This, indeed, is the word used by the apostle when he says, "offer yourselves to God, as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer the parts of your body to him as instruments of righteousness" (Romans 6:13). The hands are presented to Him to work for His glory, whether it be in our secular calling or in our ministry for others. This, of course, implies that our works are consecrated as are our greetings. Even the grasp of our hands speaks for Christ.
It means that our tongues speak only at His bidding and for His glory. We regard every word as a trust or service and our speech is always with grace seasoned with salt for the edification of others. A consecrated tongue will not speak even the commonest word without waiting upon God for His direction, and looking to Him for His approval.
Consecrated ears will be very attentive to all that He would have us hear, as well as dead to all other voices. Consecrated eyes will see a thousand opportunities that others pass by unheeded, a thousand beauties and meanings in thing that others miss.
Consecrated feet will find the path of duty always easy. The highest stairs, the loneliest walks, the most repulsive journeys, the most self-denying tasks will be a willing service for their Lord. And the errands on which they run will be doubly effectual because they the Lord's feet which carry the Lord's messages. A consecrated voice will have a new power to sing and speak, which natural tones and cultured elocution or music could never accomplish.
Are your bodies thus consecrated with all their powers to work and walk and speak, to see and hear, to give of your means and to use your whole external life as a glad and sacred ministry for Christ?
A Body Filled with the Holy Spirit
"Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own" (1 Corinthians 6:19). There are many who have received the Master into their hearts whose flesh has not become His entire abode.
None of us yet fully realize to how great and extent our physical frame may become the abode of the Lord Jesus. We have sometimes seen a human face light up with the glory of God in some hour of spiritual elevation, on some mountaintop of spiritual experience, or in the light of the borderland. It seemed as if the body had become transparent and the light of heaven within was shining through the windows of a palace.
We are told in the New Testament that Christ has become the Head of the human body, and that even in this life "the body is ... for the lord, and the Lord for the body" (1 Corinthians 6:13). He is, it is true, the source of physical strength and health, but there is something far higher than divine healing, and that is divine health. It is one thing to have the Lord touch us until we are delivered from our infirmities, but it is another thing to ave Him possess us with His life, and our lives become His life manifest in our mortal flesh.
This is the teaching of the apostle in Second Corinthians 4:7: "But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us". The vessel may be very frail, but if the life of Christ possesses us He fills us with the strength as well as divine sacredness. That is what Paul means when he speaks in the verses that follow of being cast down but not destroyed, perplexed but not in despair, always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life of Jesus also might be made manifest in us.
~A. B. Simpson~
(continued with # 14)
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