By Rev. Henry W. Frost, Director for North America of the China Inland Mission, Germantown, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Some years ago, when I resided in Toronto, I went one Sabbath morning to attend service at Knox Church, of which the Rev. Dr. Henry M. Parsons was pastor. I went to the service in a very comfortable state of mind, longing of course, for a new blessing, but without any special sense of the kind of blessing which I needed. God, however, understood my real need, and before the sermon was done that morning my comfort was past and I was in distress of mind and spirit. The sermon had been upon a theme connected with the new life in Christ, and the Lord had made such a personal application, of it to me that I felt wholly undone. My situation was similar to that of the bride in Solomon’s Song who cried: “Look not upon me, because I am black, because the sun hath looked upon me!” And in that state of heart, I returned to my home.
Immediately after dinner that day, I found a quiet place in our home where I might be alone with myself and God, for I needed to understand myself, and above all, to know God’s purpose for me. And so I meditated and prayed, and prayed and meditated. Thus, there was brought to me, at last, the consciousness that I was wrong at the center of my life. Not that I doubted that I was saved, for I knew that I was a Christian; nor that I doubted God’s acceptance of me as His servant, for I was being daily blessed and used in my work for Him; but that my life was an up and down one, sometimes in fellowship with God, and sometimes out of fellow ship with Him; sometimes praising Him for victory won, and more often confessing sin as a result of deplorable defeat. Thus it was that I saw that what I needed was a new consecration.
When I reached this point, I took up my Bible to study the subject of consecration. But not knowing where to turn, I sought the aid of the concordance, with the intention of working out a Bible reading on the subject. Here, however, I met with difficulty. There were few passages which referred to consecration. But I thought to myself that this did not matter, as consecration and sanctification are the same thing, and what I could not obtain under one word I should obtain under the other. But when I looked at the word sanctification, I was in the opposite difficulty, for there were so many passages that I knew not what to do with them. It was in this way that I turned to a passage which I had noticed, which spoke both of consecration and sanctification, namely, Exodus 28:40-43, and it was thus that I shut myself up to it and prayerfully meditated upon it. And I wish to say, that God taught me something from this portion of Scripture, that Sabbath afternoon, which has never been unlearned, and which has revolutionized my life. Not that since then I have never known spiritual inequality, and have ever walked blamelessly before God. Alas! my life has often been marred by failure and sin. Nevertheless, I say it to the praise of Christ, that things have been different from what they were, and that I have possessed a blessed secret of living which I had never possessed before. And it is because I have a longing to pass on to you the secret which God gave to me that I am writing thus personally, and that now, I shall beg to lead you in the study of the passage of Scripture referred to.
The first thing that I noticed in my study is, that consecration and sanctification are not one and the same thing. We are dealing, as I believe, with a verbally inspired Scripture, and I observe that the Spirit says, “consecrate and sanctify.” This signifies to me that consecration and sanctification - I speak from an experimental standpoint - are separate things. It is clear that they are closely connected, that one precedes the other and leads to the other, and that the other follows the one and results from that one. Indeed, one may truly say that they are inseparable. At the same time, consecration comes first and sanctification comes second. To put it in the form of a picture, consecration is the initial act of going through the outer door of a palace, and the subsequent acts of passing through other doors in the palace in order to occupy the whole and to reach the throne-room of the king; and sanctification is the palace itself, the whole of which is the home of the king, and where the king may be seen face to face. Or, to put it more simply and plainly, consecration is an initial act and many subsequent, similar acts; and sanctification is the consequent and resultant state.
The second thing which I noticed is, that the one who was to be consecrated had to belong to the right family. There were many orders of people in the world at that time. First, there were the great nations without; then, there were the Israelites in an inner circle; then, there were the Levites at large in a more inner circle; then, there were the sons of Aaron still nearer the center; and, finally, there was Aaron himself at the very center. Now, consecration - in the sense used in this passage - was not for the nations, nor for the Israelites, nor for the Levites at large. It was only for Aaron and Aaron’s sons, and the only way, therefore, that a person could reach the experience of consecration was by being born into that particular family. This suggests, of course, the idea of exclusiveness. At the same time, it is more inclusive than it appears. For who are the successors of Aaron and Aaron’s sons? The answer comes from Rev. 1:5, 6, in John’s ascription of praise: “Unto Him that loveth us, and loosed us from our sins by His blood, and He made us to be a kingdom, to be priests unto His God and Father.” Aaron and his sons were priests. We who believe in Christ are likewise priests. Thus we also may be consecrated.