Self-surrender (Hastings' Dictionary)

By this title we may understand to be indicated the fundamental principle of Christianity on its subjective side, riie roots of it may be traced back in the OT and further to the jirimitive instincts of religion. Schleierniacher's deUnition of religion as ' the sense of dependence' is defective and one-sided in leaving out of account this most essential element. It is seen in an extreme form in the extravagance of pagan fanaticism.

The Indian fakir, the yogi who abandons himself entirely to religious devotion, aims at making the most absolute surrender of his life and person ; and yet it is seen that pride, self- will, vanity, and various self-regarding attections are not excluded by the extremity of fanaticism, and therefore some deeper if not more demonstra- tive experience must be looked for in real self- surrender. The OT prepares for this, and the NT shows the way of completely realizing it. i.

Self-Surrender in the OT.— (a) This is an important element of the Hebrew faith in its various phases. In the patriarchal history it appears in the submission and obedience of Abraham and his family in leaving Ur of the Chaldees and migrating to an unknown land where they must live a no- madic life in response to the call of God ((4n I'2'"°), and in the subsequent conduct of I.saac (2t;''*) and Jacob (28'""-). In the prophets it is apparent as the very foundation of their work and mission.

The prophet is not an involuntary instrument in the hands of God through whom the Divine will is declared. Before he receives his message he sur- renders himself to the call of God ; he must be a ' man of God ' if he is to be a ' seer.' Moses sur- renders his prospects at the court of Pharaoh in the passion of patriotism ; and later, receiving his call at the buniin'C bush, gives himself up to the service of God as His ambassador to Pharaoh.

A spirit of complete self-surrender is seen later in his willingness to be blotted out of God's book that the ollending peoi)le might be forj,'iven (Ex 3'2'^). Kuth's devotion to her mother-in-law, though issuing in a great act of .self-surrender (Kii I"'-"), has only a secoiulary bearing on the giving up of self to (Jod. Samuel is dedicated to God from his birth by his mother (IS 1"), and his subsequent career shows that he confirmed this dedication by his own conduct.

Elijah throughout his adven- turous career manifests a life completely given up to the service of God in face of the greatest dangers. Elisha, responding to the call of the older prophet, takes solemn farewell of his parents and the circle of his friends at a final feast (1 K 19^'), which may have furnished Levi the publican with the precedent for his similar action (Lk S-"-'). Amos leaves his herds and his orchards to go as God's messenger to the dissolute court of Jeroboam II. at Bethel.

But the typical act of prophetic self -surrender is seen in the case of Isaiah, who gives us a full account of God's call and liis response in a vision at the temple (Is 0). Jeremiah, shrinking from the diflicult task laid on him, but going to it with the supreme courage of a naturally timorous man who is braced to face danger by a strong sense of duty and a full faith in God, lives his martyr lifi' in the spirit of entire self-sacritice.

(6) When we turn from the history to the teach- ing of the OT, we find that this supremo act of religion is repeatedly insisted on. 'The prophets call uiKjn the people to give themselves up to God- Hosea invites the unfaithful to return (Hos 14'' '•') Isaiah, denouncing the sin of Jenisalem as unfaith fnluess and rebellion (1'"'^), calls the people back 434 SELF-SUEREXDER SELF-SURRENDER to their loyalty, and promises a redemption that implies a return to Goa iu the spirit of submission (v.'-').

Early in the Captivity, Ezekiel sketches the ideal of a restored nation fully devoted to God, and in Deutero-Isaiah the restored Israel appears as a people given up to the service of God. The completed Pentateuch gives a large place to the i<lea of self-surrender on the part of the Jewish people. The whole nation is lioly, i.e. set apart for God {e.a. Ex 19» 22^').

The Levites and the priests are dedicated to God in an especial way for the performance of specific functions, but not to the exclusion of the self-dedication of the laity. Thus the people generally are expected to ' sanc- tify ' themselves and to be ' holy ' {e.g. Lv 20'). Among the sacrifices the bumt-otfering (6lah, i.e. ' that which goes up') was especially significant of the self-surrender of the man who offered it.

This was entirely consumed on the altar (therefore thought of as a ' whole oft'ering'), while other sacrifices were eaten in whole or in part by the priests and the worshippers. As the smoke as- cended to lieaven the essence of the Wctim was supposed to pass up to Jehovah, and represented the oii'erer, who was thus supposed to give himself up to God under the symbol of his sacrifice (see Bennett, Theol. of OT, pp. 148, 149, and art. Sacrifice). ii. Self-surrender in the NT.

— (a) This is first presented to us in the life of Jesus Christ, whose whole course consists in the abandonment of self and self-interest In order to do the will of God ; which is summarized in sayings reported in the Fourth Gospel, ' My meat is to do tlie will of him that sent me, and to accomplish his work ' (Jn 4*); ' I came down from heaven not to do mine own viil, but the wUl of him that sent me ' ((i^'), and described in Hebrews by the ajiplication to Christ of Ps 40 ' Lo, I am come to do thy will ' (He 10').

