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Scripture Reading: 2 Cor. 5:14-15; Rom. 6:13
We appropriate the redemption that God has accomplished in Christ for us through faith. Once we believe, that is, receive the Lord by believing, we obtain God’s redemption. Hence, believing is the first step toward appropriating God’s redemption. In this step we turn from being sinners to being believers, from being worldly to being sanctified, from being in darkness to being in light, and from being in death to being in life. This is a great step.
Even though this is a great step, it is not complete. This step merely causes us to receive, not to enjoy, God’s redemption. Although believing imparts God’s life into us, it is not enough to cause this life to grow in us. After we receive God’s redemption and God’s life, we need a further step to enjoy His redemption so that His life may grow in us. Thus, there is a need for another step to appropriate God’s redemption.
The second step in the appropriation of God’s redemption is consecration. Once we receive God’s redemption and God’s life by faith, we must consecrate ourselves to God to enjoy His redemption so that His life can grow in us. We must take the steps of faith and consecration in order to receive and enjoy God’s redemption, that is, to appropriate God’s redemption fully.
To believe is to receive God and everything of God, and to consecrate is to hand over ourselves and everything to God. Receiving is by believing; handing over is by love. When we believe, we receive everything that God has accomplished and prepared for us in Christ by faith. When we consecrate, we hand over ourselves and our everything to God because of love. By faith we receive God and everything of God; that is, we receive God’s redemption. By handing ourselves over in love, we enjoy God and everything of God; that is, we enjoy God’s redemption.
The purpose of God’s redemption is to conform us to the image of His Son (Rom. 8:29). God accomplishes this purpose by working the life of His Son into us through the Spirit. He works in us so that His life will grow in us unto maturity, and we will fully bear the image of His Son. Ephesians 2:10 says, “We are His masterpiece.” This speaks of God’s work in us, not of our doing anything for Him. After we receive His life through redemption, God does a work of life in us so that His life will grow in us unto maturity, and we will have His image fully. However, in order for Him to work in us, He must have our consent, which is our consecration. Our consecration is our giving Him the consent to work in us as He pleases.
Carpenters who work on wood and craftsmen who work on various materials have no need of consent from lifeless materials. Such materials have no consciousness or opinions. But God cannot work in us without our consent, because we have the highest form of created life. We are persons who have consciousness, opinions, preferences, and choices. If we do not want God to work in us and do not consent to let Him work in us, He will be restricted in His work in us. As living persons, we have deep emotions and a strong will. Consequently, if our will does not allow God to work in us or if our emotions do not accept God’s work in us, God will have no way in us. After our salvation our consent is needed in order for God to work in us. Our consent is our handing over ourselves to Him completely and our letting Him work in us freely. This is consecration.
Many people think that consecration is related to our working for God; this is preached quite often. However, the primary meaning of consecration is not that we would work for God but instead that we would let God work in us. God is responsible for everything in His plan of redemption. God has done some things for us, but He desires to do still more things in us. In order to receive the things that God has done, we need faith. However, in order to receive the things that God still desires to do in us, we need to consent to His work in us through consecration. In our believing we receive what God has done for us; in our consecration we allow God to do what He still wants to do in us. If we do not believe, we cannot receive what He has done for us, and if we do not consecrate ourselves, we are not letting Him do what He wants to do in us. If we believe but do not consecrate ourselves, we will receive what He has done for us, but He will be unable to do what He wants to do in us. Hence, after we believe and receive what He has done for us, He wants us to consecrate ourselves so that He may continue to work in us.
After we are saved, God draws and constrains us with His love so that we would love Him and willingly consecrate ourselves to Him. When we are constrained by His love, He can work in us as He pleases. We can consecrate ourselves only if we have been drawn and constrained by His love. If we have been drawn and constrained by God’s love, our only response will be to love Him and to consecrate ourselves to Him. If we have been drawn and constrained by God’s love, we will love God, and if we have been touched and captured by God’s love, we will consecrate ourselves to God. Once we consecrate ourselves to God, He has an opportunity to work in us. God reveals His love to us so that we would sense His love and be drawn and constrained by His love.
