Week 1: The Basis of Consecration
The New Testament contains no less than 1,000 imperatives. We’re commanded to believe, love, walk, and build. (John 14:1; Matt. 22:37; Cor. 3:10-15; Gal. 5:15) Our Christian life should be full of activity, but what exactly do we need to do? Although they differ in focus, both walking and building are proactive and, in a very real sense, synonymous. The value of knowing “the foundation” of our faith is that we’re empowered to build upon it. Our personal and daily walk with Jesus Christ demands not just the knowledge that we should be walking with God, but that we take real and definite steps with Him. We’ve explored numerous topics in our previous series, and our goal has always been to gain a deeper scriptural understanding of the foundation of the Christian faith, leading to a more consistent practice. We’ve seen the importance of reading God’s Word, fellowship with God, gathering with other believers, and prayer, each from various scriptural perspectives. Each practice is an indispensable everyday “step” we should take in our daily walk with Christ. But important as these daily steps are, the degree to which they benefit us depends on another deeply rooted scriptural principle and practice, consecration. In this new series, we’ll explore what the Bible reveals to us about consecration and how this practice is often the difference between spiritual progress and stagnation.
The Christian faith is not shallow. As believers in Christ, we’re not called merely to understand doctrines and keep rules. This may have been how God dealt with His people in the Old Testament, but in the New Testament, God’s primary demand is that we receive Jesus Christ. (Jer. 31:33-34; Acts 4:12) This is because God’s primary command to believers is that they follow Christ. (2 Cor. 5:15; Col. 2:6) Salvation is not the conclusion of our Christian life but a new beginning; once we have been born anew, we need to progress, to grow. (John 3:3; 1 Pet. 2:2) In 1 Thessalonians 1:9, Paul describes the initial salvation experience as a turn “to God from the idols to serve a living and true God.” And 2 Corinthians 5:15 tells us, “[Christ] died for all that those who live may no longer live to themselves but to Him who died for them and has been raised.” Both of these verses, and many others, indicate that our salvation is not only by Christ but for Christ. Receiving Christ Jesus as our Savior is only the beginning of our Christian life and walk. To be sure, our salvation is eternally secure through Christ’s judicial redemption. But a healthy Christian life still demands constant action and maintenance. (Rom. 3:24; Gal. 4:5) The divine expectation is that, having received the gift of redemption, we would live to God and serve Him. Our living and service to God are not predicated on following dead rules but on our response to the living God. Thus, our walk with Christ requires not only that we take “steps” but that we allow Christ Jesus to direct and lead us step by step. He is “the Author and Perfecter of our faith.” (Heb. 12:2) To have this kind of Christian life requires that we consecrate ourselves to the Lord.
What is consecration? To help us understand what consecration means for us as New Testament believers, it’s helpful to examine the priesthood presented in the Old Testament. The simplified idea of consecration is that something or someone is separated for a holy purpose. Consecration pertained both to the priests, who accepted their occupation as a sacred charge, and to the things being sacrificed or offered to God. Both the priest and the offerings were consecrated because they were for God and God alone. In the Hebrew language, the word “consecration” comes from an idiom which translates as “to have one’s hands filled.” The idea being that before someone was for God, their hands were empty and could be used as they saw fit. But once consecrated, their hands were both figuratively and literally filled with the things of God, and could therefore only be used in service to Him. Similarly, we need to consecrate ourselves to God. This kind of absoluteness may seem overwhelming initially, especially if we realize that the Bible presents the believers in Christ as both the priests and the sacrifices. (1 Pet. 2:9; Rom. 12:1) So, we need to see the very firm scriptural basis for this substantial requirement. Significantly, the very act that enabled our salvation also serves as the basis for our consecration. 1 Corinthians 6:19-20 says, “Do you not know that…you are not your own? For you have been bought with a price.” The price that God paid to redeem us, to buy us back to Himself, was the exceedingly precious blood of His Son, Jesus Christ. (1 Pet. 1:18-19) According to the Bible and in God’s eyes, we belong to Him. Romans 14:8 makes this abundantly clear: “For whether we live, we live to the Lord, and whether we die, we die to the Lord. Therefore whether we live or we die, we are the Lord’s.” Consecration is the logical progression in our experience of God’s salvation. A wonderful picture of this is found in Exodus 13. After God made provision for all of the firstborn children in Egypt to be saved, He then required that they be separated to Him. (Exo. 12; 13:1-2) After we are saved, we should consecrate ourselves to God.
As logical as this conclusion may be, we may have never heard about the need to consecrate ourselves to God or practiced doing so. For our practice, we need to realize that consecration is a normal step in our Christian experience. Regeneration enables us to walk with God, but consecration is both the gate we must pass through and the path we walk on; it is the way we walk with God. The normal condition of our daily walk with Christ Jesus is that we follow Him. It is not simply that we are walking, doing our best to be a Christian, and that He is with us, but that every step is initiated by Him, and we follow. Jesus conveyed this thought in Matthew 7:14, when He said, “narrow is the gate and constricted is the way that leads to life.” After we receive Jesus Christ as our Savior, we all desire to walk with Him and serve Him. But according to the Scriptures, we must first pass through a gate, consecration, and then we can walk on the way. Before the majority of the New Testament was even written, Christians were referred to as those who were of “the Way.” (Acts 9:2) This Way was not a set of defined rules and doctrines, but their walk with the living Christ by being absolutely for Him. As believers in Christ, we all possess the same innate desire to serve God and follow Christ absolutely. To do so requires a personal consecration.
We hope this post has helped you see the importance of consecration in the Christian experience and its basis in the Scriptures. In future posts, we’ll consider the motive and purpose of our consecration and how we can apply this essential practice in our daily walk with Christ.
