Eric Liddell and Complete Self-Surrender

Eric Liddell was the great Scottish runner who was one of two track and field athletes from the United Kingdom whose life stories were featured in the film, Chariots of Fire. Liddell managed to win a gold medal in the 1924 Paris Olympics despite switching from his strongest event to a different event at the last minute in order to avoid competing on a Sunday, which he felt would have violated his strong Christian beliefs. After winning the gold, Liddell became a national hero, and a plethora of prominent and potentially very lucrative career options opened up for him. But Liddell chose to forego all such opportunities in order to become a Christian missionary in China. He was captured in 1943, and he was kept in a Japanese internment camp until his death from brain cancer in February 1945. The last words Liddell uttered before dying were, “It’s complete surrender.”

This was a man who had sacrificed much that the world values in order to answer God’s call for him to serve as a Christian missionary. It therefore seems entirely fitting that his final words should refer to “complete surrender.” Liddell knew what lies at the heart of the Christian life and, indeed, at the heart of the divine life itself: self-surrendering, self-giving love.

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