Heavenly Father, we do want to pray and thank You for giving us this opportunity to be together. We thank You that we are gathered together in the name of Your beloved Son, our Lord Jesus Christ.
We do trust that Your presence is here with us. We ask, Lord, that You will bless this time. Bless Your Word and bless everyone who is present. To You be the glory. We ask all this in the name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.
I do thank the Lord for giving me the opportunity to be with you, dear brothers and sisters. I waited before the Lord: What should we consider together?
It seems that the Lord impressed upon my heart one thing. It is very basic, but it is very important: the matter of consecration.
We will use Romans 12 for these three sessions. First, we will consider the call of consecration; second, the vision of consecration; and third, the life of consecration.
Will you please turn to Romans 12? Tonight, we will read just one verse: verse 1.
I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living sacrifice,
holy, acceptable to God,
which is your spiritual service.—Romans 12:1
In this verse, we are told that we are to present our bodies a living sacrifice.
Consecration is our first Christian experience after we believe in the Lord Jesus and are saved. In other words, if you have not consecrated yourself to the Lord, your Christian life has not yet begun.
Therefore, consecration is very basic and very important.
We know that the book of Romans is written in such a way that it can easily be divided into two parts. The first part is from Romans 1 through Romans 11, and the second part is from Romans 12 through Romans 16.
In the first part, we are told what God has done for us in Christ Jesus. In other words, it tells us what the gospel of Jesus Christ is. It tells us of the mercies of God.
In the second part, we find our response to the gospel of Jesus Christ. How shall we respond to the mercies of God?
In the first part, it is what Christ has done for us. In the second part, it is what the Holy Spirit will do in us and through us.
The first part begins with the gospel of Jesus Christ. In Romans 1, you find that it is the gospel of God’s Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. Paul then begins to tell us what the gospel is. He gives us a very broad view of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
While we were yet sinners, Christ came and died for us. He bore our sins in His own body on the tree so that we might be justified.
When Christ was crucified on the cross, He took the old man with Him to the cross. We were crucified with Christ Jesus. By that, we are delivered not only from the penalty of sin, but also from the power of sin.
God gave the Holy Spirit to us. He dwells in us to transform us and conform us to the image of God’s Son, Jesus. His gospel is so rich and so wonderful.
Remember how Paul said that nothing can separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus. Then, from Romans 9 through Romans 11, he begins to reveal the mystery of the gospel—a mystery hidden throughout the generations but now revealed to us through the apostles and prophets.
The grace of God comes upon all men, not only the Gentiles but also the Jews. So, in Romans 11, Paul concludes the first part with these words:
O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and the knowledge of God!
how unsearchable are His judgments,
and His ways past tracing out!For who hath known the mind of the Lord?
or who hath been His counsellor?or who hath first given to Him,
and it shall be recompensed unto him again?For of Him, and through Him, and unto Him, are all things.
To Him be the glory for ever. Amen.—Romans 11:33-36
The gospel is so deep. It is something that God does for us. We simply receive what He has done. Therefore, glory be unto Him.
Then the second part begins with our response. The first response, after we have received the gospel of Jesus Christ, is this: present your body a living sacrifice.
Following this, Paul describes how we live the consecrated life.
In Romans 12:1, you find the word therefore. It is a word of consequence; it follows all that has gone before.
After all the mercies of God, after all the compassions of God shown to us, what shall we do? God has done so much for us in Christ Jesus. What should be our response to Him?
We are to present our bodies a living sacrifice.
This immediately reminds us of what happened to the children of Israel. You remember that the children of Israel were slaves in Egypt. They were not only put to hard labor; they were not even allowed to live freely.
But God, in His mercy, delivered them out of Egypt. How did God deliver them? By the Passover lamb.
Every family was to take a lamb, and that lamb was to be slain. The blood was put upon the doorposts, and the whole family gathered in the house to eat the lamb.
At midnight, the angel of death passed through the whole land of Egypt to slay every firstborn. But when he saw the blood upon the doorpost, he would pass over. In other words, the firstborn of the family would be safe.
By the Passover lamb, God delivered the children of Israel out of Egypt.
Then, in Exodus 13:1, after the children of Israel were delivered out of Egypt, God said that every firstborn that opened the womb, whether man or cattle, belonged to Him.
By the Passover lamb they were delivered, and the firstborn were saved. Therefore, by the right of redemption, the firstborn had to be offered to God.
With the children of Israel, the firstborn actually represented the whole family. When we come to the New Testament, we find that we who believe in the Lord Jesus are firstborn.
Why? Because we find in Hebrews 12:23 that we have come to Mount Zion, to the New Jerusalem, and to the church of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven.
