Part 6

(2.) But this is not all, for true holiness is a Divine gift as much as pardon. It is not an uncommon thing to find a kind of vague idea that we are to find the holiness, and God the pardon; the certain result of which is that there is no progress in the one, and no joy in the other. But that is not the teaching of the Gospel. According to the Sacred Scripture all the Three Persons of the one Godhead are engaged in our sanctification. In this passage, _e.g._, it is ascribed to God the Father, as its author, and God the Holy Ghost as the agent; in the first Epistle to the Corinthians, our Lord and Saviour is said to be ‘made unto us sanctification:’ so that He bears the very title of Jesus, because it is His office to ‘save His people from their sins.’ If, therefore, we are made holy, it is by the power of the Holy Ghost carrying out the purpose of the Father, and dwelling within the soul through the mediation of the Son; it is the sacred act of Divine power carrying into effect the Divine Covenant through the mediatorial work of the Lord Jesus Christ. And here you see in a moment the office of faith. Faith is the act of the soul casting itself on the Covenant, and on the Lord Jesus Christ revealed in Scripture as the Mediator of the Covenant. If you fight your own battle for holiness you may struggle hard, and struggle long, but you are sure to fail. You may try any expedient you please,—rules of life, books of self-examination, anything; but it won’t do. The old sin of your fallen heart will keep cropping up just as strong as ever; and you will find yourself a year hence no nearer to the mark than you are now, for the holiness at which you are aiming is not holiness through faith. If you thirst for holiness, you must throw yourself into the arms of the Son of God, that He, by the mighty power of the Holy Ghost, may do that which you cannot do,—make you holy; or, according to the text, purify your heart by faith. There is a great danger of our being partial in our trust: of trusting Him for pardon, but not for holiness. But He teaches us to trust Him equally for both. The promise, ‘I will put my law into their inward parts, and write it in their hearts,’ is just as much a promise of the Covenant as that other promise, ‘I will forgive their iniquities, and I will remember their sins no more.’ You may therefore trust Him to write His law on your heart just as much as you may trust Him for the forgiveness of your sin.

It does not follow from this that the two gifts will be completed at the same time, or in the same way: the writing of the law on the heart is through a gradual process of Divine education; the blotting out of sin, an immediate act complete at once in the mind of God: but both are acts of the great Deliverer, and for both equally it is the joy of our hearts to trust Him. Trust Him, therefore, to work out a holiness in your soul just as you trust Him to have given you the forgiveness of your sin. If you are trusting Him for imputed righteousness,—that is, trusting Him for having wrought out such a work in your behalf that you are already ‘made the righteousness of God in Him,’—trust Him also for personal holiness; that by the power of the Holy Ghost your character may be conformed to your position. There are many powers by which you may gain many victories, but there is only one by which you can overcome the world: viz., that described by St. John when he said, ‘This is the victory that over-cometh the world, even our faith.’ Be sure, then, that that power is sufficient; so that, trusting Christ, you may rest assured of victory. You are not condemned to toil on in a condition of disheartening hopelessness; but you may enter on each day of your life in the happy and peaceful assurance, not that you are perfect, but that you have perpetually at hand a loving Lord fully able by His own omnipotence to overcome in you your besetting sin. So you may go up from the wilderness leaning on the Beloved, and by God’s grace may walk with Him to victory. Past failures must teach you your own most terrible corruption; but God’s truth may assure you of His sufficiency: so that at the very moment of your own most utter helplessness, when you are ready to cry, ‘Oh, wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?’ you may reply to your own question in the triumphant language of the Apostle, ‘I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord.’

CONSECRATION.

‘I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.’—ROM. xii. 1.

A GREAT deal has been lately said on the subject of consecration; and we may all rejoice in having our attention directed to it, as we all require a much higher standard than we have ever yet known of self-abandoning dedication to the Lord. We all need to know more fully and more experimentally the real meaning of such words as these: ‘Whether we live, we live unto the Lord, or whether we die, we die unto the Lord; whether we live, therefore, or die, we are the Lord’s.’ It is most important then that we understand what we mean by consecration. It is clearly quite distinct from that Divine act of separation in which God, by the power of the Holy Ghost, separates His own elect, and incorporates them into Christ. It is also quite distinct from the submission of the soul when it ceases to go about to establish its own righteousness, and submits itself unto the righteousness of God, though in the inaccurate phraseology of some modern writings it sometimes appears to be confounded with it. To consecrate any thing is to set it apart as a holy gift unto the Lord; and, therefore, when we speak of consecration, or self-consecration, we mean that which St. Paul described of the Churches of Macedonia, when he said, ‘They first gave their own selves to the Lord.’ It is the voluntary act of the loving and believing heart yielding itself up to a blessed Saviour, to be henceforth holy unto God. It is in this sense that I am about to speak of it now,—not considering the word so much as the thing,—and hoping that, by God’s great grace, all amongst us who know the Lord may be enabled to yield ourselves, as we have never yet done, to His service.

