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Bible Dictionaries
Self-Surrender
Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible
or SELF-SURRENDER . 1 . The military metaphor underlying the idea of ‘surrendering oneself’ is suggestive. The keys of the citadel of self are handed over to the rightful Lord, whose most powerful weapons of attack have been the entreaties of His love. The surrender is not for demolition, but for restoration in beauty and strength. It is a voluntary act, implying the ‘presenting’ of ourselves unto God, and involving the ‘presenting’ of our ‘members as instruments of righteousness unto God’ ( Romans 6:13; cf. Romans 12:1 ). A similar conception finds expression in the Gr. word ( hypotassesthai ) which RV [Note: Revised Version.] tr. [Note: translate or translation.] ‘to be subject to,’ lit . ‘to set oneself under.’ The proof that in ‘the mind’ the ruling element is not ‘flesh’ but ‘spirit’ is the absence of hostility to God; this state of ‘life and peace’ is the result of ‘subjecting oneself to the law of God’ ( Romans 8:8 f.; cf. Romans 10:3 , James 4:7 ). In Hebrews 12:9 this unreserved surrender of ourselves to God is represented as the only worthy recognition of His absolute claims, and as, therefore, thoroughly consistent with a due regard to the development of our own personality. To ‘be in subjection to the Father of spirits’ is indeed to ‘live.’ ‘Such absolute subjection is crowned by the highest blessing. True life comes from complete self-surrender’ (Westcott, Com., in loc .).
2 . It depends upon the point of view whether the Christian ideal of life is described as the life of self-surrender or as the life of self-development. Repentance and faith are alike acts in which, at one and the same time, will-will is surrendered and the higher self is realized.
‘Our wills are ours, we know not how,
Our wills are ours to make them Thine.’
Our self-surrender is the condition of the Divine co-operation; His working in us ‘both to will and to do’ enables us to respond to the exhortation: ‘work out your own salvation’ (Philippians 2:12 f.). ‘Every real sacrifice is at the same time self-preservation, namely, preservation of the ideal self’ (Paulsen, System of Ethics , p. 248). ‘To yield oneself up as the organ of a higher spirit which disposes of us as may be fit constitutes the mystic ideal of perfect life’ (Martineau, Types of Ethical Theory , ii. 273). The open secret of that life is revealed in St. Paul’s profound words: ‘I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I that live, but Christ liveth in me’ ( Galatians 2:20 ).
J. G. Tasker.
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Hastings, James. Entry for 'Self-Surrender'. Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/hdb/s/self-surrender.html. 1909.