The church of the firstborn is the church today. With the children of Israel, only the firstborn were offered to God. But with us today, everyone is firstborn. Therefore, none is excepted. We all need to present our bodies a living sacrifice.
Here we find, “I beseech you therefore, brethren.” Now, who are the brethren?
If you read Romans 1, you will find that the gospel is to be preached to all nations, and the faith is to be obeyed by all nations. Among the nations were those in the Roman Empire who were called of God and beloved of God.
Brothers and sisters, you will find that this word is addressed to every believer. Consecration is not a call merely for those who devote their lives to the ministry of the Word and to prayer. It is for all the brothers and sisters.
I remember when I was saved, in the 1930s, that when you went to special meetings, the last night was always on consecration.
But when they spoke about consecration, what did they mean? They meant that you consecrated your life to be a preacher or a Bible woman. That, they said, was consecration.
They did not know that consecration is for everyone. The Bible does not say, “I beseech you, ministers.” The Bible says, “I beseech you therefore, brethren.”
Are you a brother or a sister in the Lord? If you believe in the Lord Jesus, then you are a brother or a sister in the Lord. The call to consecrate is to you.
We are to offer our bodies a living sacrifice. In Old Testament times, what did they offer?
If you were moved by the love of God, you would take from your flock or herd a lamb. You would bring it to the temple, and that lamb would be killed and offered upon the altar as a sacrifice to God.
That lamb represented you. It was a burnt offering to God. The whole lamb was burned and consumed by fire as a sweet savor, satisfying and pleasing God.
That is what the children of Israel did in the old days. But now it is different. We are not to take something out of what we have and representatively present it to God. We are to present our bodies a living sacrifice.
What God desires is not yours. God desires you yourself.
There is a great difference here. Under the old covenant, all the firstborn had to be offered to God. God demanded it. God said, “Because it is Mine.”
According to the law, God has a right to possess us. In 1 Corinthians 6, we are told that we are bought with a price. We are not our own; we belong to God.
By the right of redemption, we are God’s. Do you know that you do not belong to yourself? You belong to God. He has redeemed you. He has bought you with the blood of His beloved Son.
Therefore, you have no right to live for yourself. You must offer yourself to God. According to the right of redemption, God can demand consecration from every one of us.
But under the new covenant, God does not deal with us according to law. He deals with us according to grace.
Romans 12:1 says, “I beseech you therefore.” Here God is beseeching us through Paul. To beseech means to beg.
“I am begging you. Even though by right you are Mine, I will not deal with you on that basis. I would rather deal with you according to My mercy.”
Think of the mercies God has bestowed upon us. We were dead in sins and transgressions, and yet God so loved us that He sent His only begotten Son to us. Christ loved us and died on the cross for us. These are manifold mercies.
We are what we are today by the grace of God. God says, “I beg that My love would constrain you.” The love of Christ constrains us to realize that He died for us, and that we cannot live for ourselves any longer. We must live for the One who died and was raised from the dead.
Brothers and sisters, God is dealing with us according to grace. His love constrains us, so that we voluntarily, willingly, and joyfully present our bodies a living sacrifice to God.
Why does God want our bodies? Because we live on earth through the body. This means our daily living. To present your body a living sacrifice is very practical.
In the Old Testament, all the sacrifices were killed. But in the New Testament, the sacrifice is a living sacrifice. This shows us that it refers to our Christian living.
If we become Christians, how should we live on earth? Before we believed in the Lord Jesus, we lived in the body for ourselves. We used this body to serve our own purposes.
But after we are saved, how are we going to live in this body? We are constrained by His love, and we offer our bodies a living sacrifice to God.
God has saved us, and now we respond: “Lord, I will no longer live for myself. I will live for You.” This is consecration.
Sometimes we think of consecration in terms of, “What should I do for God? How should I serve God?” But consecration is, first of all, not doing something for God. It is living unto God. It is our being, not our doing.
Oftentimes, we have a wrong concept. We say, “If I offer myself to God, what am I going to do for Him?” Consecration is to be, not to do. It means that your life will be lived for Him.
Of course, you will also live for Him because that is the only way you can truly live. The body here includes our whole being—spirit, soul, and body—but it is expressed through our body.
How do you do that? It is best that the moment you are saved, you present your body a living sacrifice. You are in your first love, and it is very easy to present your body as a living sacrifice. The best thing to do is to do it immediately.
Now, brothers and sisters, ask yourself whether you have presented your body a living sacrifice to God. You may have been saved for five years. During those five years, have you ever once presented your body a living sacrifice?
Or, to put it another way, have you consecrated your life to the Lord?
If you have never done that, remember: you have not started your Christian life. You may have believed in the Lord for five years already, but during those five years you have still been living for yourself.
