Yield Yourselves unto God

It is of great consequence that we keep very clearly before our eyes what the object of our gathering” is. We look at the state of God’s church, at the great majority of Christians, and hear them complain of their feebleness and continual failure, and we want to ask the question, Is there not, in God’s word, sufficient provision to enable a child of God to live a spiritual, humble life of victory all along the line? We want to ask this question regarding ourselves. So many of us have to say, “I know that Christ is an Almighty Saviour. That I believe, but He does not prove to bean Almighty Saviour to me.” Is that not the position toward God many of us occupy. There are elementary truths that we think we can live by. What there is in God’s word for making strong Christians has been too often regarded as applicable to the few who we think are called to a special service. And so many want to get all the religion and happiness they can with as

little of sacrifice as possible. They don’t understand that just as a man who wants to come out first in an examination, or to take a g-ood place in a profession or business, must g-o at it with his whole heart, and give his time and strength to it, so religion requires a man to give up everything to know God in Christ. Your first business is to be a man of God as God wants you to be. You will never regret it. We cannot be first-rate, thoroughgoing Christians without giving a great deal of concentrated, intense attention to it, and waiting on God to make us as Christ was. Christ did not become what He was without giving up everything; the twelve apostles had to give up everything. Dear friends, if we give up ourselves entirely to God’s training then we can become strong Christians.

When I look upon the state of the church in England and elsewhere, I feel sure that God will have to call out a number of people to separate themselves from everything, give themselves up entirely, just as Jesus did, to getting the fullest possible experience of the love and will of God; through such men God will be able to bless His other children. God comes to this company with the question. Are you desirous to be, and to do, and to have, the very utmost that God can give you? There are some hearts who say, Yes. I invite you to listen to a portion of God’s word that you all know. You will find the words in Rom. 6: 13. Bible students know that this text is found in the second of the four great divisions of the Epistle to the Romans. The first division, from 1: 16 to 5: 11, 7’ighteousness by faith. The second division is from Chap. 5: 12 to the end of Chap. 8, life by faith. Third division, Chaps. 9, 10 and 11, the mystery of faith; the deep mystery of God’s purpose and council with mankind. And then from Chap. 12 to the end you have the zvalk oj faith. Now, here we have the life of faith. You know the words in Habakkuk that Paul takes as the text of his Epistle, “The just shall live by faith.” Faith g-ives two thing-s, faith g-ives righteousness and faith gives life. These two thing’s have been separated in the first part of the Epistle. Paul beg-ins by explaining the righteousness of faith, how we are justified. Then he points out what the ground is of that justification by faith, and that is our living union with Christ. People often ask. Is it right in God to take Christ and lay our sin upon Him, and to take me, the guilty one, and pardon for the sake of One who died. God does not justify me for the righteousness of Christ as long as I have no part in it. Christ is one body with me; I am in Him by faith. He becomes vitally connected with mc. We don’t count it strange if we take a twig from a tree or seed and plant it, that the tree that springs from it is of the same nature. So it is not strange that when Adam fell and died I should share his sin. It is most natural. And so if Christ and I are one it is not strange that God should justify me in Christ. But the believer must not only know that he is justified but must know that he is in Christ. Chap. 5: 12 Paul begins his great argument to prove how we have not only righteousness, but life in Christ. Just as we died in Adam so we may live in

