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On Absolute Surrender “Then Jesus, crying with a loud voice, said, ‘Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit!’ And having said this he breathed his last.” –Luke 23:46 We are not called merely to do good in the name of God, as it is beginning at the end—the result and not the source. We are commanded to give ourselves up, to take up our crosses and walk with Jesus. This, and only this, will grow forth into new life and ultimately good works in the name of the kingdom. But it is not for us to begin at the deeds themselves because of our futile sinful state. Deeds done for the sake of behaving like a Christian are not what God immediately seeks from us. The actions that spring forth from Christ-like living are a result. They stem from something (or in this case, someone) else. Faith, and submission through faith, are what draw us into God. And God himself, as he hung from the cross, said, “Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit!” This, the ultimate act of submission and devotion to the Father’s task at hand is what we are called to emulate. Do not seek the favor of God, because before death you will not find it. Instead seek God himself. “Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children” (Eph. 5:1). And when you find him in doing so, all the rest will come along with your discovery. “…and live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God” (Eph. 5:2). The life of an Apostle of Christ is not simply a life of good doings and humble asceticism—it may only appear this way to those who are observing. Underneath and behind the actions, below the physical into the mental and spiritual is a soul, wholly yielded to God and offered up for the use of God. As Oswald Chambers so elegantly puts it, “If I obey God I do so because I have yielded myself to him…yielding to Jesus will break every form of slavery in any human life.” The ‘slavery' is idleness and blindness. With these are ignorance, vanity, wantonness, and the rest of the devil’s cardinal virtues. These will restrict us to the world and by so doing hold our eyes shut. In our own self-efforts we will only fall deeper into the dark in misery, farther into the slough until we are smothered. Only one power could pull us out, which is not our own, but it is ours to call upon; it is our own task to invoke it. When we relax our failed efforts and lift our gaze out of the quagmire to the heavens, when we call to God, then we are lifted free. And in all of this, we do not rely on our own deeds to bring down the help of God. Instead we go limp and rely on his help. Like Jesus, we must rejoicingly say, “Into your hands we commit our spirits!” and allow him to go about his work with us. |