The agony in the garden reveals the spirit of perfect self -surrender under the severest trial when our Lord cries, 'Howbeit, not what I will, but what thou wilt' (Mk 14**), and the endurance of the passion consummated in the crucifixion completes the sacrifice. (6) Jesus Christ invites His disciples to a similar life of self-surrender. That is seen outwardly in the call of the Twelve, which leads each to give up his work and his liome in order to follow Christ. At Cffsare.

a Philippi the underlying principle is made a rule of universal application when our Lord says, ' If any man would come after me, let liim deny himself {aTraprriadcrBa ^oi/rii'), and take up liis cross, and follow me ' (Mk 8", Mt 16", Lk 9"— Luke has ' take up his cross daily '). Plainly, this means much more than what we commonly under- stand by self-denial, i.e. the giving up of certain of the conveniences of life.

The essential difference is that it involves the abandonment of self altogether as the end of life (see Swete, St. Mark, in loc. ). The word rendered ' deny ' {i-rapvioimi, stronger than ipvloiun, and meaning a more thorough abandonment, suggested by the prefix iirb) is used for St. Peter's denial of Christ (Mk H**) and for the denial in the presence of the angels of those who deny Christ on earth (Lk 12").

But while the absoluteness of the surrender is thus demanded, certain mistaken forms of self-denial are excluded. The notion does not involve asceticism or any form of self-torture. Primarily it is negative ; it is requisite as a preliminary condition to following Christ, which is the real object to be aimed at, not commended as a meritorious act on its own account. Self must be renounced in order that Christ may be followed.

Further, there is no idea of the abandonment of the ego in the destruction of the personality, or the fusing of the individual in the aniversal being of God. Christ's teaxihing does not tend in this pantheistic direction. Tlie very appeal to the act of self-renunciation brings in the idea of the will that is to perform it (el m 8i\ei), and that will is equally requisite for the following of Christ, which is to be the subsequent aim of His servant.

The disciple is to follow Christ as an individual personality, walking after his blaster, though in the Master's footprints ; not to merge his own consciousness and activity in the being and life of Christ. But while the individu- ality of the ego is to be thus preserved, thesurrender of the will in submission and obedience is to be unconditional and complete. Probably we should regard our Lord's hard sayings on the subject of riches in the light of this primary condition.

That He did not lay down a rule of poverty as a uni- versal condition of discipleship is proved by the fact that some of His disciples who possessed pro- perty were not required to sacrifice it, e.g. Zacchaeus, the Bethany household, the mother of St. Mark — in whose house the Church met after the resurrec- tion.

Therefore the difficulty of a rich man in entering the kingdom of Goa, concerning whioli Jesus spoke with great emphasis, must be found in the entanglement of worldly goods hindering the complete surrender of will, and not in the hard necessity of giving up all the possessions.

The case of tlie young ruler, who, when asked what he should do to obtain eternal life, was told to sell all he possessed and give it to the poor, stands by itself : we have no other instance of such a demand, and therefore it is just to conclude that it had a specific application to this man, his wealth being his fatal hindrance, and a career of discipleship being open to him if he would abandon all his worldly goods to follow Christ with the peasants and fishermen.

Thus riches may be classed with the hand, or foot, or eye that is to be cut off or plucked out if the member offend. Poverty />ers6 IS no more required as a condition of membership in the kingdom of God than mutilation.

But if any hindrance is found in what seems most valu- able and our own by right — even a limb of the body — so that the precious thing must be aban- doned rather than that the life should be mined, much more must this process be followed in the case of what is so extraneous as material wealth. For a full discussion of this position see Wendt, Lehre Jesu, pp. 376-389 [Eng. tr. ii. 58 ff.]

While absolute surrender to the will of God is thus required by Christ at any cost, pure altruism is not demanded. The ' golden rule,' which may be regarded as the primary law of Christian ethics, enjoins that we should do to others as we would wish them to do to us, on the principle that we should love our neighbours as ourselves, where some self-regarding thought is allowed, since this is expressly named as the measure of our feelings and actions towards others.

Still it is to be ob- served that the more advanced teaching of the Fourth Gospel carries us beyond this line of measurement >vith the ' new commandment,' — perhaps new in contrast with the old command- ment about love to our neighbour, — inculcating love like Christ's {'even as I have loved you,' etc., Jn 13**), because His love involved complete self-sacri- fice for the saving of others.

In the same way Jesus spoke of the necessity of bearing the cross, not meaning the endurance of some hardship, but the readiness to face death, like the condemned man who carries his cross to the place of execution { and He laid Aovra the great principle contained in the words, ' Whosoever would (or rather wishes to, BiXj]) save his life shall lose it ; and whosoever shall lose his life for my sake and the gospel's, shall save it' (Mk S" etc.)