You may try to do something for the Lord by your own effort, but actually you are not living for God. Sooner or later, if you really want to go on with the Lord, there must come a time when the mercies of God so constrain you that you tell the Lord, “Lord, I cannot live for myself any longer. I am Yours. I willingly offer myself to You.”
“From now on, You are my Lord. From now on, I am Yours, and You have full authority over my life.”
Brothers and sisters, that is your Christian life. If you have not done that yet, you need to do it right away. Otherwise, even though you have received the grace of God, you have wasted God’s grace.
How are we going to do it? Are we going to do it in a very general and vague way? You may pray and say, “Lord, I give myself to You. Use me for Your work.” And that is all.
When you do it, you need to do it specifically. Let me tell you a story.
There was a famous preacher named F. B. Meyer. He wrote many books and was a great preacher. When he was a young man, he was pastor of a large church in Edinburgh, and he was already very eloquent.
One day, another young man visited him. That young man had gone to China. He was C. T. Studd, one of the Cambridge Seven—young Cambridge graduates who went to China as missionaries.
C. T. Studd was one of the most famous cricketers in England. He was a famous athlete; every household knew his name. His family was very rich, and he inherited much wealth. Yet he offered himself to God and came to China.
He was doing some teaching around the country, and one day he came to F. B. Meyer’s place and preached there.
Early one morning, F. B. Meyer noticed that there was a light in C. T. Studd’s room. It was November and very chilly. He wondered whether his guest was well.
It was so early that he hesitated to knock on the door. But after a while, he saw that the light was still there, so he became concerned. He knocked, and C. T. Studd said, “Come in.”
F. B. Meyer saw him sitting there, wrapped in a rug, reading the Bible. Meyer said, “Well, you are early.”
C. T. Studd said, “I am searching the Scriptures for God’s commandments.”
Now, when you search the Bible, what are you searching for? Probably you are searching for promises, not commandments. We often try to avoid the commandments and take all the promises.
Some people are so lazy that they do not even care to search the Scriptures. In the morning, they simply pick a promise from a promise box. That is the kind of Christianity you often find today.
But C. T. Studd was searching the Scriptures for God’s commandments so that he might keep them. F. B. Meyer realized that there was something in C. T. Studd’s life that he himself did not have.
So he asked, “What should I do that I may have what you have?”
C. T. Studd said, “Have you consecrated yourself to the Lord?”
To ask that question of a preacher! F. B. Meyer said, “Of course I did.”
C. T. Studd asked, “How did you do it? Did you do it generally or specifically? Did you go to the Lord and offer to Him, one by one, everything in you and everything of your life?”
F. B. Meyer had to confess that he had not done that. So he went before the Lord and began to hand things over to Him.
As he was praying, he saw in a vision the Lord coming to him and putting out His hand. F. B. Meyer gave the Lord a bundle of keys—keys to different rooms, representing different areas of his life.
The Lord said, “Is that all?”
F. B. Meyer said, “It is all,” but there was one small key that he wanted to keep for himself. The Lord said, “Give Me that.”
F. B. Meyer saw the Lord begin to turn away. As the Lord turned away, he became desperate. He really loved the Lord, but there was something in his life that he wanted to keep for himself.
He could give the Lord everything—but that.
That was F. B. Meyer’s famous prayer: “Lord, make me willing to be willing. I am not really willing, but make me willing to be willing.”
Immediately after he said that, he saw the Lord take that little key. Later, F. B. Meyer had another famous saying: “If He is not Lord of all, He is not Lord at all.”
Now, brothers and sisters, have you consecrated your life to the Lord? Did you do it very generally? If you are serious about it, if you really want the Lord to be your Lord, if you really want to live for Him and no longer for yourself, then go to the Lord and hand over everything that you know of to Him.
It is like Mrs. Jessie Penn-Lewis. When she consecrated herself to the Lord, she said, “I give You all that I have, all that I am, and all that I am going to be.”
Brothers and sisters, have you said that?
Let me tell you another story. It happened in Fuzhou in 1936. I was preaching on consecration, saying that we need to offer ourselves one by one, specifically, to the Lord.
That night, a doctor went to pray, and he began to hand over to the Lord one thing after another in his life. He had two things that he loved best: his chickens and his fish.
Nobody could touch those two things. If anyone touched them, he would get angry, because those two things were his life.
But while he was praying, the Lord reminded him of these things. Finally, he offered both of them to God.
The next morning, one of his chickens died. Before that consecration, he would have been very sorrowful, as though something had been taken out of his life.
But do you know what he did? He killed the other chickens and gave a feast to the brothers.
That is consecration. You do not hold on to anything for yourself. Your life is for God and for Him.
Brothers and sisters, every one of us needs to do that. Do you know why our Christian life is so weak? It is because something is missing in this most basic matter.
