I. This consecration is a sacrifice. I need not say that it is not a sacrifice for the blotting out of sin: it cost more to redeem our souls, so we must let that alone for ever. It is the sacrifice of thanksgiving, corresponding to the meat-offering in the law of types,—the sacrifice of the thankful heart presenting its thank-offering to God. Regarding it then as prefigured by the meat-offering, we may learn two lessons respecting it.

(1.) It implies complete surrender. Under the ancient law every sacrifice was wholly given up to God. Whatever was brought to the altar was given up without reserve. No part of it was taken back to the home of the offerer. People might give what they pleased, but when it was given it was no longer their own, but God’s. And so it is with us. If we have given ourselves to the Lord, we are no longer our own: ‘Whether we live or die, we are the Lord’s.’ There is, however, this difference between the Jewish sacrifice and ours. In the case of the ancient sacrifices, when the sacrifice was a living animal, it was always put to death, and part of it burned as a sweet savour unto God: but it is not so with us. According to this text, it is a living sacrifice that we are called to offer; it is the continued life that we are to surrender. We are not now called to die for Him, as martyrs and many of our missionaries have done, but to live for Him in that state of life in which it has pleased God to call us. The sweet savour that is to rise from our sacrifice is to be the sweet savour of Christian holiness, the holy fragrance of Christian character.

(2.) This sacrifice is well pleasing to God. The meat-offering was described as ‘an offering made by fire of a sweet savour unto the Lord:’ so this sacrifice is said in the text to be ‘acceptable unto God.’ It does not say that it can fulfil the law, or be perfect before God; for there is a vast difference between that which can fulfil the law and that which can please Him. Nothing imperfect can fulfil the law, but the utterly imperfect service of a loving heart may be well-pleasing in His sight. Thus it is that He declares our sacrifice to be acceptable to Himself; and while we seek to yield all we have to Him, and for His sake ‘to do good and to communicate,’ we may have the delight and encouragement of knowing that ‘with such sacrifices God is well pleased.’ (Heb. xiii. 16.)

II. It is a sacrifice of the whole man. In the first verse the body only is mentioned: ‘Present your bodies a living sacrifice;’ which evidently has reference to the Jewish type, and teaches that we are not to offer the body of a lamb, or a goat, or a heifer, but our own. But the next verse teaches us that the appeal is not limited to the offering of the body, for there we read that we are to be ‘transformed by the renewing of our mind, that we may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect will of God.’ It is clear, therefore, that the whole man is to be included in the gift. Now I sometimes meet with subtle distinctions between the soul and the spirit, and the emotions and the will, and I am quite ready to admit that they may be all correct and very interesting: but I do not care to stop to distinguish between the different parts or faculties, for God’s call lays claim to them all. Whatever they are, and whereinsoever they differ, the desire of our heart should be that they should all as one whole be given up to Him. In whatever position He has placed us,—whether that of parents, children, masters, servants, men of business, men of wealth, tradesmen, labourers, or clergymen,—that position is to be occupied for Him; and whatever faculties He has given us,—whether a powerful intellect, a good memory, a warm heart, a tender conscience, a vigorous body, a good constitution, or an ample fortune,—all, all belong to Him who has redeemed us by His own most precious blood. When we give up ourselves we give up everything,—our wills, and emotions, and powers, and energies, our hearts, and heads, and hands,—to be yielded up to Him, and employed by Him and for Him, as He sees best for His own glory.

III. This consecration is the result of mercy. The latter words of the text show that it is ‘a reasonable service;’ or, in other words, that it is not the result of mere feeling, impulse, or emotion, but the deliberate and well-considered decision of a thoughtful mind. The passage corresponds to those words in 2 Cor. v. 14: ‘The love of Christ constraineth us because we thus judge;’ where you see the union between the heart and the head. The constraining love is the result of the judgment, the blessed fruit of the deep convictions of the understanding: so that those who feel it may give a reason, not only for the hope that is in them, but also for the love that fills their heart. There are certain great facts on which the judgment rests, and the believing assurance of these facts is the means employed by the Holy Spirit to call forth the devotedness of love.

Now what are these facts? What is it that possesses this love-producing power? In the passage from the Corinthians there is one great fact mentioned: viz., the propitiatory death of the Lord Jesus Christ. ‘If one died for all, then were all dead,’ ‘or died.’ They died in Him, inasmuch as they were represented by Him; and it is that great fact which is said to produce the constraining love. In this passage no one fact is mentioned, but the appeal is made to the whole multitude of His mercies: ‘I beseech you, therefore, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice.’ Throughout the Epistle St. Paul had been showing that we are all saved by mercy. In the eleventh chapter he had enlarged on the mercy by which we Gentiles are now saved in Christ Jesus and the mercy about to be manifested towards the Jews, till he arrives at the conclusion that ‘God hath concluded all in unbelief, that He might have mercy upon all.’ Then he bursts forth in the exclamation, ‘Oh the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God!’ and follows it up by the appeal of the text: ‘I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God.’ If such mercy has been shown you, if, notwithstanding all your unbelief, by boundless and unmerited mercy you have been saved and made one even with Christ Himself, is it now too much to ask of you that, without delay and without reserve, you yield your whole lives to His service?