Confusion has come into the interpretation of this passage through the two senses of the word f tixi), as life and soul, being SELF-SUEREXDER SENAAII 435 introduced ; but the prenous sentence about tlie cross, an instrument of capital punishment, should make it clear tliat it is not the soul, especially as we now understand the word 'soul,' but the life, that is here referred to. The Gr. word is used in the same sense in Mk lO'", where Jesus speaks of Living His ifvx'^, i.e.

His life, in the sense of giving Himself up to die. The piussage, then, means that whoever is willing to face martjTdom for his Christian faith shall save his life— i.e. live on in spite of being killed, by entering into the eternal life; while he who makes it his aim to escape martyrdom will really die, because he will miss the eternal life. Here the self -surrender, even to the e.\tent of suffering a martyr's death, i.e.

the surrender which will face that extremity if neces- sary, is what Christ requires, not in every case the actual endurance of the martyrdom, — for the sen- tence is hypothetical. But this self-surrender is not tlie end, it is the means through which we are to enter into life. In a larger application of the essential principle it may be said that we must re- nounce ourselves in order to realize ourselves.

The end then, as we saw above in another connexion, IS not self-abnegation, much less is it extinction of being, or loss of personality and conscious existence, Buddhist iVirrana, or Hindu absorption in Brahm, but the very opposite — the full, enduring, conscious activity known as eternal life. (c) In St. Paul's Epistles this principle comes out with regard to the mystical union of the Christian with Christ.

He die's with Christ (Col 2«') ; he is crucified with Christ (Gal 2™) ; through the cross of Christ the world has been crucified to him, and he to the world (6") ; the old man is crucified with Christ (Ilo 6"). The last of these phrases throws light on the others. St. Paul is thinking of the pre-Christian condition, the life of sin and the world. This is so completely put away in Christ that it is said to be killed, crucified.

The apostle means more than repentance ; he is thinking of an actual end of tlie old thoughts, aflectiims, desires, habits. But the peculiarity of his teach- ing is that this result is brought auout by union willi Cliiist, and especially by an inward, spiritual assimilation to His death. 'Thus, on our part, the cause is self -surrender to Jesus Clirist, for Him to be the supreme commanding influence over the soul.

Then this same surrender to Christ, result- ing in union with Him and assimilation to His experience, carries the soul on to a resurrection. Accordingly, St. Paul writes of Christians as being 'raised together witli Christ' (Col 3')- Writing of his own experience, the apostle declares that it is no longer he that lives, but Christ who lives in him (Gal 2-*). This, which may be called the mystical element in St.

Paul's thought, links itself to his ralibinical and legal view of redemption as an act of justification by God which we rccc^ive through faith. The bond of union between the two parts of the apostle's teaching may be found in his ideas on faith. It is faith that secures the grace of for- giveness, and so places the guilty person in a state of justification. Now, faith with St. Paul is not merely intellectual a.ssent to dogma; it is personal trust in and adhesion to Christ.

But such a con- dition of soul is the very surrender which secures the mystical union with Christ. Thus the two experiences — the .subjective dying and rising, and the objective forgiveness and justification — spring out of the same act on our part, the faith that implies self-surrender. Further, out of this an<l its results arise moral obligations to continual self- renunciation for the service of Christ and the l>enefit of mankind.

Tlie Christian is not his own, because he has lieen bought with a price (1 Co 0'»- »). There- fore a special obligation is on him to spend his life in unselfish service.

For the same reason he must avoid unchastity, since his bod 3- is a temple if the Holy Ghost Christians are exhorted to present their boclies to Goil as a living sacrifice, an act w hich the apostle calls ' reasonable service ' (XoytKiiv XaTptlaf), perhaps meaning 'spiritual service' in contrast to the external service of Judaism (Ko 12'). ((/) The Epistle to the Hebrews, treating cliieHy of Christ and His work, does not devote much attention to the subjective side of religion.

Still it exalts faith as the secret of spiritual power and heroism, and this faith involves the renunciation of self in accepting the help of God to do His will. Thus one instance is that of Moses, who gave up the treasures of Egypt, enduring ' as seeing him who is invisible' (He 11"). (e) St.

Peter describes Christians as persons who were going astray but are now returned to the Shepherd and Bishop of their souls (1 P 2^) ; and this return involves surrender to obedience, since the sheep of the flock follow their shepherd.

(/) In the Johannine writings the act of self- renunciation does not come fonvard so prominently on its own account as elsewhere in the NT ; but it is even more completely involved in the require- ments that correspond to the Divine side of religion than in the other apostolic writings. The new- birth of which Jesus speaks to Nicodemus (Jn 3'"') requires the surrender of self in the abandonment of pride and self-sulliciency, in order that it may be experienced.

To drink of the water of life, to eat the bread of life, to follow the Light of the World, are actions that require the abandonment of all claims to self-sufficiency. Then St. John demands faith as the great condition on our part for the reception of eternal life (1 Jn 5").

At the same time, in the prominence which he gives to this gift of eternal life as a present possession, it is plain that he does not teach any doctrine of the abandonment of the human personalitj' for absorption in the Divine. W. F. Adeney.