Sanctification and Surrender

Sanctification and Surrender
Copyright by Shea Oakley.
All rights reserved.

Sometimes we wonder why the heart-change we know we so desperately need never seems to happen. We pray, we fellowship, we read the Bible and still the old negative patterns re-assert themselves. In time frustration takes its toll and the temptation comes to blame God for not saving us from the things that are so destructive in our lives. On some level, though, we know that He cannot be at fault. If the spiritual life has hit what seems to be a dead-end it is fruitless to blame God. Beyond that, it is also dishonest and deep-down we know this too. There has to be another cause.

That cause might be this: we may be trying to do God’s work on the soul. Sanctification is not brought about by the flesh. The fact that a human being cannot accomplish the transformation implied by that term apart from God is one that most Christians will give intellectual assent. However applying it in our hearts is another matter. It is part of fallen human nature for some of us to try to lift ourselves up by our bootstraps. People who have not had grace modeled for them by the most significant people in their lives are most prone to this particular sin. If you grow up being told you never measure up to some human standard you will be more afflicted by a tendency towards self-effort (Unfortunately, this tendency usually carries over into the Christian life and continues until we are able to forgive these significant people).

The results of pure self-effort can be disastrous. Instead of receiving the loving grace that the Lord intends to use to free human beings from perfectionism individuals prone to relying on their own works resist it. This may be a conscious or unconscious rejection of His help. Either way it sets up a person for failure as long as he or she continues to believe the lie that we cannot trust God to do what we cannot. At this point the reader may protest that surely we must all play a role in our spiritual growth. Yes, but there is a vast distance between “playing a role” and trying to purify ourselves, by ourselves. When we do the latter we make an idol of an innate, personal ability to change that we simply do not have. John 15:5 says that apart from God we can do nothing, nothing good that is.

So how does a person escape this condition? Surrender is key. We must give up on self-improvement and begin to allow “God-improvement” to take over in the construction site that is our heart. This will most likely take time. True surrender to God is rarely accomplished in some one-time flash of insight. Salvation may happen in a moment but sanctification is a process. This is true no matter how hard it is to swallow for those of us raised in an “everything now” culture. It is a process that cannot become what our Lord wills it to be until we relinquish to Him the reigns of our sanctification. It is only in this yielding that we can escape the bondage of self-effort. It is only then that we will begin to reap the blessings that come from the kind of change only God Himself can accomplish in us.