Christ; those who receive the gift of righteousness, they reign in life; from Christ they have not only pardon and acceptance but victory; they are not only saved, but made kings unto God. After having laid this foundation in the second part of Chap. 5, he goes on in Chap. 6 to explain this further; to tell us the only way to conquer sin is to know our union with Christ. Justification does not deal with the question, how I can conquer sin, but deals with the question. How can I be delivered from past sin and get right with God? It is quite another question, How am I to conquer sin? His answer is, “Shall we sin that grace may abound? God forbid. How shall we who are dead to sin live any longer therein?” Paul says. Know you not that when you were baptized into Christ you were baptized into His death. You were made partakers of His death. You were united with Him in the likeness of His death; therefore reckon yourselves as indeed dead to sin. You are dead to sin because you are one with the Christ who died to sin. You say to an unconverted man, You are dead in sin; you are dead to God. How did he become dead? He died. How did he die? He died in Adam. Every one of us died in Adam, and the life that we get from Adam is dead to God. Just so, when I believe in Christ, I get a life in Christ dead to sin, the very life of Christ who died on Calvary, that life dead to sin, raised up by the glory of God, that life is in me. And Paul says you have got to believe that until your whole heart becomes full of it, and cries out. Praise God, I am dead to sin; the living Christ is in me, I am alive unto God in Christ Jesus. After having- expounded this, Paul says, “Reckon,” count, yourselves dead, actually dead, dead to sin; for you are dead, and alive unto God in Christ Jesus. Then follows, “Therefore,” what must be the result, “Let not sin therefore reign in you.” You have done with sin, you are dead to sin; let not sin any more reign in your mortal body. 2’’ou are dead to sin, but your body is not dead yet, and sin can tempt you, and thoug-h you are dead to sin you can be tempted and mastered throug-h the body. So yield your members to God, and let the Holy Spirit mortify the deeds of the body. “Let not sin reig-n in your mortal body.” Why is it believers let sin reig-n in their mortal bodies? Because they do not understand or accept this truth in Rom. 6: 11: “27??^ a7’e dead to sin and alive to God. Let not sin reign in your mortal body. Nor yield your members.” You have got the power of Christ’s life in you; don’t yield your lives to unrig-hteousness, or your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin — now comes my text — ‘■’■ But yield yourselves unto God as alive f’om the dead., and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God.-^ If the believer wants to know what is the position he has to take before God to know whether he can conquer sin, he will find it in these words,” Present yourselves unto God as alive from the dead, and present your members as instruments of righteousness unto God.” Paul will show in the 7th chapter that even when I am dead to sin I may be tempted to get into a leg“al state, and by self-effort and self-strug-gling may begin try ing to fulfill the law; but it will be utter failure. He will then take us on to the 8th chapter, and will show us that by the Holy Spirit all that is taught in chapters 6 and 7 can be made a reality to us, and that the Holy Spirit will make the death and life of Christ a living reality. So our great need is to be freed by the Spirit, from the law of sin and death, and also led by it to mortify the deeds of the body. But if we want it made clear to us how we are to live that blessed life in the Spirit, we must first understand what it means. “Yield yourselves unto God.” Present yourselves as alive from the dead. In speaking on these words I wish to answer three questions, — Who? How? Why?