The Gospel of John shows that the Lord wants us to believe into Him and then love Him. Believing into Him causes us to receive Him as life (3:15, 36; 6:40, 47); loving Him causes us to live out His life through His working in us (14:21, 23; 15:10). If we believe into Him but do not love Him, the life that we have received from Him will not grow in us or work in us so that we would be conformed to His image and express Him. Hence, we must love Him as well as believe into Him. Chapter 21 records the story of the Lord leading Peter to love Him. Although Peter believed in the Lord, he was short in loving the Lord; thus, after the Lord resurrected and ascended, He came back to lead Peter to love Him more so that Peter would allow the Lord’s life to work in him according to the Lord’s desire (vv. 15-17).
The maiden in Song of Songs represents every believer, and her pursuit illustrates a loving pursuit that gives the Lord an opportunity to do an inward work in her. Her pursuit comes from receiving a revelation of the Lord’s love and from being drawn by the Lord’s love. The maiden’s pursuit of her beloved, who represents the Lord, and her interactions with the beloved are the result of being drawn by his love. Our loving the Lord gives Him an opportunity to work Himself into us until we are full of His stature. If we want the Lord to work in us, we must be like the maiden and receive a revelation of His love and be drawn by His love to pursue Him. No one can pursue the Lord without being drawn by His love. Only those who pursue the Lord in love will give Him an opportunity to work in them so that they may grow in life unto maturity. We must be drawn by the Lord’s love.
The apostle Paul says, “The love of Christ constrains us...that those who live may no longer live to themselves but to Him who died for them and has been raised” (2 Cor. 5:14-15). This word shows that Paul had been constrained by the Lord’s love; thus, he could count all things as loss and fully pursue the Lord (Phil. 3:8, 12). The Lord caused Paul not only to have faith but also to love Him (1 Tim. 1:14). Paul’s faith toward the Lord enabled him to receive the Lord and the Lord’s life; his love toward the Lord enabled him to consecrate himself to the Lord, to let the Lord work in him so that the Lord’s life would grow in him unto maturity. Paul was filled with the Lord, and he wanted the Lord to be formed in him so that his living might be Christ (Phil. 1:21). He was full of the Lord’s stature because the Lord’s love motivated him to love the Lord and to consecrate himself so that the Lord could gain him and work in him as He pleased. His love toward the Lord was the result of being constrained by the Lord’s love. The Lord constrained Paul with love so that he could be gained by the Lord and let the Lord be worked fully into him.
Receiving by believing enables us to gain the Lord; consecrating because of love enables the Lord to gain us. The Lord must gain us in order to work in us. Only a consecration out of love will enable the Lord to gain us. Hence, the Lord constrains us with His love in order to produce a response in us to love Him, to consecrate ourselves to Him, and to let Him work in us. The Gospels show that the Lord led His disciples to believe in Him before His death and to love Him after His resurrection. The Acts and the Epistles show that the Lord led the disciples to believe and love Him so that He would have an opportunity to work in them and make all that He is available to them as the Spirit. Because the disciples were drawn by the Lord’s love, they loved and followed the Lord and let Him work in them as He pleased. The disciples’ experience applies to all who have followed the Lord throughout the ages. Hence, we must be drawn and touched by the Lord’s love in order to willingly consecrate ourselves to Him. We must be touched and constrained by His love to such an extent that we could only consecrate ourselves to Him and never flee from Him.
Once we have been touched by the Lord’s love and have consecrated ourselves to Him, the Lord’s life, which is the Lord Himself, immediately gains the ground to operate in us, to gradually work everything of the Lord into us. Once we consecrate ourselves to the Lord, the Lord’s life gains the ground to develop and grow in us and to remove every unrighteous, unholy, or improper thing in us so that we may be transformed until we are fully like Him.
Our consecration allows the Lord to work in us. The Lord is waiting for us to give Him the ground. Once we willingly hand ourselves over and consent to let Him work in us, His life will operate in us and give us a sense that we must separate ourselves from this thing or put away another thing. The Lord will give us a sense related to everything that is incompatible with His life or does not please Him. If we are willing to obey this sense, the Lord will remove these things one by one according to the power of His life. This will not come about by outward, doctrinal teaching but by the operation of the might of His life in us. His life is righteous, holy, bright, and divine. When He has the ground, He will remove little by little everything in us that is unrighteous, unholy, dark, or apart from God. From the center of our being, He will spread outward to the circumference of our being step by step. Eventually, with light He will efface everything in us that is dark, and by life He will swallow up everything in us that is dead. In this process we will be transformed into the Lord’s image from glory to glory (2 Cor. 3:18).
