Not My Own

I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. ROMANS 12:1

A few months after his conversion, Hudson Taylor spent another free afternoon alone in his room with God. In the gladness of his heart, he says in A Retrospect, he poured out his gratitude to the One who had saved him when he had given up all hope, and asked for some work to do for Him as an outlet for love. It did not matter what, however trying or however trivial.

What followed was, by his own account, a moment of unreserved consecration. He put himself, his life, his friends and his all upon the altar, and a deep solemnity came over him with the assurance that the offering was accepted. The presence of God became, he says, unutterably real. Though he was not yet sixteen by his own reckoning, he lay stretched on the ground, silent before God, in unspeakable awe and unspeakable joy.

A very practical consciousness

He did not know for what service he had been accepted. But in his own words, “a deep consciousness that I was no longer my own took possession of me, which has never since been effaced.”

What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? 1 CORINTHIANS 6:19

It has been, he adds, “a very practical consciousness.” He gives an example. Two or three years later a doctor who was his friend and teacher offered him favourable terms for medical study, on condition that he bind himself as an apprentice. Taylor declined. He did not know when or how the One whose alone he was might call for service, and he felt he dared not give away what was not his to give.

This is consecration with its sleeves rolled up. Many Christians have had moments of solemn dedication; far fewer have let one decide a contract. Taylor understood that if he was not his own, then his time, his career and his future were not his to sign away, and he acted on it at some cost.

The altar and the cords

In Union and Communion Taylor comes back to this theme with the wisdom of fifty years. Commenting on the bride’s plea, Set me as a seal upon thine heart, he quotes the Psalmist’s prayer about binding the sacrifice to the horns of the altar, and then observes that it is comparatively easy to lay the sacrifice on the altar; the hard thing is keeping it there. That requires, in his phrase, divine compulsion, the cords of love.

God is the LORD, which hath shewed us light: bind the sacrifice with cords, even unto the horns of the altar. PSALM 118:27

The young man in his bedroom was sincere; the old man knew how often sincere offerings are quietly taken back. The answer is not a fiercer resolution but a deeper grip of love. Taylor did not trust his own constancy. He asked to be bound, and trusted the love of Christ to do the binding.

Lord of all, or not at all

In Separation and Service Taylor presses the logic of consecration to its end. Writing on the blessing of Numbers 6, he says that many Christians fail to see there can be but one Lord, and that “those who do not make God Lord of all do not make Him Lord at all.” The slightest reservation, he argues, shows that we still hold ourselves as our own, free to give God as much or as little as we think fit.

Know ye not, that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey? ROMANS 6:16

Then he adds the other side. If we have nothing of our own, because we and all we have are His, then in return all He has and all He is become ours. He calls it a blessed portion. Who, he asks, would not wish to have no private property in himself, in his members, his possessions, his family and his affections? But he meant it as an exchange, and he was sure the exchange was in our favour.

For all things are yours; … And ye are Christ’s; and Christ is God’s. 1 CORINTHIANS 3:21–23

Taylor would have been happy with the link Paul makes. Everything is ours because we are Christ’s. The one who gives himself away receives everything.

The wardrobe and the library

Taylor’s consecration also reached his cupboards. In Hull a friend pointed him to the Scriptures about the return of Christ. He studied them and became convinced that the Lord might come at any hour, and that the right response was to live as a man waiting for his master. The practical result, he says, was that he went through his little library and his small wardrobe to be sure they held nothing he would be sorry to give account of if the Master came at once. The library was considerably diminished, to the benefit of some poor neighbours.

Let your loins be girded about, and your lights burning; And ye yourselves like unto men that wait for their lord. LUKE 12:35–36

He repeated the exercise throughout his life, going through his house from basement to attic, and says he never did so without a great accession of spiritual joy. He believed that most of us accumulate, through thoughtlessness or pressure of work, things that would be useful to others and are useless to us, and that we lose blessing by keeping them. It is one of the most searching pages in A Retrospect because it is so ordinary.

What this does not mean

Two cautions belong here. First, consecration is a response to grace, not a way of earning it. Taylor’s self-giving came after the finished work, not before it, and he never confused the two. Separation and Service is emphatic that even the best offerings of a consecrated life are accepted only through Christ.

Second, a single moment of consecration, however real, is not the whole of the Christian life. Taylor’s account shows a boy giving everything he knew about, and then an old man discovering how much more there was to give and how hard it is to keep giving it. Those who have never had a dramatic moment should not despair. Those who have should not rest on it. The call is the same for both.

And he said to them all, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me. LUKE 9:23

Taylor’s afternoon on the floor of his bedroom was the beginning of a life, not a substitute for one.

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Write down, honestly, what you still treat as your own: time, money, reputation, plans, a relationship, a child.

2. Consider whether any commitment you are about to make would bind you in a way that leaves God no room to call you.

3. If you have made a consecration in the past, ask whether you have quietly taken any part of it back, and give it again.

4. Go through one room of your house this month with Taylor’s question: what here would I be sorry to give account of if the Master came today? Give it away.

5. Ask God not for a stronger resolve but for the cords of His love to hold you to what you have given.

A PRAYER

Lord Jesus, You bought me with a price, and I am not my own. Forgive me for living as though I were.

I give You again all I am and all I have, and I confess that I have often taken back what I once laid on the altar.

Bind me there with the cords of Your love, for my own resolve will not hold me.

Make my consecration practical: in my diary, my wallet, my cupboards and my plans. And let me find, as Your servant did, that all You are is mine. Amen.