It is a sacrifice. A sacrifice means that you need to lose something. You need to lose yourself, lose your right to yourself, and give it to the Lord. That is a sacrifice.
It is a living sacrifice because daily you give yourself to the Lord, let the Lord have you, and let Him live out through you.
Brothers and sisters, are you willing to do that? Perhaps you consecrated yourself to the Lord five years ago, but it was done in a very general way. Now be serious about it.
That is the only way you can go on with the Lord. You have to give yourself totally to Him—not to do something for Him, but to live for Him. That is a living sacrifice.
Every brother and sister should be a living sacrifice—not some brothers and some sisters, but every brother and sister.
How does God look at this? He says that this living sacrifice is holy and acceptable to God.
God is holy. That is the nature of God. He is uncommon, separated from all things, unique, incomparable, and by Himself.
God is holy, and because God is holy, He wants us to be holy. “Ye shall be holy; for I am holy.”
Now, brothers and sisters, how can we live a holy life? Do we need to become monks or hermits? No. Every believer is to live a holy life.
God has separated us from the world for Himself. That is holiness. Holiness is being set apart for God.
How do you begin to live that holy life? You begin to live it by consecration.
Perhaps now you discover why you are not able to live a holy life. Why are you still conformed to the world? Why, with the greatest effort, are you unable to live a holy life?
It is because you have not presented your body a living sacrifice. A holy life can only be lived by Christ living in you.
As long as you try to live a holy life, you will fail. But if it is Christ who lives in you, that is a holy life. But how can Christ live in you if you still hold back?
The secret to holy living is consecration.
This living sacrifice is acceptable to God. We thank God that we are accepted by God in His beloved Son.
Now, after we are accepted by God, consider who we were. We were sinners, rebels, and enemies of God. Yet we are accepted by God in His beloved Son.
After we have been accepted by God, surely we should have a desire to be well pleasing to Him—to live a life that is acceptable to Him. How can we be acceptable to Him? Present your body a living sacrifice, and you will be acceptable to Him.
This is your spiritual service, or your spiritual worship.
Do you want to serve God? We should, because when the children of Israel came out of Egypt, God said, “Let My people go, that they may serve Me.”
God did not deliver them so that they could serve themselves. By the right of redemption, they belonged to God, and they had to serve God.
Brothers and sisters, after we are saved, we are supposed to serve God. Not only a few serve the Lord; we all serve.
Do you have the desire to serve Him? How should you serve? Are you trying to find some way to serve Him, asking, “What can I do for Him?”
Oftentimes we try to think of what we can do for God, but I can tell you: if you offer your body as a living sacrifice, that is your spiritual service.
Today, many people are serving God, but they are serving God in their own way.
Think of Saul the Pharisee. He thought he was serving God. He was zealous, and he killed Christians. He did not know that he was doing a disservice to God.
Today we have this same problem. Many people serve God out of themselves. But there is only one sure service to God: to present your body a living sacrifice.
If you have not presented your body a living sacrifice, you have not begun to serve God. What you think is serving God may actually be serving yourself.
The only service to God is through consecration.
At the same time, this word can be translated as your spiritual worship. We all ought to worship, not merely a few.
Worship is not an outward thing. Worship is an inward attitude. We worship God in spirit and in truth.
How do we worship? We worship God by presenting our bodies as a living sacrifice. Then we are true worshipers.
What is worship? Worship means that you place God in His place, and you place yourself in your place.
If you do not place God in His place as the Lord of your life, and if you do not place yourself in your place as a living sacrifice, you do not know what worship is.
You may attend many worship services, but you may not really worship. Perhaps you are worshiping yourself. You are putting yourself in the place of God and wanting God to serve you.
Brothers and sisters, worship does not begin until you present your body a living sacrifice. The heavenly Father is seeking worshipers today. He wants you to be a true worshiper.
So, dear brothers and sisters, let us have a transaction with God. We should not postpone this matter of consecration.
If you have never done this, may the love of Christ constrain you. Think of His mercies. Think of His mercies. Tonight, before you go to bed, present your body to Him.
If you have done it before, but only generally, or if you are no longer living in the spirit of consecration, then you need to renew your consecration.
You need specifically to hand yourself over to Him. Brothers and sisters, when this happens, you will find your life different. It will revolutionize your life. You will begin to live as a consecrated person.
Heavenly Father, we do praise and thank You for Your mercies. They are so real; they are so living.
Lord, we pray that tonight Your mercies will constrain us, so that we cannot hold ourselves back from You, but will hand ourselves over to You as a living sacrifice.
How we praise You that it is gain, not loss. We may lose ourselves, but we gain You.
Have mercy upon us tonight. We ask in the name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.