What does it mean to be consecrated?
The word consecrate means to be set apart for the service of God. There were four main words that were used in the Hebrew to describe this:
1.) Haram - to devote
2.) Nazar - to separate
3.) Qadhesh - to set apart
4.) Mille yadh - to fill the hand: used to describe the ordination of priests
The term consecrate was applied to several aspects of the Jewish life:
• Places: Holy of Holies - The inner most part of the temple
• People: Priests and prophets
• Things: Altar of Incense and the Ark of the Covenant
• Times: Various feasts and special days such as Yom Kippur or Passover
A consecrated life is one that seeks to bring honor to the name of Christ:
• Identified with Christ: Do people know you are a Christian?
• Imitation of Christ: Do you seek to become more and more like Jesus?
• Inauguration of the Holy Spirit: Does the Holy Spirit reside within your life? Does He have control of how you live? Sanctification is inaugurated in a moment but experienced over a lifetime. Too many people get focused on the moment and forget that it is meant to be a daily experience. When was the last time that the Holy Spirit moved you to change something in your life?
Consecration is evidenced in the constant striving for the completion of Christ’s work within a person’s life.
Paul gives us an excellent understanding of consecration as it applies to the life of a believer. God moves from being converted to be being consecrated. God wants more
for your life than to just be saved because he wants you to be filled
with His Spirit and sanctified.
1 Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God--this is your spiritual act of worship. 2 Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is--his good, pleasing and perfect will. Romans 12:1-2
Consecration Means Sacrificial Living
Sacrifice Your Body:
Paul is calling the Roman believers to not just surrender their physical bodies to God but the entirety of their mortal existence. In other words, Jesus wants everything from your life. He wants your dreams, your desires and your disappointments. Jesus wants all that you have, all that you are and all that you will become, surrendered to Him.
This means that every possession is Christ’s not yours. This means that every moment is Christ’s not yours. Every effort of your life is Christ’s not yours. When you hold something back from Christ, you are literally saying that He is not worth giving up what you want. We are meant to live for Christ with every breath we take and love Him with every fiber of our being.
Sacrifice Your Service:
Paul calls us to offer ourselves as living sacrifices. This seems like the ultimate paradox because the Jewish mind set would have automatically assumed that a sacrifice was dead. It would have seemed impossible to have a living sacrifice. The sacrifice was given by shedding its blood and letting it die on the altar.
When you give a living sacrifice to Christ it is an offering of a life that was once dead and has been given new life. When we were dead in our sins we were not truly living but through Christ we find true life. Remember Paul is talking to believers here because he called them brothers. As believers we must strive to live lives that are separated for God’s service. Lives that are set apart for His use.
The problem with living sacrifices is that they sometimes crawl off the altar - Annon.
Living sacrifices are a daily choice and is an issue of the heart. Each and every day you get up and make the choice to either live for God or live for something else.
Paul adds yet another ingredient to the mix of consecration - spiritual acts of worship. The Greek states this a little differently. The term here for spiritual is logikos which is where we get our English word logic. It means to be logical or reasonable. Paul moves us full circle because he starts with our mortal existence, then adds our spiritual life and now finishes with the reason. What is the purpose here?
We must live to serve God with a focus through all that we are and every ability that we have been given. The word for worship here literally means to serve with all of one’s strength. God wants us to serve Him with all of our being and all of our strength.
Consecration Means Separated Living
Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world:
Paul is confronting a very real problem in the Roman church and in the church of today. There is a problem when the church takes on the character of the world. Paul is talking about allowing the world around us to shape and change us into its image, but Jesus wants us to be changed into His likeness.
The central issue here is the fact that if a Christian allows the world around them to continue to shape their values and virtues, they will never experience consecration. As Christians we are to be influenced by God!
Consecration Means Sanctified Thinking
Sanctified transformation:
The key to experiencing consecration does not come from our own efforts but instead comes from the work of the Holy Spirit within us. The Greek word here is metamorphusthe, which is where we get our English word metamorphosis. The transformation that Paul is talking about is from the inside out and all of this must begin with the mind. The mind is the source of both the thoughts and the actions of a person’s life.
Paul says that the mind must be renewed before a Christian can experience a transformed life. This renewing literally means to have a new way of thinking. The Greek word for renew is close to the word for resurrection. This act is only through the power of God in the Holy Spirit and it represents a complete change from one form to another.
Sanctified desire:
Once the mind is renewed and transformed, the way is paved for us to become more and more like Jesus. This change gives a transformed desire and a longing to do the will of God.
Paul actively describes God’s will in three powerful ways:
• Good - The will of God is useful, joyful and beneficial
• Pleasing - The will of God is welcomed
• Perfect - The will of God is without error and brought to completion
Heavenly Father, I thank You for all the mercies You have bestowed on me.
I thank You for the forgiveness of my sins and for the gift of eternal life You have given me in Your Son Jesus Christ.
I thank You that He gave Himself for me, so that I might give myself to You.
I now present to You, all I am and all I have, as a living sacrifice to You. It’s my logical response to Your love for me. It’s my spiritual act of worship to You.
Transform me as a person by renewing my mind by Your Spirit, so that I think the way You want me to think about everything, especially about You and about Your will.
Give me discernment by Your Spirit, as I seek to put Your will into practice in my everyday life. Enable me to recognise Your will, and discover as I seek to do it, that it truly is good, acceptable and perfect.
I ask these things so that You may be honoured and glorified, in and through my life, in Jesus’ name I pray. AMEN.
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