Helps To Understanding Consecration Part 3

So far we have looked at abandonment and surrender as terms that describe consecration. Today, we examine the phrase, “Lay all on the altar.” This expression is a favorite with many teachers of full salvation, that is holiness. The figure comes from the sacrifices made under Moses’ law. Every Israelite had to offer sacrifices. The main thing about the sacrifice was, whether sheep, goat, lamb, dove, or something else, it had to be a perfect, unblemished sacrifice. God would not accept any lame, maimed, blemished, or otherwise marred sacrifice. It had to be the best of its kind. It had to be perfect. After it was brought to the priest and dedicated to the Lord, it was laid on the altar and consumed by fire. It was wholly the Lord’s. The one offering it had no more to say about it whatever.

Then on God’s altar you should lay all—time, talents, earthly goods, soul, body, and will. I like to add the future as part of the description of consecration. Once Abraham had made a sacrifice, birds came to steal it. Abraham was careful to drive away the birds. A beautiful figure is found in Abraham’s action. We might say that after you have laid all on God’s altar you may need to guard the offering; for the birds of self-will, pride, unbelief, and evil desire may carry off your sacrifice.

Our offering is a live offering. We are alive to Jesus Christ, yet we are willing to die to our own desires. Paul in Romans 12:1-2 wrote:  “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.” Paul is telling us to present our bodies in a definite act of consecration, meaning that there is a specific definite act of our making our presentment of our bodies. Our minds, however, are renewed daily. We renew daily by reading the Word of God, meditating on it (that is to mutter it), and prayer. While your entire being is consecrated, you cannot neglect your mind. The world and it’s systems and beliefs will try to bombard you with its way of thinking. It will try to convince you that love is tolerance to sin. It is not tolerant to let someone stay in a burning building and you not tell them to get out before it is too late.

In the days we live, believers need to be entirely sanctified in order to stand up to the pressures of compromise and sin. Believers who have laid their all on the altar are “dead men and women,” and dead people don’t give in to the pressures of the world. So, where are you at today? Are you on the altar, all of you?