Gospel Gal: "MamaBear Monday: Surrender, MacArthur, and a Romans 7 Kind of Day"

Gospel Gal: "MamaBear Monday: Surrender, MacArthur,

and a Romans 7 Kind of Day"
~Marissa Namirr

So, the other day, I posted this statement about surrender that multiple friends clamped onto,  understood, and shared. Others pushed back... hard. I said that the concept of surrender is not to be found in the Bible or in Reformed Theology. To clarify the initial statement I made was in the context of another thread in a Facebook group. The thread was about how much surrendering is "enough", and "I surrender all". Those in my circle get it, but those with a background in Lordship Salvation teaching or Higher Life theology may not. And one person rightly corrected me with a statement on surrender by John Calvin. He did assert that surrender is a thing to be desired, as a result of what has been done for and worked in us in Christ. The Calvin quote below is from The Golden Booklet of the True Christian Life, which is actually an excerpt from Book III of The Institutes of the Christian Religion.  

I was wrong to state that the Reformers didn't teach surrender. However, as this article will show, Reformation teaching does not divorce the teaching of self-denial or yieldedness to Christ from the broader context of its Theology. In the Institutes, Calvin also beautifully states, ...Paul... contends that we are pleasing to God through grace and are accounted righteous through his pardon because nowhere is found that observance of the law for which the reward has been promised. Paul therefore justly makes contraries of the righteousness of the law and of that of the gospel  (Institutes, 2.9.4). Righteousness is not obtained by what we do, but by what Christ has done. Sanctification is not obtained by our doing (surrender) but is the work of God's grace in us. 

So, I could have been clearer and the statement would be better said this way: The concept of "surrender" as taught by Lordship Salvation proponents and Wesleyan Higher Life theology is not found in Scripture or in Historically Reformed theology. Hopefully, this article will shed light on the problems with the word as it's used in so much of the evangelical world. It is more than semantics. It is what is behind the word, the assumptions, assertions, and doctrines associated. 

Pastor Matt Richard asks: "Have you heard of the Keswick Movement? No? I bet you have. You can tell that Keswick theology has impacted you and others when you hear a Christian ‘testimony’ like this:

I was saved when I was nine years old, and I yielded to Christ when I was nineteen.

Did you catch it? I was ‘saved’ when I was nine (step 1). I ‘yielded’ to Christ when I was nineteen (step 2). Jesus saved them, but then they surrendered, emptied, let go and let God when they were nineteen. Do you hear the two-tiered progression? Typically these testimonies end with how the person is apparently living in a completely different Christian dimension; higher and more victorious than they were before. Yes, indeed they were ‘saved’ but they also ‘surrendered.’"

The problems with this two-fold view of salvation are 1. The human recipient of salvation is in the driver's seat. 2. Justification and sanctification are separated. This separation is foreign to Reformed theology. Reformed teachers and believers have only ever known a Whole Christ, Who alone drives, performs, and ensures both our justification and our sanctification, and both benefits of the free grace of God. 

Read the Westminster Shorter Catechism on this topic, here: "What is justification? Justification is an act of God’s free grace, wherein he pardoneth all our sins, and accepteth us as righteous in His sight, only for the righteousness of Christ imputed to us, and received by faith alone. ...What is sanctification?  Sanctification is the work of God’s free grace, whereby we are renewed in the whole man after the image of God, and are enabled more and more to die unto sin, and live unto righteousness."

Also worth noting, Graeme Goldsworthy is on point when he says, "When we approach sanctification as attainable by any means other than the gospel of Christ--the same gospel by which we are converted--we have departed from the teaching of the New Testament. "A justified person is sanctified because he is in Christ, and because God is faithful to complete our salvation. Sanctification does not occur because we surrender, but because God works in us through the Gospel. Read the Epistles. You can't miss this fact if you read them as cohesive letters, which they are. 

On this point, we (Reformed Christians) would agree with John MacArthur. He took a firm stance against the Keswick, Higher Life assertion that we can have justification without sanctification in his book, The Gospel According to Jesus. However, he strays from Reformed theology in suggesting his own version of "surrender". He revises the ordo salutis and his concept of surrender makes yielding or surrendering to Christ's authority a condition for salvation. 