1. Who are to do this, — to present themselves unto God as alive from the dead? This is the lesson, “Present yourselves unto God as alive from the dead.” A man can truly present or yield himself to God only as he knows he is alive from the dead. If a man thinks he is a Christian, but that the larger part of his nature is sin, that there is a little spark of life amid a mass of what is sinful, he cannot make a properpresentationof himself to God. The secret and the strength of your yielding yourself to God lies in this: / am alive from the dead. Many people trouble themselves greatly to apprehend intellectually the expression, “Dead to sin and alive unto God in Christ Jesus.” Let us far rather accept it in the faith that God knows its full meaning, and obey the injunction of our text, to present ourselves to God as alive from the dead. You can understand that if I am alive from the dead then it is no more than right, and indeed the only rig-ht thing- that I should say, “Lord, I have got this life from Thee; I cannot keep it or maintain it, I come to Thee with it.” However much of darkness or ignorance, dear believer, do come and say, “Lord God, this is all Thy life; Thou hast given it me to Christ; it is Thine own life, I present it unto Thee; I yield myself unto Thee as alive Jrom the dead.’’’’ Present yourselves unto God. You know what I said yesterday morning about Christ bringing us unto God. That is the same thing in another form. The whole object of Christ’s work is to bring us near to God. And the first thing the apostle gives us to do, when he has taught us how, after dying with Christ, we have been raised with Him, is to come with this new life arid bring it unto God. The object for which Christ died was to get us very near to God and into fellowship with Him. Present yourselves unto God. How often have I to do it? It must be every moment. It must become a habit of my life. I have to do it every day, until the consciousness takes possession of me, I have a divine life from God; I bring it to God because God does not give me life in myself that I can have as a possession, that I have as my own, but as His life working in me only so far as I yield to Him and abide in communion with Him. Ye who are alive from the dead, present yourselves unto God; do it every day until your whole soul is filled with the living faith of your true position. The everlasting God has begun a life in me, and is carrying it on every moment of the day; every moment I can count that God will maintain it. Don’t you see that we have been too much guilty of breaking- off the connection with God, and our life is in broken communion? If I can learn to walk all the day in God’s presence, presenting myself unto Him as alive from the dead, God will make the resurrection life of Christ to work in me day and night, secretly, quietly, gently, and effectively. You that are justified, you that know you have life in Christ, present yourselves unto God. Everything must come from Him. We now know who are those who have to do it — those that are alive from the dead. What are the marks of those that are alive? God’s life is no mere imagination, thought, conception; it is a great reality. Remember that this life must bear two marks. It is a life that has been dead and a life that is now alive from the dead. These are the marks of Christ’s life in heaven. In Revelation He says, “I am He that liveth and was dead, and am alive for evermore.” The life of Christ in glory is ever a life from the dead. In heaven they ever sing the song of the Lamb and the praise of His blood. If the death and the life are linked together there, it must be so too in the believer here. There must be the mark of death and the mark of life. What are the marks of death? The death marks of Jesus,

the disposition which took Him to death, we know — humility. He humbled Himself and gave Himself up to death. Humility is one of the death marks in the believer. Death to sin, separation from all sin, is another mark. Another death mark is separation from the world, to be crucified to the world. Then there is deep impotence, helplessness. When Christ went down into the grave He was helpless. And this is perfect restf ulness. He rested in the grave in hope. In the believer who is really dead in Christ you will find these marks.

You will find very deep humility. I am nothing” but a redeemed sinner, nothing but a creature in whom God can work His glory It was humility that led Christ to the death, and humility will be the death mark in every one that has died in Christ Jesus.

Separation from all sin. Christ died to sin; died rather than yield to sin. An intense desire to be free from every sin; the readiness to give up life rather than sin; counting all things but loss to be made conformable to His death, are the marks of a life that roots in the death of Christ.

Separation from the world. A man feels, I belong” to another sphere, I am living- in eternity. I am living with God. I am separate from the world. 1 may have to do my work because I am in the world, but I am not of the world as Christ was not of the world.

Along with that, another mark is impotence; nothing of self-effort. We ever try to do something of ourselves instead of taking our place at the foot of the throne so that God can work in us. The deeper the Spirit of Christ’s death enters us, the more we shall be willing to be nothing, that God may be and may work all.

The last mark is restfulness. In the grave Jesus rested. He gave up His Spirit and rested in the

grave. The death mark of the believer is deep restfulness. Jesus knew God would fulfill His work. As the believer advances he learns to rest perfectly in his God.

On the other side, let us look at the life marks.

The first life mark is victory. Jesus has conquered death and hell, and we are more than conquerors throug-h Him that loved us. Another life mark is joy. It was for the joy that was set before Him He endured the cross. Deliverance gives joy. If we would be filled with the resurrection joy, the joy of triumph over sin and death, we have it in Christ. It is ours because we are alive from the dead. Resurrection life is in us. The living Christ is living in us. How little is the joy of the world compared to the deep joy of redemption filling our souls.

Another mark is the power of blessing. The Lord Jesus rose from the dead and began to bless. The first night He breathed His Spirit upon the disciples. On the day of His resurrection there was blessing, and in the outpouring of His Spirit this dispensation became one of divine, infinite blessing. If you are living in Christ, your resurrection life will be one of blessing to others.

