Consecration and Humility Before God
“LORD, what wilt thou have me to do?” should be the question of every Christian. If there is consecration and faith on our part, God, on his part, will cleanse and fit us for his work, even as he did the prophet of old. However hard the task or perilous the mission, we will then say “Here am I; send me.” Isa. 6:5-8. No repentance is so deep as that having for its foundation a deep sense of God’s purity and goodness and love. No obedience is so faithful, so willing, as that born of gratitude to Him “who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity.” The Cross of Calvary adds undimmed luster and holiness and beauty to the Law of Sinai, and awakens within the heart a holy fear that the thunders of Sinai could not compel. No terms can express the greatness and majesty and glory of Jehovah. He is the High and Lofty One that inhabiteth eternity, whose name is Holy. Truly it would seem that to walk with such a being, man must lift up himself. Such he would endeavor to do if he were to walk with an earthly king. But the Majesty of Heaven says, “Humble thyself to walk with thy God.” Micah 6:8, margin. God dwells, walks, abides, with the lowly in heart, but the proud he knoweth afar off. “Humble thyself in the sight of the Lord, and he shall lift thee up.” The Valley of Humility is a hard place to get, but a blessed place to walk; for He who alone can bless, walks with us. CONSECRATION to God means submission to his whole will. To consecrate ourselves to God is to dedicate or devote every faculty and power of our being, body and soul, to his service. All is to be devoted to God, because the individual realizes in all true consecration, that all belongs to God by the right of purchase, the price of which was the precious life-blood of our Lord Jesus Christ. Devoting ourselves to God, thinking that we are doing him a favor, is not Christian consecration; it is self-righteousness. Neither is that Christian consecration which devotes all to God, to be used in our way. We may call it consecration, but it is no more the genuine article than though we did not profess the name of Christ at all. We have put our way for God’s way, our will for God’s will. Our way may, from a human standpoint, seem best, but to follow that way in opposition to God’s way is to deny his unerring wisdom and infinite holiness; and to deny either of these attributes of Deity is to deny God. And this is the class spoken of by the apostle in Titus 1:16: “They profess that they know God; but in works they deny him, being abominable, and disobedient, and unto every good work reprobate.” To deny God in works, we have only to follow the will and way of the carnal heart, instead of submitting to God’s will and walking in God’s way. It is ever well to remember that “if a man also strive for masteries, yet is he not crowned, except he strive lawfully.” 2 Tim. 2:5. THE reason why so many Christians lament their lack of influence and power among their fellow-men, is simply because they fail to share the influence and power of Christ in their own experience. It is the duty of every Christian to so live out his profession that a divine fragrance will be shed round about him, and that those who come in contact with him will realize that he is breathing of the atmosphere of Heaven. In order for us to make the religion of the Lord Jesus Christ attractive to others, we must first realize its attractiveness in our own souls. Paul speaks of himself as “one that hath obtained mercy of the Lord” (1 Cor. 7:25), and it was this fact, continually realized by him, and always coming up before him, that enabled him to have such power for helping others. THE “sure word of prophecy” is a light in the darkness of this world, to which all do well to take heed. Those who will in God’s way seek this light have a satisfying consciousness that it is light. They know in whom they have believed. But how different to this is the man who depends on the knowledge of this world. All is darkness before him. This is well represented by the following from Professor Huxley, in the Nineteenth Century (italics ours):— “I had, and have, the firmest conviction that I never left the ‘verace vio’—the straight road; and that this road led nowhere else but into the dark depths of a wild and tangled forest. And though I have found leopards and lions in the path; though I have made abundant acquaintance with the hungry wolf, that ‘with privy paw devours apace and nothing said,’ as another great poet says of the ravening beast; and though no friendly specter has even yet offered his guidance, I was, and am, minded to go straight on, until I either come out on the other side of the wood, or find there is no other side to it—at least, none attainable by me.” Said Jesus, “If any man will do His [God’s] will, he shall know of the doctrine.” John 7:17. “God is light, and in him is no darkness at all,” wrote one who had walked in the way of light for fifty years. 1 John 1:5. “What is the chaff to the wheat?”