THE ONE OFFERING
December, 1881

By Carrie F. Judd

     A lady once said to me, “I am tired of the words consecration and sanctification; they sound so old-fashioned.” Her remark came to my mind this morning, but it was with a sense of comfort that those dear, “old-fashioned” words, so ancient that we find them in the oldest books of the Bible, are still on the lips of believers, and that they are words of blessed meaning to God’s children who are “hungering and thirsting after righteousness.”

     In referring to the Old Testament we find many passages in which the words consecrate and sanctify are used to express the same meaning, ex: to set apart, or devote as holy unto the Lord, and this very use of these words indicates that when anything is wholly consecrated to God, He will immediately set His seal upon what is wholly given up to Him.

     Let us look over some texts in which we find lessons concerning consecration. “Consecrate him, that he may minister unto Me” (Exodus 28:3); and again “Thou shalt anoint them, and consecrate them, and sanctify them, that they may minister unto Me in the priest’s office.” – (Ex. 28:41.)

     The anointing, the setting apart, and the being made holy, were to prepare them for an acceptable service unto the Lord, and we must not forget to look at this as the blessed result of consecration now.

     In the twenty-ninth chapter of Exodus we read of the ceremonies attending the consecration of the priests, and see that they were accepted as holy because of the sacrifice of the required burnt offerings; not by any good word or deed of their own were Aaron and his sons to be hallowed, but because of the atonement foreshadowed in Christ and His finished work. And thus we are to take home to our hearts the blessed truth here conveyed, that we are consecrated by the offering of Him “Who is consecrated forevermore,” and that “by one offering He hath perfected forever them that are sanctified.” – (Heb. 10:14.)

     Here we see that our consecration is Jesus’ work as well as the rest of our salvation. We have thought that we must strain every nerve to do the consecrating, instead of realizing that our part is simply to acknowledge the consecration which our great High Priest has made for us, and then take to ourselves the glorious, amazing truth contained in Heb. 10:10. – “We are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.”

     Do we not now begin to understand what is meant by Christ’s finished work? We stand still, not daring to put forth an irreverent hand to add to that which has been so gloriously finished. “For if the blood of bulls and of goats, and the ashes of a heifer sprinkling the unclean sanctifieth to the purifying of the flesh: how much more shall the blood of Christ, Who through the eternal Spirit, offered Himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?” – (Heb. 9:13, 14.)

     If we have up till now doubted our acceptance when we have with tears and anguish tried to consecrate ourselves to God, it is because we have failed to realize that the offering is already presented to the Father by our faithful High Priest, that He hath “given Himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling savour” (Eph. 5:2), that we are therefore consecrated by Him, for God “hath made us accepted in the Beloved.” (Eph. 1:6)

     And as in the olden days, “every devoted thing” was “most holy unto the Lord,” and was no longer at the disposal of him who had offered it (Lev. 27:28), so, now, we are not our own, but are “bought with a price,” having been made “the servants of righteousness,” with our “fruit unto holiness, and the end everlasting life.”

     Shall we not joyfully acknowledge that in the person of Jesus Christ we are offered irreversibly unto God, that by His “one offering” we are sanctified, and that we are thereby made “a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Christ Jesus”?