Present yourselves unto God, all that are alive from the dead. Present yourself by the Holy Spirit and ask God to make the death marks more clear and the life marks more beautiful, and your whole life will be from God and before God as of those alive from the dead. Say, “I have died; I have been crucified with Christ. God has raised me;” and the more intensely you present yourselves to God in that life, the more intensely will it manifest itself in your daily life. A life out of death, a life ot victory, the resurrection life in Christ will be yours in truth; you will begin to walk before God as one alive from the dead. With Christ I g-o down into the g-rave, give up myself as lost; God raises me up in Christ and makes me alive from the dead. Yield up yourselves, believers, to know Christ. You aix alive from the dead; accept it in faith. Yield yourselves, present yourselves unto God.

Second question: How are we to do this? Note here very carefully how the apostle answers it. He makes a difference between myself and my members. He says, ^’’X^^ yourselves lxx..o God as those that are alive from the dead, and jyo/^r we7W<5^r5 as instruments of righteousness unto God.” What is that difference? We find in the 6th, 7th and 8th chapters the difference occurs continually between the new life, the renewed self, and the body or the members. Sin is continually represented as havingpower in the members of the believer after he himself has been made alive from the dead; so Paul says, in Rom. 7, “In me, that is in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing. If I do that which I would not it is not I, but sin, that dwelleth in me.” Paul speaks of the center of his life as the renewed “I.” The “I” has been reg-enerated. The “I” is alive now in Christ. It is that “I” of which he says: “I have died to sin, I am alive to God. It is not I but sin.” That new “I” dwells in the body with its members. Sin is in my flesh, so I find the law of sin in mj members, that leads me into captivity to the law of sin and death. It is a saved man who says, “I delig-ht in the law of God after the inward man.” It is not I who sins; my will utterly loathes the sin, but this body of death is full of sin. I am impotent and am taken captive. And then Paul says the reason is that he was trying to obey the law in his own strength but failed. This leads me on to chapter 8, where you get at once the deliverance of the Holy Spirit, who personally works in you what Christ has done, and sets you free from the law of sin and death in your members, and enables you through the Spirit, to mortify the deeds of the body. It is in this sense he says, “Yield yourself unto God as alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God.” He does not say the members are alive from the dead. You as the living one are to present them to God. You ask how you are to bring your members into subjection, to yield them as instruments of righteousness unto God. I must not only try as a spiritual man to say: Lord, here is my self, my inmost heart and love; but I must take my members, my flesh, my body, in which is the power of sin, and I must say, “Lord, these members I give up to Thee as instruments of righteousness.” Before Paul comes to the beautiful teaching of the first part of chapter 7 he wants you to take up this word. Prom the 16th verse of the 6th chapter he amplifies it in a very practical passage of the utmost importance. In it the three words are found — righteousness, obey, service. These words occur repeatedly. The lesson is this: After you have accepted the first half of Rom. 6 there is a g-reat deal of spiritual teaching- in Rom. 7 and 8, to which 3’ou are to be led on. But in between he introduces this practical parenthesis: If you are alive from the dead; if you have yielded yourselves to God beg-in at once and take these three words and bring them into practice. Righteousness. You have been declared righteous by God that you may live in practical righteousness upon earth. Be careful. If you are going to live as alive from the dead do not sin. Do not ask the question, How far can I go and not sin, but take simply what God says, Sin not. Say, I am going to live for the highest righteousness. Righteousness is the very foundation of God’s throne; it must be so too in the Christian life. Do not seek beautiful spiritual thoughts and experiences when you speak of being dead and alive in Christ, but come at once and yield every member to be nothing but an instrument of righteousness.

There is the second word, set’ve. You are to be the servant of righteousness. A man can sometimes be in the position of a servant, and yet act as if he were master. We need the deep conviction, I have been delivered from the service of sin to become a servant of God and His righteousness. As we yield ourselves to God daily it must be with the one desire, to keep the place of servants before Him. Our Jesus took the form of a servant; that was His life, and made Him the Father’s delight. That must be our Spirit.

One word more. I have sometimes got a favorite servant who works hard, but often works in his own way instead of carefully obeying- my will. Remember, you are not only to live as a servant but as one who obeys, who waits daily upon God to find out His will, and who works righteousness, not according- to his own but according- to God’s thoughts.