There are few passages of sacred Scripture which will give us a better summary of the subject than this verse. It contains four points, to which I would draw your particular attention.

I. This consecration is a sacrifice. I need not say that it is not a sacrifice for the blotting out of sin: it cost more to redeem our souls, so we must let that alone for ever. It is the sacrifice of thanksgiving, corresponding to the meat-offering in the law of types,—the sacrifice of the thankful heart presenting its thank-offering to God. Regarding it then as prefigured by the meat-offering, we may learn two lessons respecting it.

(1.) It implies complete surrender. Under the ancient law every sacrifice was wholly given up to God. Whatever was brought to the altar was given up without reserve. No part of it was taken back to the home of the offerer. People might give what they pleased, but when it was given it was no longer their own, but God’s. And so it is with us. If we have given ourselves to the Lord, we are no longer our own: ‘Whether we live or die, we are the Lord’s.’ There is, however, this difference between the Jewish sacrifice and ours. In the case of the ancient sacrifices, when the sacrifice was a living animal, it was always put to death, and part of it burned as a sweet savour unto God: but it is not so with us. According to this text, it is a living sacrifice that we are called to offer; it is the continued life that we are to surrender. We are not now called to die for Him, as martyrs and many of our missionaries have done, but to live for Him in that state of life in which it has pleased God to call us. The sweet savour that is to rise from our sacrifice is to be the sweet savour of Christian holiness, the holy fragrance of Christian character.

(2.) This sacrifice is well pleasing to God. The meat-offering was described as ‘an offering made by fire of a sweet savour unto the Lord:’ so this sacrifice is said in the text to be ‘acceptable unto God.’ It does not say that it can fulfil the law, or be perfect before God; for there is a vast difference between that which can fulfil the law and that which can please Him. Nothing imperfect can fulfil the law, but the utterly imperfect service of a loving heart may be well-pleasing in His sight. Thus it is that He declares our sacrifice to be acceptable to Himself; and while we seek to yield all we have to Him, and for His sake ‘to do good and to communicate,’ we may have the delight and encouragement of knowing that ‘with such sacrifices God is well pleased.’ (Heb. xiii. 16.)

II. It is a sacrifice of the whole man. In the first verse the body only is mentioned: ‘Present your bodies a living sacrifice;’ which evidently has reference to the Jewish type, and teaches that we are not to offer the body of a lamb, or a goat, or a heifer, but our own. But the next verse teaches us that the appeal is not limited to the offering of the body, for there we read that we are to be ‘transformed by the renewing of our _mind_, that we may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect will of God.’ It is clear, therefore, that the whole man is to be included in the gift. Now I sometimes meet with subtle distinctions between the soul and the spirit, and the emotions and the will, and I am quite ready to admit that they may be all correct and very interesting: but I do not care to stop to distinguish between the different parts or faculties, for God’s call lays claim to them all. Whatever they are, and whereinsoever they differ, the desire of our heart should be that they should all as one whole be given up to Him. In whatever position He has placed us,—whether that of parents, children, masters, servants, men of business, men of wealth, tradesmen, labourers, or clergymen,—that position is to be occupied for Him; and whatever faculties He has given us,—whether a powerful intellect, a good memory, a warm heart, a tender conscience, a vigorous body, a good constitution, or an ample fortune,—all, all belong to Him who has redeemed us by His own most precious blood. When we give up ourselves we give up everything,—our wills, and emotions, and powers, and energies, our hearts, and heads, and hands,—to be yielded up to Him, and employed by Him and for Him, as He sees best for His own glory.

III. This consecration is the result of mercy. The latter words of the text show that it is ‘a reasonable service;’ or, in other words, that it is not the result of mere feeling, impulse, or emotion, but the deliberate and well-considered decision of a thoughtful mind. The passage corresponds to those words in 2 Cor. v. 14: ‘The love of Christ constraineth us because we thus judge;’ where you see the union between the heart and the head. The constraining love is the result of the judgment, the blessed fruit of the deep convictions of the understanding: so that those who feel it may give a reason, not only for the hope that is in them, but also for the love that fills their heart. There are certain great facts on which the judgment rests, and the believing assurance of these facts is the means employed by the Holy Spirit to call forth the devotedness of love.

