A True Life of Consecration
(Overcomer Wu)

"I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service.” --Romans 12:1

The subject and the desire to consecrate ourselves to the Lord is often misrepresented and misunderstood even by ministers of the Word. Many, especially those who are young in the Lord, have been victimized time and again on this matter of consecration. The bludgeoning pitch that's most commonly used is: “The Lord Jesus gave His all for you. We have been redeemed purchased by His blood. The least you can do and in fact our obligation is to give our all to Him!” (This statement in itself is of course not wrong and is Scriptural, but we shall see in a moment that there is a problem when we only lead others to this point.) The believers are thus exhorted and pressured to consecrate and commit his life to Christ on the basis of his love, obligation, and gratitude for what Christ has done on his behalf on the cross.

The average congregation is inculcated with this message and put through this routine perhaps once or twice a year... most likely at a conference in a secluded, rural area where they would feel like the atmosphere is heavenly. The young believers are thus maneuvered to consecrate and re-consecrate, and to commit and recommit themselves to the Lord. At the same time, the minister would take advantage of the consecrated believers to draw them into a work for the building up of their own ministry under the pretext of preaching the gospel or aiding of a church in a particular locality. After an initial warm surge of feeling re-consecrated, these dear saints would, in a matter of a few days or weeks, either relapse into their old habit of living in defeat or floundering in failure. Being frustrated repeatedly, they have come to dread such conferences or turn a deaf ear to such messages.

The problem lies in the fact that the vitally critical truths contain in Romans 6 and 7 have been skipped over or ignored in an attempt to delve into the deeper truths in Romans 8 and 12:1. Every sincere, redeemed, regenerated, Spirit-filled, Christ-loving Christian longs to be truly consecrated and conditioned for effective life and service. Therefore from the very outset of his Christian life, the well-meaning believer thinks that since he has the will to obey God and to give his all for Him, he should attempt to carry out God's will through personal consecrated effort. Until the Lord allowed certain major failures to occur in his life – like it did to apostle Peter when he denied the Lord three times, he struggles forth in attempting to live a consecrated life of service to God. Although being motivated by the love of God and love for God, the earnest believer soon finds how futile his self-efforts are, and fatigue and frustration have overtaken him.

If we are to grow in Christ and yearn to live the truly consecrated life, we need to see the necessity of going beyond the love motive to the life motive: “For to me to live is Christ” (Phi 1:21). Our consecration and commitment to Christ will never last if we are responding merely from other motivation and not out of His Life in us. Serving Christ and living for Him from any other basis will simply amount to the strengthening and the empowering of our self-life, rather than the denial thereof. Many good sounding, spirit-stirring messages on consecration are simply promoting the consecration of the “old man” and the good “flesh”! Instead of accepting the sentence of death already passed on to our flesh and the fact that our old man has been crucified and buried with Christ (Rom 6:6, Gal 2:20, 1 Pet 2:24), these well-intentioned preachers are inadvertently stirring up and re-invigorating the flesh, which is rejected by God by virtue of the fact that nothing good dwells in our flesh (Rom 7:18)!

God has but one stipulation for our consecration: “Present yourselves unto God, as those who are alive from the dead” (Rom 6:13). God will only accept what we consecrate to Him if it has passed through the death and resurrection of Christ. Our risen life with Christ and in Christ is the one and only true ground of consecration. Therefore, the question we need to ask ourselves is, “Which life am I consecrating to God, my old self-life, or the new life in Christ?” Only those who are “alive from the dead” -- those who have appropriated fully the reality of their death with Christ – are enjoined to present their “members as instruments of righteousness to God.” It is also for this reason that right after we are beseeched to present bodies as a living sacrifice, Paul immediately followed that by pointing out our need to be transformed -- “be transformed by the renewing of your mind” (Rom 12:2). Many imagined that once they offer themselves or consecrate themselves to the Lord, they will be used by the Lord in some great capacity right away. But actually, the Lord cannot use us until we are first transformed by the renewing of our mind.

Why does our “mind” needs to be renewed? (This is a topic in its own right, but just a simple sentence of explanation here.) We need to have the mind of Christ (Phi 2:5) for us to be readied as a useful living sacrifice, because our mind is the leading part of our soul. Whatever our mind is set on, that is the direction our whole being will follow. A good illustration is that our mind is like the steering wheel of a ship. Obviously when you steer the steering wheel of a ship in a certain direction, the whole ship will follow in that direction. For instance, when your mind is set on sad thoughts, your emotion will feel distraught and depressed, and your body's immune system too will become weaken... making you more susceptible to getting sick. Thus, we are also exhorted to “Set your mind on things above, not on things on the earth” (Col 3:2), and the very context of this chapter also tells us in verse 10 that the “New Man is being renewed in knowledge (referring to the mental faculty)...” and followed by crucial practical word on the best way to do so is by being richly indwelt by the Word of God (Col 3:16). The Word of God is essentially the thoughts of God just as a person's writing is a piece of a person's mind; likewise it is with the Word of God. Therefore, as we are richly indwelt by the Word of God, we are filled with the thoughts and the mind of Christ, and we will start to live, move and act accordingly. Thus unless we are willing to humble ourselves to live in the reality of our death with Christ as the daily, moment by moment, basis of our life and service to Him, and be transformed by the Word of God in the renewing of our mind, whatever we do for God will amount to absolutely nothing from the spiritual standpoint.

The inspired written Word of God , the Bible, has great significance in all the details that was put into it, including the order of the chapters. Romans chapter 12:1, where we are exhorted to present our bodies as a living sacrifice to God, comes after Romans chapter six for a good reason: our co-crucifixion and resurrection with Christ must come before consecration. For us to “live by faith in the Son of God” (Gal 2:20b), we must first be crucified with Christ and come to the state of “it is no longer I who live” (Gal 2:20a). Romans chapter six is not simply an aspect of the truth, but the foundational truth upon which every believer must stand to enter into the victory in Romans chapter eight and a true life of consecration in Romans chapter twelve. After we are dead to our old man and are transformed by the renewing of our mind, we will then be ready to live the church life that God desires, which immediately followed the first three verses of Romans 12... starting with verse 4 we see the living of the Body life -- the Church life.