Entire consecration is misunderstood by many who place it at one of two extremes. Some put it down with repentance and make it an element in repentance, or taking place at the same time. Others place it up with sanctification and identify it with the work of cleansing. The true zone of entire consecration lies between these two extremes. Entire consecration viewed Scripturally and experimentally comes after repentance and can be performed only by a living subject of grace, and oil the other hand it precedes the work of purification, and prepares the way for that experience. Let us notice wherein consecration differs from repentance. Repentance has reference to our relation to sin and punishment; entire consecration has reference to our relation to the will and service of God. Repentance is the renunciation of all our sins, evil associations, ungodly alliances, unholy pursuits and business.
Entire consecration is just the opposite of this, it is the cordial yielding up of all our good things, our affections, our loved ones, our possessions, our reputation, our legitimate plans, purposes and prospects, our free will, our very life and destiny to the perfect will of God, subject to His disposal at all times. The first is giving up the bad things, the second is giving up the good things. If I may so speak, in repentance we let Satan take what belongs to him, and in consecration we let God take what belongs to Him. Again, the motive to repentance is to escape punishment, to flee from the wrath to come; the motive that prompts entire consecration is a longing for a better experience, a desire to be like Jesus. Consecration is of the nature of making a will, of giving ourselves up a free-will offering to God, of making a quitclaim deed of ourselves and all our effects. But in order to execute such a will or deed, we must be citizens of the heavenly kingdom. Under our civil laws, a man who is under sentence of death, be he ever so rich, cannot make a will, or deed away a piece of property, for in the eye of the law he is dead. In like manner all impenitent sinners are condemned already, they are under the death sentence, and only awaiting the execution. Hence, they cannot make a free-will offering of themselves to God, or deed themselves away to Christ in the true sense of Scriptural consecration, until they are pardoned and restored to heavenly citizenship. So the Scriptures speak of offering ourselves "a living sacrifice," and of "yielding ourselves unto God as those which are alive from the dead." The same thought is illustrated by joining the army. A soldier in joining the army virtually offers himself up to die, he is a living sacrifice on the altar of his country, but it is only an uncondemned citizen who can thus offer himself.
No foreigner or unnaturalized person can join the army. Citizenship must precede soldiership. Such is true in grace, we must first be adopted and become citizens in the kingdom of grace before we can enter the true soldier covenant, and offer ourselves up to die for the King. It takes a good deal of grace in the heart to carry us through the act of entire abandonment to God. Entire consecration involves such a dying out of self, such a detailed yielding to the Lord, that no cold, formal Christian, no backslider in heart can do it. Only the subject of true saving grace can go through with it. So we see entire consecration is beyond repentance, and, in many things, quite different from it.
Now, let us notice the difference between consecration and purification. Consecration is our work, purification is the Lord's work. When we want our watches cleaned and oiled, we take them to a jeweler, and leave them with him, he cleanses them and rectifies their machinery. Our hearts are our watches, we commit them unlimitedly to Jesus; He, by His Spirit, cleanses them and rectifies their movements. Many persons are prejudiced against the word sanctification, and habitually use the word consecration as a synonym of sanctification. This is putting the word too high. There is a subtle reason for this, the unsanctified mind instinctively magnifies the human side.
You will notice that all persons who are not deeply spiritual will, without knowing it, ignore or minify the supernatural in religion; their eye is not on God half as much as it is on self, consequently they dwell almost exclusively on the human side of religion, upon the struggles, the trying, the doing of the creature. And because consecration is the act of the creature, it is magnified as the climax of religion; whereas, in reality, it is but " making straight paths for our feet," leveling the mountains, "gathering out the stones," "preparing the way of the Lord," opening up the avenue for the sanctifying Spirit to enter in. In saying that entire consecration is the act of the creature, it is understood that we can only do it through the help of the Holy Ghost, for every step in grace from repentance onward, is taken through the assistance of the Spirit of God. Consecration begins in the spirit of adoption, and it is completed just before the divine act of purification.
