FREEDOM MUST PRECEDE DEVOTEDNESS

FREEDOM MUST PRECEDE DEVOTEDNESS

I was on the practical last evening. Your body presented as a living sacrifice is the beginning. Many begin with good works of some kind, but the real beginning is - the vessel is the Lord’s, cleared out of everything which would in any way divert it from the new mind which is now to govern it. A man’s mind is his kingdom. It is conformity to the world in some form which is the check or obstacle to the mind of the Spirit in us. The body would be luminous if there were no part dark within.

If I understand that I am free from the body of sin (Romans 6), and from the body of death (Romans 7), I rejoice that my body is the Lord’s. This is the first thing; the next is, that the body of Christ is my first circle of interest. This is quite individual; it is a practice which can only spring from the state in which I am set; and the state springs from the standing - what God has done for me. The better I believe and know the full way in which the Lord has commended Himself to me, the better shall I commend myself to Him. Very often there is a real desire to commend oneself to Him, and in truth I should be commanded of the Lord; but I may seek a right thing in an incorrect way, and then ^[p. 414] I never reach it, because the crooked cannot be made straight.

I believe that the more I dwell on what He has done for me, and in consequence made me, the more am I in consonance with His pleasure, the more I do the things which please Him. If I am really free from the law of sin and death, what liberty His Spirit has in me! The law of His Spirit is asserted and maintained in my body according to His pleasure. Freedom must precede devotedness. Often one is devoted in order to be free; then always there is self-occupation in some form. It is the freedom to be enjoyed in devotedness which is the charm to me, and not the object to whom I am devoted. The hound hunts for the game; the hunter for the happiness in the sport. When I am quite free, my devotedness to the Lord is all on His own account; His life, and ways, and thoughts, all charm me, and advance me in moral likeness to Himself, which is the highest reward to a heart devoted to another sensibly superior to it. The devotedness of a free heart is occupied with what it acquires from its object, and not with that which it confers. When it is in any degree the latter, it is that I may receive something, my gain is before me; whereas when the Lord is simply my object, to learn more of Himself is the one aim of my life; and I do everything that I may win Christ.