Now what are these facts? What is it that possesses this love-producing power? In the passage from the Corinthians there is one great fact mentioned: viz., the propitiatory death of the Lord Jesus Christ. ‘If one died for all, then were all dead,’ ‘or died.’ They died in Him, inasmuch as they were represented by Him; and it is that great fact which is said to produce the constraining love. In this passage no one fact is mentioned, but the appeal is made to the whole multitude of His mercies: ‘I beseech you, therefore, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice.’ Throughout the Epistle St. Paul had been showing that we are all saved by mercy. In the eleventh chapter he had enlarged on the mercy by which we Gentiles are now saved in Christ Jesus and the mercy about to be manifested towards the Jews, till he arrives at the conclusion that ‘God hath concluded all in unbelief, that He might have mercy upon all.’ Then he bursts forth in the exclamation, ‘Oh the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God!’ and follows it up by the appeal of the text: ‘I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God.’ If such mercy has been shown you, if, notwithstanding all your unbelief, by boundless and unmerited mercy you have been saved and made one even with Christ Himself, is it now too much to ask of you that, without delay and without reserve, you yield your whole lives to His service?

I believe it is impossible for us to be too careful in observing this connexion between consecration and mercy, for in the very vague theology of the present day there is a great deal which certainly has the appearance of teaching that the blessed peace of a union with Christ is to be the result of entire consecration. But we are here taught, not that we are to reach mercy as the result of the completeness of our consecration, but that, having realized mercy, we should yield ourselves in consecration to God. That union with the Lord Jesus must be given through the personal appropriation of the mercy of God in Him; and we should regard with the utmost jealousy any teaching which, either intentionally or unintentionally, turns the thoughts inwards to analyze the extent of consecration, with a view to obtaining the blessing of that union, instead of rather diverting all thoughts to the fulness of mercy in Christ Jesus, and so calling forth out of His fulness the abounding love of a consecrated heart.

This great truth is well brought out in our Communion Service. You remember those words of self-consecration in which we have so often united, words founded on this very text: ‘Here we offer and present unto Thee, O Lord, ourselves, our souls and bodies, to be a reasonable, holy, and lively sacrifice unto Thee.’ Now in the first Prayer-book of Edward VI. that prayer stood before the reception of the Lord’s Supper, as if we were first to complete an act of self-consecration, and then upon the strength of it feed on Christ: so our Reformers changed its position, and put the prayer after the reception instead of before it, in order to show that when we want to feed on Christ Jesus, to dwell in Him and He in us, we must come to His footstool as poor sinners, forgiven and accepted through His most precious blood; and that when we have been thus permitted to ‘sit under His shadow with great delight, and to find His fruit sweet to our taste,’ the next thing for us all to do is to kneel down with a full and thankful heart, and yield ourselves, body, soul, and spirit, to His service.

IV. This consecration should be continually renewed and deepened. In our Communion Service we renew our self-dedication every time that we receive the Lord’s Supper, for every time we say the same words: ‘Here we offer and present ourselves . . . to be a reasonable, holy, and lively sacrifice unto Thee.’ In doing this I firmly believe we are right; and that we are so seems clearly proved by the text. The Romans, to whom these words were addressed, were ‘beloved of God, called to be saints’ (i. 7); they had ‘become servants of God’ and had ‘their fruit unto holiness.’ (vi. 22.) There can be no doubt, therefore, as to their past surrender to His service; but, notwithstanding that, they were exhorted afresh to ‘present their bodies a living sacrifice,’ and afresh to ‘yield themselves unto God.’ (vi. 13.) So we are not to look on our consecration as a single act, completed at a certain moment, and afterwards to be regarded as a finished thing; but rather as a habit and attitude of mind, deepening with our depth, strengthening with our strength, and growing with our growth. As we grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, we shall grow also in the deep sense of mercy. His love passeth knowledge, and it will take eternity to learn its fulness. And His mercy corresponds with His love: it is ‘from everlasting to everlasting upon them that fear Him;’ it is ‘high as the heaven is above the earth;’ and as no astronomer can measure the height of the fixed stars, and as no finite mind can take in the idea of an infinite eternity, so none of us, no, not even the most advanced believer, can fathom the depths or scan the heights of the free, unfettered, everlasting mercy of our God. But as we grow in the knowledge of Him and of ourselves, we shall learn more and more of it. The more we know of the covenant of God,—the more we see of the Lord Jesus, in His person, His character, and His work,—the more we know of our own hearts, and discover the exceeding sinfulness of our ruined nature, and the more we see of the perfect adaptation to our utmost wants of the Divine salvation wrought out for us in Christ Jesus,—so much the more shall we know of mercy. Every day in the believer’s life brings with it a fresh lesson in mercy, and every prayer that we pray to a reconciled Father should bring home to us with fresh power the deep debt we owe to mercy.

