Submission, Not Surrender

For many years now, I have said that we ought not to surrender to Christ our God. This ruffles many Christian feathers, but give me a chance to explain why I don't like this term, "surrender," in describing the Christian's relationship to God.

You see, surrender is what you do on a battlefield when you have only the choice to give up or die and you don't want to die. It is what one enemy does toward the other. When you surrender, you don't love your enemy. You're not suddenly on his side. You will, as a matter of duty and principle, look for any chance of escape to take up arms against him again -- or at least to leave the war and go home away from your enemy. In short, there is nothing cooperative in being the prisoner of the enemy. It certainly doesn't benefit the one who surrenders. One need only to think about the American POWs in Vietnam, Korea, or Germany to get a good picture of how it works. It's all about power and compulsion of one side against the other. In short, it's about being and remaining enemies.

Jesus, loved us. He laid down His life voluntarily for us. He set the example and invited us into a relationship of mutual love and benefit. That doesn't require surrender, it requires submission to Him. What's the difference, you ask? Submission is given freely. Submission is given out of love for the one submitted to. It does not look for an avenue and chance for escape. It seeks to stay -- forever -- in a relationship of mutual love.

Jesus Christ, in His submission to the Father, emptied Himself, submitted Himself to an earthly life for the sake of gaining our love and restoring us to a proper relationship to the Father. In this, He set the example for how we ought to approach an submit to the Holy Trinity.

Only through submission can we act in synergy with the grace that God gives us to empower our return to Him.