A genuine and proper consecration gives the Lord’s life the ground to operate and spread in us by letting Him work in us. As long as we are faithful and remain in our consecration, giving the Lord the ground to work as He pleases, His life will develop and grow in us unto our maturity and perfection (Heb. 10:1, 14).
Since consecration does not emphasize our working for God but rather our letting God work in us, consecration is not focused on outward, behavioral change but on the inner growth of God’s life. Our behavior has no standing in God’s redemption. Our behavior cannot save us, cause us to receive God’s life, or cause us to progress in our growth in God’s life. Our salvation and our receiving of God’s life do not depend on behavior but on believing. In the same way, the growth of God’s life in us does not depend on behavior but on consecration. Just as believing, the receiving of God’s life, is not the issue of behavioral change, consecration is not related to behavioral change.
Consecration is not for us to live a godly life but for us to let God live out from us. Nothing of our working or doing can be brought into God’s redemption. God accomplishes everything in His redemption. In His redemption we receive Him and everything that He has done, and then we let Him work in us as He pleases. Our receiving is through believing, and our letting Him work in us is through consecrating. Although believing in the Lord affects our behavior positively, a change in behavior is not God’s goal. Similarly, although consecrating ourselves to the Lord will affect our behavior, this is not God’s goal. Consecration is not focused on a change in our behavior but on allowing God to work in us for the growth of His life in us.
The Lord does not want us to work or to do anything for Him; He only wants us to give Him the ground to work Himself into us and to be formed in us. The Lord wants us to consecrate ourselves to Him, to hand all the authority over to Him, so that He may work in us as He pleases. Then His life will grow in us, and He will be formed in us (Gal. 4:19), manifesting His glorious image in us (2 Cor. 3:18). As a result of this inward growth, our outward actions will not be an issue of our behavior but of His life. Everything in our living will be the Lord living out from us; it will not be something of our doing. Although others may regard our living as being an expression of our virtues, we will sense only that the Lord is living out His life in us, based on our consecration to Him.
The purpose of God’s redemption is not to change our behavior but to work Himself into us so that we may have His life and express His image. From the beginning to the end of His work in us, God’s only desire is that His life would develop and grow in us until He is formed in us. Only our consecration, our handing ourselves over to Him, gives Him the opportunity to work this out. Only our consecration gives God the authority in us. Thus, only our consecration gives Him the ground to cause His life to grow in us unto maturity.
This is the focus of consecration. If our consecration does not provide the ground for God’s life to grow in us, then our consecration is improper. Proper consecration gives God the ground to do what He wants to do in us so that His life may grow unto maturity. We must examine our consecration in this light and let God gain such a consecration. This is necessary for God’s life to grow within us unto maturity, and it is indispensable for us to enjoy God’s redemption.
Although consecration is a step, it is not something that can be done only once. Consecration is merely a gate that we pass through and a way that we take. Once we have passed through the gate of consecration, we must walk on the way of consecration. Passing through the gate is for walking on the way; this is the order ordained in the Bible. We must first pass through the gate and then walk on the way (Matt. 7:14). After we are saved, we must have a definite time of consecrating ourselves to the Lord, of passing through the gate of consecration, before we can enter into the blessed realm of enjoying the salvation that we obtained by believing. In order to enjoy God’s salvation continually after our initial consecration, we must take the way of consecration by not leaving our consecrated position or losing the reality of our consecration. Whenever we leave our consecrated position and stop living a consecrated life, we will lose the enjoyment of God’s salvation.
We need to continually renew our consecration. Actually, we need to consecrate ourselves to the Lord every morning. Then at every turning point and every juncture in our life, we need a new consecration. Chapters 28 through 29 in the book of Numbers speak of God’s people offering a burnt offering every day, every Sabbath, every month, and at every feast. This typifies our continual consecration to God. Through consecration we enjoy God’s salvation and let the Lord’s life operate and grow in us. We should never cease to consecrate, much less lose our consecration. We must remain in our consecration to enjoy God’s salvation continually. This is our indispensable responsibility.