I believe it is impossible for us to be too careful in observing this connexion between consecration and mercy, for in the very vague theology of the present day there is a great deal which certainly has the appearance of teaching that the blessed peace of a union with Christ is to be the result of entire consecration. But we are here taught, not that we are to reach mercy as the result of the completeness of our consecration, but that, having realized mercy, we should yield ourselves in consecration to God. That union with the Lord Jesus must be given through the personal appropriation of the mercy of God in Him; and we should regard with the utmost jealousy any teaching which, either intentionally or unintentionally, turns the thoughts inwards to analyze the extent of consecration, with a view to obtaining the blessing of that union, instead of rather diverting all thoughts to the fulness of mercy in Christ Jesus, and so calling forth out of His fulness the abounding love of a consecrated heart.

This great truth is well brought out in our Communion Service. You remember those words of self-consecration in which we have so often united, words founded on this very text: ‘Here we offer and present unto Thee, O Lord, ourselves, our souls and bodies, to be a reasonable, holy, and lively sacrifice unto Thee.’ Now in the first Prayer-book of Edward VI. that prayer stood before the reception of the Lord’s Supper, as if we were first to complete an act of self-consecration, and then upon the strength of it feed on Christ: so our Reformers changed its position, and put the prayer after the reception instead of before it, in order to show that when we want to feed on Christ Jesus, to dwell in Him and He in us, we must come to His footstool as poor sinners, forgiven and accepted through His most precious blood; and that when we have been thus permitted to ‘sit under His shadow with great delight, and to find His fruit sweet to our taste,’ the next thing for us all to do is to kneel down with a full and thankful heart, and yield ourselves, body, soul, and spirit, to His service.

IV. This consecration should be continually renewed and deepened. In our Communion Service we renew our self-dedication every time that we receive the Lord’s Supper, for every time we say the same words: ‘Here we offer and present ourselves . . . to be a reasonable, holy, and lively sacrifice unto Thee.’ In doing this I firmly believe we are right; and that we are so seems clearly proved by the text. The Romans, to whom these words were addressed, were ‘beloved of God, called to be saints’ (i. 7); they had ‘become servants of God’ and had ‘their fruit unto holiness.’ (vi. 22.) There can be no doubt, therefore, as to their past surrender to His service; but, notwithstanding that, they were exhorted afresh to ‘present their bodies a living sacrifice,’ and afresh to ‘yield themselves unto God.’ (vi. 13.) So we are not to look on our consecration as a single act, completed at a certain moment, and afterwards to be regarded as a finished thing; but rather as a habit and attitude of mind, deepening with our depth, strengthening with our strength, and growing with our growth. As we grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, we shall grow also in the deep sense of mercy. His love passeth knowledge, and it will take eternity to learn its fulness. And His mercy corresponds with His love: it is ‘from everlasting to everlasting upon them that fear Him;’ it is ‘high as the heaven is above the earth;’ and as no astronomer can measure the height of the fixed stars, and as no finite mind can take in the idea of an infinite eternity, so none of us, no, not even the most advanced believer, can fathom the depths or scan the heights of the free, unfettered, everlasting mercy of our God. But as we grow in the knowledge of Him and of ourselves, we shall learn more and more of it. The more we know of the covenant of God,—the more we see of the Lord Jesus, in His person, His character, and His work,—the more we know of our own hearts, and discover the exceeding sinfulness of our ruined nature, and the more we see of the perfect adaptation to our utmost wants of the Divine salvation wrought out for us in Christ Jesus,—so much the more shall we know of mercy. Every day in the believer’s life brings with it a fresh lesson in mercy, and every prayer that we pray to a reconciled Father should bring home to us with fresh power the deep debt we owe to mercy.

And now you see in a moment how it is that there should be a continued and constantly repeated renewal of self-consecration. Every fresh discovery of mercy should lead at once to fresh surrender. If you are looking on mercy as some distant thing, which you have often heard of and wish to reach, but cannot, I see not, for my part, how it should have any great power over your life; for, though it looks very beautiful, you cannot say that it has brought any benefit to you. If you have never felt your own deep need of it, and never learned your utter ruin, and have therefore never realised your condemnation before God, I see not how the tidings of mercy should have any great power upon you, for no man really cares for the remedy until he has been taught by God’s Spirit to feel his need. But if you have discovered yourself to be utterly and hopelessly lost, condemned alike by your own conscience and by the law of God; and if in the midst of your ruin you have, by God’s rich love in Christ Jesus, ‘obtained mercy;’ if you can look on His mercy in having redeemed you by His blood, in having called you by His Spirit, in having saved you by His grace, in having given you a blessed hope of His everlasting kingdom,—then indeed I cannot doubt that God has long since called you to a real consecration to His service. But if this be so, and if God has since been bringing you to a deeper sense of sin, and at the same time opening your heart to understand more of His mercy; if He is step by step making manifest to you ‘the depth, and length, and breadth, and height,’ and causing you to ‘know the love of Christ that passeth knowledge:’ then I can see very clearly that all past consecration must appear to your own heart as nothing, and that, ‘forgetting those things that are behind, and reaching forth unto those things that are before,’ you will be ready again to kneel down at His feet, and with fresh love and fresh thanksgiving, yield yourselves afresh to Him, to be His, and His for ever. You may have long since given yourself to the Lord; but if you are this day really permitted ‘to feed on Him—in your heart—by faith—with thanksgiving, you will be prepared to kneel down afterwards and say, ‘Here we offer and present unto Thee, O Lord, ourselves, our souls and bodies to be a reasonable, holy, and lively sacrifice unto Thee.’