jesus for help with everything we are doing wrong.
Here’s an
illustration that helps me appreciate the difference between law-based
surrender and grace-based surrender. One person has a totally messed-up estate
and hears that the King is coming, so he works wildly to get his yard and house
cleaned up so that it is all fit for the King. He does not want to be ashamed
to invite the King to a full tour of all his land, and every room in his house.
Neither does he want to dishonor the King with an unkempt property. He wants to
surrender everything that is his to the King so he can be happy with it all.
Another person
also has a totally messed-up estate and hears that the King is coming. However,
he knows it is hopeless to think that he could possibly clean everything up in
order to make it suitable for royalty. He has heard of the King’s love, his
grace and mercy, and his power to clean up estates, so he opens the gate and
asks the King to come into the mess, the squalor, the darkness, the filth, and
take it over. He tells the King that he can have it all, and that he is quite
willing to surrender to whatever the King wants to do to clean it up.
Much of my life
I have struggled to believe that I am still not “totally surrendered” to God
because I keep finding things that are not yet transformed into Jesus’
likeness. That is completely law-based. God is not calling me to “do” for him,
but to “receive” from him. Surrender is not reaching a level of self-denial
where we are finally able to do all the good things God wants us to do.
Surrender is letting God touch everything in our lives with his healing and
cleansing power.
One church
conflict I have seen many times has been between those who want a church where
they can show what good Christians they are, and those who want a church where messed-up
Christians can get all the help they need to grow up into the goodness of
Christ. In such conflict, the good people are in bondage to their notion of
presenting their good behavior to God as a pleasing sacrifice. The not-so-good
people are bound to a hunger and thirst for God to do righteous things in their
lives because of faith, not of works, to the glory of the cleansing blood of Jesus
Christ.
I once had a
pastor introduce himself to me as a recovering-Pharisee. I could relate to
that. As one who has been a “good boy” my whole life, it was easy to fall into
the trap of using good behavior as a means of feeling good about myself. God
graciously blew that all out of the water so that the mirage of my goodness
could be met by the reality of his goodness.
I can relate
to the good-Christians who think they need to try hiding the parts of
themselves that are beyond their ability to fix because they can’t appear good
enough to please God. They cannot live with what would happen to them if they
knew that he saw that mess, if they admitted that mess, and if they brought
that mess out into the open so the church could help them. They have no
comprehension of the grace of God that comes into messes and cleans them up.
They only know that they have to be good in order to be accepted, and so they
will be the best good they can be, and fake it in everything else.
The desire to be totally surrendered to Jesus
Christ is not fulfilled by cleaning up our lives so we can offer Jesus access
to every room of our fixed-up hearts. It is fulfilled by opening up our whole
messed-up, dirty, filthy, scary, dark, wounded, broken, sinful, worried,
doubting, prideful, lives to the powerful cleansing work of the blood of Jesus
Christ and letting Jesus come in to our whole being and do all the cleaning up
he wants to do, in every way he wants to do it, for however long he chooses to
take to clean up any particular thing within us. Surrender is not surrendering
to do all the good things God wants his children to do. It is surrendering our
real state-of-being to Jesus so he can carry on to completion all the good
things that he has come into our lives to do.
“And I am sure of this,
that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of
Jesus Christ.” (Philippians 1:6)
From
my heart,
Monte
© 2013 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517,
Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8 ~ in2freedom@gmail.com
Unless otherwise noted,
Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English
Standard Version Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good
News Publishers.)
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