On surrendering to God

My son John has declared that he wants to be called Spike. That’s his nickname, he said, and he for sure does not want to be called Robert, which is his middle name.

I asked if it would be OK to call him Buzz. He said that it would not. John or Spike, but not Buzz and definitely not Robert.

I dearly love that boy and, of course, all my children. I would gladly lay down my life for them. There’s no courageous heroism or grandiosity in that. Their lives simply mean more to me than mine does. It’s something instinctive, I think, something in nature.

Stories about parents standing in harm’s way in defense of their children are myriad in human history. We’ve heard of mothers lifting enormous tree trunks to free a pinned son. Fathers have drowned saving their daughters.

Sure, an evil world spawns aberrations in parent-child relationships. But in the natural order, a parent’s love is not conditional. Even a bird will die defending an egg.

What then are we to make of God the Father giving up His only Son to death? Surely that relationship is fraught with more love than even a dad could have for a small boy named Spike. I cannot understand it, but my faith confirms the truth of it, just as I do not doubt that a mother can lift three times her weight to extricate a son.

The Son of God was in fact Love Incarnate. The Father so loved the world that He gave His only Son. No, my mind quits – trying to comprehend.

I know this: I could not bear to live knowing that I had avoided saving my son from death, even at the expense of my own life. I might have physical life, but my soul would be forever anguished, rendering the physical life also tormented.

Jesus said He came that we might have life, and He freely laid down His own life in His purpose. I know, though, that the life He meant for us to have was not physical life, but spiritual. I know that to obtain this spiritual life, I have to die, not physically – but to my own will.

There must come a time to surrender to God, in yielding my will to His, when what I give up is not only sin, but also even that which is most precious to me. If the truth be known, what is most precious to me is my will.

Abraham was a father. Surely Isaac’s life was more precious to him than his own. Gladly would he yield his own life, but Isaac’s? A father’s will for his son to have life is very strong. With Abraham’s surrender, he gave up the powerful life of his own will. Isaac was spared. Jesus, however, was not spared. He did die.

That’s a radical turnaround, a surprise to the sensibilities. It calls the Son Himself into the picture. The Father freely relinquishes His Son; the Son freely relinquishes His life because of His Father’s love, not only for Him, but also for all His children.

A lot of dying going on, giving up, surrendering. But what’s really dying is any consideration of self. Only by doing that kind of dying, as we are taught by the life and death of Jesus, can anyone obtain the kind of life worth having. – T.R.

written by Thomas A. Russell
first published in the Lafayette Sunday Visitor on September 6th, 1987