And now you see in a moment how it is that there should be a continued and constantly repeated renewal of self-consecration. Every fresh discovery of mercy should lead at once to fresh surrender. If you are looking on mercy as some distant thing, which you have often heard of and wish to reach, but cannot, I see not, for my part, how it should have any great power over your life; for, though it looks very beautiful, you cannot say that it has brought any benefit to you. If you have never felt your own deep need of it, and never learned your utter ruin, and have therefore never realised your condemnation before God, I see not how the tidings of mercy should have any great power upon you, for no man really cares for the remedy until he has been taught by God’s Spirit to feel his need. But if you have discovered yourself to be utterly and hopelessly lost, condemned alike by your own conscience and by the law of God; and if in the midst of your ruin you have, by God’s rich love in Christ Jesus, ‘obtained mercy;’ if you can look on His mercy in having redeemed you by His blood, in having called you by His Spirit, in having saved you by His grace, in having given you a blessed hope of His everlasting kingdom,—then indeed I cannot doubt that God has long since called you to a real consecration to His service. But if this be so, and if God has since been bringing you to a deeper sense of sin, and at the same time opening your heart to understand more of His mercy; if He is step by step making manifest to you ‘the depth, and length, and breadth, and height,’ and causing you to ‘know the love of Christ that passeth knowledge:’ then I can see very clearly that all past consecration must appear to your own heart as nothing, and that, ‘forgetting those things that are behind, and reaching forth unto those things that are before,’ you will be ready again to kneel down at His feet, and with fresh love and fresh thanksgiving, yield yourselves afresh to Him, to be His, and His for ever. You may have long since given yourself to the Lord; but if you are this day really permitted ‘to feed on Him—in your heart—by faith—with thanksgiving, you will be prepared to kneel down afterwards and say, ‘Here we offer and present unto Thee, O Lord, ourselves, our souls and bodies to be a reasonable, holy, and lively sacrifice unto Thee.’

PRAYER.

‘I am Thine, save me; for I have sought Thy precepts.’—PSALM cxix. 94.

WE studied last Sunday the subject of consecration as taught us in the words of the Apostle Paul, in which he exhorted us to ‘present our bodies a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable unto God.’ I trust the result has been that many amongst us have so realised the multitude of God’s mercies that, under the deep sense of profound thanksgiving, we have knelt down before Him, afresh to yield ourselves to His service. If so, the question arises, What next? If the sacrifice of ourselves has been offered by us and accepted by God, into what position have we been brought, and what are we to expect in our future life? Are we to expect to be so set free from the impediments of sin, and so filled with holy love and joy that we shall be gently wafted heavenward, without either a conflict or a difficulty? or, are we to expect a stiff, hard warfare to the end, with a certain hope of victory through the perfection of our Leader’s power, but with all the accompaniments of a deadly struggle until the victory is won and Satan bruised under our feet for ever? I regard this question as one of the utmost importance, for if we look for that which God has not promised, our very faith will lead to disappointment; whereas if we do not look for that which He has really promised, we shall clearly never rise to the high standard of His Word. To this question then I purpose to turn your thoughts this morning, and I pray God that the Holy Spirit may teach us all, and lead us rightly to understand, and truly to act on, His Word.

This text appears to throw great light on the subject, for in the first clause the Psalmist actually pleads before God the recognised fact of a past and present consecration. He does not say, ‘I wish to be Thine,’ or ‘I hope to be Thine,’ or ‘I pray Thee to make me Thine,’ but he says, ‘Lord, I am Thine,’ and no one could say that unless he had already yielded himself to God. But it is not consecration only that is expressed when the believer says, ‘Lord, I am Thine;’ for the consecration of which I was speaking last Sunday is a human act,—it is our own surrender of our own powers to God; and when we look closely at anything we do we may well remember the words of the prophet, ‘How weak is thine heart!’ If we can truly say in faith, ‘Lord, I am Thine,’ we must rely on something a great deal better than our own consecration of ourselves. We belong to the Lord Jesus by virtue of the eternal covenant to which He referred when He said, ‘My Father which gave them Me is greater than all;’ we belong to Him because we have been made His own by redemption, so as to be parts of the ‘Church which He has purchased with His own blood;’ we belong to Him because we have been separated unto Him by the mighty power of the Holy Ghost, and so been ‘sanctified unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ;’ we belong to Him, for we have been made His own children by adoption, so that He speaks of us, saying, ‘I and the children whom Thou hast given Me;’ and we belong to Him, for we have been solemnly signed and sealed unto Him in our baptism, and in our own persons have deliberately ratified the covenant. So that when we say, ‘Lord, I am Thine,’ we do not merely refer to some one particular transaction of our own at some one particular time, but we look at the whole counsel and covenant of God,—at the great and perfect work of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost,—before which any feeble effort of our own minds is absolutely nothing; and, reviewing it all, we kneel down, with our hearts full of praise, and wonder, and say with the deepest thanksgiving, ‘Lord, I am Thine.’