Refer to our article "The Reformation Answers Lordship Salvation". MacArthur's assertion is "'Instead of calling men and women to surrender to Christ, modern evangelism asks them only to accept some basic facts about Him." He adds a fourth element to this definition by saying it also includes a determination of the will to obey. MacArthur writes, “repentance is a critical element of genuine faith” The Gospel According to Jesus). And in the same book, he states: 'Faith obeys. Unbelief rebels. The direction of one's life should reveal whether that person is a believer or an unbeliever. There is no middle ground. Merely knowing and affirming facts apart from obedience to the truth is not believing in the biblical sense.' As my friend and pastor, John Fonville, rightly points out, 'the idea of “surrender” isn’t taught by any of the Reformed confessions but came out of the higher life theology.' Reformed teachers agree that the received Gospel does indeed have as fruit, works of obedience, repentance, good works, but they do not confuse or enmesh faith with that fruit. Implying that obedience is a part of faith contradicts sola fide. Per Michael Horton, Reformed theologian and scholar,"...the classical evangelical definition of saving faith encompasses three elements: knowledge (an intellectual grasp of the facts), assent (the conclusion that these facts are true), and trust (the conviction that these true facts are true in my case and for my salvation)." It is also noteworthy that Horton makes no allusion to surrender, rather to ways of grasping the truth of the Gospel." 

So, back to the original post in question, I do not deny that the concept of yielding to God's Spirit and will are found in Scripture, nor do I claim that that obedience and turning from sin are foreign of Reformed Theology. Further, I affirm with the writers of the Heidelberg Catechism that Jesus, the Son and second person of the Trinity, is the Christ, the Anointed One. He is not only Lord, but Prophet, Priest and King. And when I say I am a Christian, I own that "I am a member of Christ by faith, and thus am partaker of His anointing; ...so I may confess His name, and present myself a living sacrifice of thankfulness to Him; and also that with a free and good conscience I may fight against sin and Satan in this life, and afterwards reign with Him eternally over all creatures." ~Heidelberg Catechism LD 12

At the same time, I would be remiss if I did not add that my "surrender" and willingness to perform all of all that is stated in LD 12 is not perfected in this life. I affirm with the writers of the Heidelberg Catechism: "even the holiest have only a small beginning of this obedience" (LD 44). For the Christian, every day is a Romans 7 kind of day. "The normal Christian life is not onward and upward, but more often one step forward, two steps back. It's a struggle that will not completely end in victory until we are translated at the Consummation. We do not suffer from over-realized eschatology. We affirm that we are utterly dependent, sinful creatures who boast in nothing but Christ and Him crucified."~"The Reformation Answers Lordship Salvation": Marissa Namirr and Joy Dudley. 

We struggle with sin, and again and again face it, acknowledge it, confess it, and look back to Christ Who yielded perfectly to His Father in our place. Back to the original post...  "He came down from Heaven and always did what pleased the Father (John 8:29). We need Him because we do not do this. We can rest in the fact that He did." Our focus shifts from what we've done, what we'll do now, to what has been done for us. Jesus, not our will or ability to surrender all, gives us hope and assurance. 

You can listen to the YouTube episode by the same title as this article here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vEZj_q4cCbI&t=227s&ab_channel=Marissa

 

Sources noted: 
1. My Facebook Post: https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=10227286904982063&set=a.10201327030761432
2. The Golden Booklet of the True Christian Life: John Calvin
3. The Institutes of the Christian Religion: John Calvin

4. "Keswick Theology: The Exhaustion Of Trying To Yield More, Surrender More, And Let Go-Let God": Matt Richard

5. Westminster Shorter Catechism
6. The Gospel in Revelation: Graeme Goldsworthy

7. "The Reformation Answers Lordship Salvation": Gospel Gal: Marissa Namirr and Joy Dudley

8. The Gospel According to Jesus: John MacArthur

9. Christ the Lord: Michael Horton

10. Heidelberg Catechism