We say it all the time: “You/I need to surrender to God.”
We sing about it. It might just be one of our most oft-repeated phrases, in our spiritual conversations with each other. My own book sure contains references to it!
But … to “surrender” (to God) does not appear in the Bible.
Ever.
In the entire Bible, there is not a single command, reference, even mention of surrendering to God.
So why have I spent so much of my life exhorting others and myself to surrender to Him?!
To be fair to us all, I think it’s just an unfortunate misnomer, that’s gained acceptance over the years, for a concept that is in the Bible.
In short: The Bible never tells us to surrender to God because the word surrender is always, ALWAYS used in reference to an ENEMY.
God is not our enemy.
God is NOT OUR ENEMY.
If there is one thing I have learned this year, through the various heart-ache and disappointments we faced, it is that GOD IS NOT MY ENEMY.
GOD IS FOR ME. Even the hard is for my good.
I wish I could shout from a world-wide megaphone and somehow convey to this aching, bewildered, lost and hurting world: GOD IS FOR YOU!
God LOVES YOU!
God is not your enemy!
Just this morning Jeff read it in church:
What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. (Rom 8:31-34)
Friends, I honestly believe that if we had ANY INKLING how FOR US God really is, we would never doubt, never fear, never struggle to trust. We would be mind-blown at His goodness.
We would fall on our faces in grateful adoration.
Now, what words are in the Scriptures? From what I understand, the idea of surrender really comes from two concepts: Submit and obey.
Submit
James exhorts us to “Submit yourselves, therefore, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. (4:7) The context is pride and worldliness. Interestingly, James says that although God is not our enemy, we can make ourselves enemies of God by befriending the world. But even then, the exhortation isn’t to surrender but to submit.
Is it just splitting hairs? I don’t think so. While surrender refers to an enemy, submit speaks of loving, voluntary, glad deference to a GOOD HEAD, a GOOD leader, a superior officer of sorts who is ON THE SAME SIDE. It’s always used with regard to two people on the same team.
While surrender is always used of an enemy, submit is always used of a comrade or spouse.
Because of Christ, and this is MIND-BLOWING, you are a friend of God. God is your Heavenly Husband. He’s a good one. He’s a GOOD leader who ALWAYS has your best interest in mind.
Submit actually doesn’t occur that often as well. James is the only one who uses it in reference to God. The other references are to fellow believers, spouses, or church leaders. The word that does occur a LOT, although it isn’t as popular nowadays, is obey.
Obey
This might be our culture’s least favorite word. I recently read about a popular children’s book where the plot-line was a girl who had to “overcome” a curse that over her that made her always obey any order given to her. Yikes! Obedience is called a curse?! Of course, obedience to evil is a curse, but in our day and age we’re almost afraid to use the word. We teach our children to be “good listeners” but if I can be so bold, I don’t think anything is wrong with their hearing, obedience is what our children desperately need!
And while surrender occurs zero times, obey and obedience occur 180 times!
Now, the bottom line of this is so significant I can’t help but get excited. While the word surrender carries connotations of an enemy, the words submit and obey carry the connotations of …
Loving relationship.
Submit speaks of a loving husband-wife relationship, of friends and comrades, of voluntarily deferring to one another, out of love and mutual respect.
God is our husband and friend.
Obey speaks of a parent-child relationship, of a loving dad giving good and beneficial boundaries to His children out of deep love for them.
God is our Father.
Dear, dear one: God is not your enemy. It might be a subtle shift, but I pray it is a real one. I pray you know the loving leadership of a good God who is FOR YOU, who knows that your best life is found in Him, that apart from Him there is no joy, no good, nothing of any lasting value.
No surrender. Submit yourself to a loving God, and obey His good and loving leadership in your life.
Thanks for reading.
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2 thoughts on “Why we don’t need to surrender to God”
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This is a good read, and hopefully a revelation to many. I’d have to add though that surrendering to God has another meaning for me. Probably from having sung “I Surrender All” for many years, I was hoping you would also mention “Give” besides “Submit” and “Obey”. I got this from thesaurus.com:
Word Origin & History
surrender 1441, “to give (something) up,” from O.Fr. surrendre “give up, deliver over” (13c.), from sur- “over” + rendre “give back” (see render). Reflexive sense of “to give oneself up” (especially as a prisoner) is from 1585. The noun is recorded from 1487.
After reading this, I found it also amazing to think of oneself as a criminal who gave oneself up as guilty only to be set free because all debts have been paid for.
Love your ministry, Kari. And I really appreciate your reminder about God being FOR us as believers, and about the importance of being thoroughly obedient and submissive to the Lord in everything.
In contrast to the thesis of your post, I thought it might be helpful to remind you that many of us who follow Jesus do not equate Christian “surrender” to Christ with a sense of enmity. This is probably why so many great saints from history have used the term for their own attitude of Christian obedience, and why they have so often appealed to others to do the same. Many of these “best of the best” believers are extraordinarily Bible-literate, so it might be unlikely that their use of the term “surrender” can be attributed to some sort of carelessness, perhaps in the form of “an unfortunate misnomer.”
When we Christians voluntarily “surrender our rights,” for example, for the benefit of another person (1 Corinthians 9:9, 12, 19), we do so in love, not enmity. “Surrender” does not have a connotation of animosity to us in these cases. As with the words “concede,” “capitulate,” “relinquish,” and “yield,” English speakers need not equate “surrender” with attitudes of animosity, and we Christians might like to use words like these in our exhortations and poetry.
When Richard Weymouth translated Romans 6:13 and 16, and 1 Corinthians 15:24, he used the word surrender in a non-adversarial way, so it might not be safe to suppose that, in Scripture “the term surrender is always, always used in reference to an enemy.”
It might also not be safe to say that “submit speaks of loving…glad deference to a good head on the same side…the same team.” It would be hard to make the case that when the saints in Rome were told to submit to Nero—the government official who would eventually execute Paul and Peter for their faith—they were submitting to a “good head” who was “on the same side” in any obvious sense (Romans 13:1-5).
Of course, the unbelievers who read your post are actually the enemies of God, as all of us were at one time, before conversion (Romans 5:10; Psalm 7:11-12; John 3:36, etc.). Would they be able to discern this monumental reality in the face of your general assertion that “God is not your enemy”? Perhaps you had only a Christian audience in mind as you made these exhortations, but even we were once enemies of God, and then we “surrendered to Him.”
Maybe all of our Christian terms for compliance (“surrender,” “submit,” “obey,” “yield,” “fear the Lord,” “bow the knee,” etc.) could carry negative connotations in many minds, even the very same negative connotations, and you did well in addressing those connotations, but we fallen humans will always have to contend with an intuitive offense we feel over the concept of unconditional compliance to God—the “offense of the cross.”