If you walk in the path you will understand the answer to the question. How am I to present myself? You will yield yourselves, your inmost being-, as renewed in Christ, as alive from the dead unto God, and bring- your members each time and present each one of them, each power and movement of your being to God, as an instrument of rig-hteousness. And your inner life with God will be manifested in your conversation among men.

Last question. Why ought we thus to present ourselves to God and our members as instruments of righteousness. I can only very hastily say a few words on this. Let it be a presentation of thanksgiving, dear believer. Every time you think of it, “I am alive from the dead,” let your heart rise up with wonderful thanksgiving. Present yourself unto God, yield your body, soul, and spirit a living sacrifice. Is that not a privilege, an unspeakable honor? You may walk in the sunshine of God’s love with God, in the gladness that says, I offer myself just out of deep gratitude for the life of Christ. I am alive from the dead. Oh beloved, if you would have the joy of God’s heaven in your heart praise Him for the wonderful mystery of the resurrection of Christ in you. You dead with Christ and alive with Christ, present yourselves to God in praise.

Present yourself in surrender. I am not my own,

I have been boug-ht with the blood. I have been paid for. I present myself as belonging- to God. Christ suffered that He might bring us to God. Christ died; we died with Him; God made us alive with Him, that we might serve God. Give yourself up in absolute surrender. Have nothing in your members, your conduct, your temper, that is not entirely subjected to the life of God. Bring all, every day, to God, that by His Holy Spirit the death in Christ may be fully manifested in you. Bring everything 3’ou have, dear friends, your mind, your power of thought, your heart, your love, your joy; bring everything and lay it before God. Have you ever thought of Jesus after God had raised Him from the dead? If He had turned away from heaven and gone to live in the world what would have become of us? Shall we do it? Shall we dare to do it, to live worldly lives, to live sinful lives? Shall we do it after we have been raised from the dead? Shall we not say, I present myself to God, that He do with me only what pleases Him.

Let it not only- be a presentation of thanksgiving and surrender, but also one of holy spiritual expectancy. I said, at the beginning, in regard to this life from the dead, that we do not know how to keep it or maintain it. But if God has begun the work He will continue it. If He has given it He will maintain it; the life God bestowed, in resurrection. He will perfect. He waits for you every day to present yourself as alive from the dead; to bring every member as an instrument of righteousness, and to have large expectations of what your God will do for you.

Do believe with your whole heart, my brother, that God is able and willing to lead you to live upon earth as a living- Lazarus, raised from the dead by the mighty power and to the glory of God. He can enable you every day to live the resurrection life. Do believe that. Only remember this, you must in Christ present yourself every day to God in holy expectancy, waiting for Him to work in you, waiting on Him in faith to answer prayer in which you express your surrender to God.

This brings me back in closing to where we were yesterday morning. Christ suffered that He might bring us unto God. Let this be your one object, as you reckon yourselves as alive from the dead, dead to self and alive with Jesus, let it be your one object to get near to God. We want more time in secret prayer if the resurrection life is to work in power; more time alone with God for God to perfect His work in me. Believer, yield yourself unto God. Let your life bear the stamp; ask God to write it in your heart, a God-yielded man, a God-devoted man, that God may perfect the life He began in Christ. It will be a life of victory, of joy, of blessing, to live as a God-yielded man, waiting continually upon God to work His work perfectly in you. Let us believe that all this is indeed for each one here. Shall we not trust God by His Holy Spirit to make it true? He uses the words of the speaker. They may be feeble but He uses even these thoughts to make His own precious word true in actual reality in our souls. Shall we not trust God for it? Shall we not trust God that the Holy Spirit does set us free from the

law of sin and death in our members; that the Holy Spirit does g-ive us strength to mortify the deeds of the body, so that our lives shall indeed be as those walking- in Christ and walking in the Spirit, monuments of the power of God who quickened the dead, and makes us conformable to His blessed Son.