Freedom in Surrender
Whether you’ve been a believer for a long time or a short time, we all have many things in common. From young to old we all must collectively and individually discover for ourselves what are the open secrets of life and freedom that are found in surrendering to God and His ways.
In order to discover these open secrets of God, we all must come to terms with the truths that are laid out in God’s Word about who we are and what we are doing here. It’s through understanding our identity and purpose from a heavenly point of view that we gain access to experiencing the freedom found in surrendering to God and His ways.
So, what is the heavenly point of view of believers?
1 —
God yearns with intense ferocious love for all humanity.
Because of His intense love, in Jesus God took upon Himself the total weight of all of humanity’s justified punishment. Scripture tells us that Jesus endured the cross with a focus on the joy of bringing salvation.
Because of the joy awaiting him, he endured the cross, disregarding its shame. Now he is seated in the place of honor beside God’s throne.
— Hebrews 12:2 NLT
Because of His immense love for humanity, bringing salvation to all who believe is an immensely joyous occasion.
“Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Doesn’t he leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it? And when he finds it, he joyfully puts it on his shoulders and goes home. Then he calls his friends and neighbors together and says, ‘Rejoice with me; I have found my lost sheep.’ I tell you that in the same way there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent.
— Luke 15:4-7 NIV
Jesus dying on a cross isn’t about God feeling lovey dovey and wanting to send a good message. Because He is a just ruler, judging all people equally without favoritism, the only right response of the heavenly courts to the evil that we commit is a demanded retribution, payment for wrong doing.
He paid the price of freedom on behalf of all who receive His love and sacrifice through faith — because we all have free choice, we cannot be forced to receive His love or the freedom that comes from Him taking the punishment on our behalf. It is by faith that we receive a right standing with God, a right standing that means we are freed from enduring the just punishment upon ourselves. We are at peace with God.
All of the evil acts that are ever committed through our mortal bodies — past, present and future — have been justly condemned in Christ on the cross, setting the record clean and legally freeing us from the moral obligation to fix our own mistakes.
2 —
We have all been set apart by God for His glory.
Being set apart by God is the present day mirror image of the patterns established by God with the nation of Israel. Stemming back to the original 12 tribes of Israel, God set apart the people from the tribe of Levi to be His representatives on behalf of the entire community.
“In this way you are to set the Levites apart from the other Israelites, and the Levites will be mine. “After you have purified the Levites and presented them as a wave offering, they are to come to do their work at the tent of meeting.”
— Numbers 8:14-15 NIV
God is deliberate in His decision to set apart a people for Himself, that through them He would work out His purposes. Bringing about in ancient days the same pattern of change that He is bringing about in our day: spreading truth, beauty and goodness in the communities that the set apart live within.
In so far as believers are set apart, God’s Word elaborates that from the heavenly perspective, being in made new in Christ means that we are actually God’s “ποίημα”(poiēma) — work, creation, handwork, poem — set apart to do good works.
“For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”
— Ephesians 2:10 NIV
What’s more, we are not just pieces of artwork without experience or expression simply just to be looked at or used. God has not just set us apart for service to Himself, but He also personally works in conjunction with our submission to Him to work out our good as well.
“And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.”
— Romans 8:28 NIV
“Know that the Lord has set apart his faithful servant for himself; the Lord hears when I call to him.”
— Psalms 4:3 NIV
3 —
We are all undergoing a process of progressive growth: sanctification.
Never yet on this earth will we be in a fully perfected state. Being justified by God through His sacrifice, set apart by Him through His Spirit, we are continually day by day set free from the power of sin. Until we reach the new heaven and new earth, where we are eternally separated from sin, we are in process.
Jesus prayed for believers in John 17, explicitly asking God to “sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth”. Therefore, it is through God’s Word that we are progressively grown in sanctification.
“Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world. For them I sanctify myself, that they too may be truly sanctified.”
— John 17:17-19 NIV
It is through God’s word that we are progressively and continually set apart and grown into maturity, and it is God’s will that we are sanctified. Maturity being this: a life perpetually set free from the power of sensual enslavement and earthly self promotion, replaced with a life filled with the goodness and richness of God.
“It is God’s will that you should be sanctified: that you should avoid sexual immorality;”
— 1 Thessalonians 4:3 NIV
“Sexual immorality” might seem a bit odd to throw into the mix here. Especially in a sex-crazed world that emphasizes sexual choice as a right we have to exercise as we please. We are told of the good pleasure it can bring us, but like any pleasure it can be taken out of its proper context and turned into something it wasn’t intended to be. God designed sex. He intended for it to be good and pleasurable, but that intention for pleasure does not supersede the intention of goodness that He has for all mankind.
When we take this good pleasure out of its proper context we open the door to become enslaved by sensual and earthly things. We open the door to be captured by a lesser experience of life, reducing the pleasure to something less profound and less important than it truly is.
Reducing ourselves and our bodies to a lesser experience is something that God desires to free us from. He isn’t trying to be a buzzkill and ruin all of our fun, He wishes that we would have the greatest experience of life possible — that of life with Him and the spreading of truth, beauty and goodness. A life that has the good pleasures that He designed inside of their proper context so as to benefit us and not become a hindrance.
We all must yield to God’s Word and ways. This journey of discovering how is a process of self discovery, divine intervention, and discovery of a close personal relationship with the Creator of our souls.
Through learning these “open secrets” of our identity as well as God’s identity, we can know on what basis to approach God. We can discover on what basis God is with us and for us. We can learn what it means that God says we can come to His throne of grace in our time of need:
“Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.”
— Hebrews 4:16 NIV
We can receive the benefits of genuinely being helped by God personally in our times of need. And we can experience the freedom and joy that comes from knowing who we are, knowing who God is, and importantly experiencing what it means to be known by God.
He deeply longs for an experience of deep satisfaction and fulfillment in the lives of all humanity — an experience that can only be found in deep relationship with Him.
I’ll leave you with this:
“Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says, “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion, on the day of testing in the wilderness, where your fathers put me to the test and saw my works for forty years.”
— Hebrews 3:7-9 ESV
“God again set a certain day, calling it “Today.” This he did when a long time later he spoke through David, as in the passage already quoted: “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts.””
— Hebrews 4:7 NIV