III.

CONVERSION AND CONSECRATION,

HESE two facts in our spiritual history

TH

seem to us to be often strangely confounded. We make a radical distinction between them. In conversion we receive; in consecration we give; in the one we accept eternal life from God; in the other we offer up ourselves in self-surrender to God; in the one we appropriate the work of Christ done for us, in the other we fulfil the work of the Spirit in us. Inquirers are not infrequently counselled to give their hearts to Christ, or to consecrate themselves to the Lord. We would not be over-critical with what is well meant; but really this is not the Gospel. The good news of grace is that God hath given to us eternal life and redemption through His Son, and that in order to be saved the sinner has naught to do but to accept it. Indeed why should one be asked to give, when he has nothing acceptable to bring?

"It is more blessed to give than to receive;

and the Lord who is alone worthy takes this highest beatitude for Himself, and puts the whole race of unrenewed sinners into the position of helpless and dependent receivers.*

"For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son." (John 3: 16.)

"The gift of God is eternal life." (Rom. 6: 23.) "Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it." (Eph. 5: 25.)

“As many as received Him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God." (John 1: 12.)

"Whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely." (Rev. 22: 17.)

"As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord." (Col. 2 : 6.)

But having received the gift of God and been made a partaker of His converting grace, then and therefore the divine obligation for service begins to press upon us. The Lord becomes an asker as soon as we have become recipients. "As ye

* "The gospel of the grace of God does not consist in pressing the duty defined by the words 'Give your heart to Christ,' although that is often unwisely urged upon inquirers after salvation as though it were the gospel. The true gospel is, "Accept the free gift of salvation from wrath and sin by receiving Jesus Himself and all the benefits he purchased with his blood."

-William Rcid; Blood of Jesus. p. 22.

have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in Him; let consecration crown conversion, let self devotement to Christ answer to His self devotement for you. Has the reader noticed the significant "therefore" in that earnest plea for consecration with which the x1th of Romans opens? Just previously the question has been asked, "Or who hath first given to Him, and it shall be recompensed unto him again?" Had we first rendered something to God, we might look for a return. But, on the contrary, we have received everything from Him-"for of Him and through Him and to Him are all things." And this is the reason why we should render to Him all that we have. "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."

One love demands another. If God has shown. His love to us by giving His Son to die as a sacrifice for our sins, let us show our love by giving ourselves to live in daily sacrifice for Him. "By giving ourselves," we say. Self-sacrifice may be scanted in two ways. We may give our posses

*Coloss. 2: 6.

sions, instead of giving ourselves; or we may give ourselves to God's service instead of to God himself. In either case our sacrifice is lame and our consecration lacking. There must be self-surrender to Him who surrendered Himself for us, before Christ can be "all and in all." Have we not found persons giving their money to charity, under the idea that their gift would in some way sanctify the giver and make him acceptable to the Lord? But God requires our persons before He asks our purses. We are to "" present our bodies unto Him, and that will carry our possessions. For the body is "the temple of the Holy Ghost," and Jesus tells us that it is the temple that sanctifies the gold, and not the gold that sanctifies the temple. The devotement of self therefore must go before devotement of property and possessions. This is the divine order which the apostle so thankfully recognizes in acknowledging the gifts of the Macedonian Christians. For making mention of the riches of their liberality, he adds, "And this they did, not as we expected, but first

gave their own selves to the Lord, and unto us by the will of God."* And for this cause he declares

* 2 Cor. 8: 5.

that he ministered the gospel of God to the Gentiles, that being renewed by the Spirit, they might be fitted to give in the Spirit, "that the offering up of the Gentiles might be acceptable, being sanctified by the Holy Ghost.” * And the opposite idea is equally true that we must devote ourselves to the Lord, not merely to some work for the Lord, which may absorb in itself the interest and zeal, which should be bestowed on His divine person.

Now nothing is clearer than the fact that a Christian gets power from God, just in proportion to the entireness of his self-surrender to God. If we ask how this is, the answer is easy. It is not that God keeps a strictly debt and credit account with the Christian, giving so much grace for so much sacrifice, so much power for so much humility. It is by the action of a necessary law that it comes to pass. We know that, in the human body, the privation of any one of the senses only intensifies the power of those which remain. If, for example, the sight be lost, the touch and taste become thereby much more acute. Exactly so it is between the three factors of our human being

Rom. 15: 16.