colleges. The discussion centered around the topic, “ Suc cessful Christian Living.” One of the first questions asked was this, “ How do you move, from a mere church-going life, to a life of daily Christian living?” The Governor’s words and the inquiry of the college student point up the need of realizing the fact that God is interested in the whole man. It would seem that many of us never get beyond Sun day religion. The potential for great and wonderful things is present in every congregation but this potential lies dormant, unharnessed and unknown. One of the rea sons for this is, that too many of us have forgotten that God is interested in the whole man: in our whole life. He does not separate life into the secular and the spiri tual. We do this. The temptation on our part to desert nature to attain to spirit is one of the subtle tricks of spiritual immaturity. The temptation to consider prayer emphasis as spiritual and the pay envelope as secular is a deception too common to most of us. In First Thessalonians 5:23 and 24, the Apostle Paul reminds us of the potential of dedication. Here Paul calls us to God’s interest in the whole man. Notice these revealing words, “And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly and I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. Faithful is He that calleth you, Who also will do it.” If this Scripture declares anything at all, it states that God wants the whole man. Notice the order here. Man’s dedication begins with the spirit of man. So often we try to begin with the body. We talk so much about, pre senting our bodies to God. The body is the last mentioned in the matter of dedication. The first matter in dedication is the whole spirit of man. The spirit of man is the God conscious part of man. The potential of dedication begins here. In John chapter 4, the Lord speaks of this to the woman of Samaria, when He says, “But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeketh such to worship Him. God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.” The word used for worship here is one that means to crouch, to kiss, to do homage, to prostrate oneself, to reverence. The potential of a dedicated life begins here. Man’s spirit must first be sanctified. The God-conscious part of man must be prostrate before the Lord. In Proverbs 20:27 man’s spirit, his God-conscious part, is described in this way, “ The spirit of man is the candle of the Lord, searching all the inward parts of the belly.” Again in Psalm 18:28 we read, “ For thou wilt light my candle: the Lord my God will enlighten my darkness.” Adding the truth of Psalm 51:6, “ Behold, thou desirest truth in the inward parts; and in the hidden part thou shalt make me to know wisdom,” it then becomes apparent that dedi cation begins in man’s spirit — the God-conscious part — when flooded with light and yielded to God’s will. When man is prostrate before God in his God-conscious part, then dedication has begun. One is reminded of the little fellow who kept standing up on the pew disturbing people during a church service. Finally his mother set him down very firmly and told him to remain seated. Aft er a time of silence, the little fellow leaned over to his mother and said, “Mother, I am standing up inside.”
Too many of us talk about dedication who are standing up inside. Our spirits are not prostrate. Next we are told in I Thessalonians 5:23, that our whole “ soul” is to be sanctified. The soul is the self- conscious part of man. Here is the center of our affections, desires, ambitions, appetites. This center is to be dedicated to God. Many times in our Bibles the word soul could be translated desire. This is true in Proverbs 13:2, “ But the soul (desire) of the transgressors shall eat violence” and in Proverbs 19:2, “Also, that the soul (desire) be without knowledge is not good.” In I Peter 2:11 we read, “Dearly beloved, I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul.” Some of us have used the term soul, in speaking of another person, as “ He is a good soul.” What do we really mean? We simply mean that the person is acceptable to us, be cause he enjoys the same things, or has the same desires that we do. In other words, that person’s self-conscious life agrees with my self. Then if the potential of dedication is ever to be realized, the self-conscious part of man must be sanctified. My affections and desires, the center of these my self-conscious part, my soul, must be dedicated. In .Deuteronomy 30:6 this dedication is described in this way, “ And the Lord thy God will circumcise thine heart . . . to love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul . . .” Our affections must be brought under the will of God. Finally, I Thessalonians 5:23 deals with our body. This is the sense-conscious part of man. “ And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly: and I pray God your whole spirit and soul and. body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.” So many times we try to begin here. We attempt first to present our bodies a living sacrifice. We try to present the sense- conscious part of man to God, before we have known dedication of the God-conscious and self-conscious part of man. It is impossible to know dedication of hands, feet, ears, eyes and tongues until we know dedication of our spirits and our souls. It is impossible to have our seeing, hearing, touching and tasting—under God’s con trol until the inner man, the spirit of man, is flooded with light, and the self-conscious part of man, his affections and desires, are filled with His love. What is the potential of dedication? It is the whole man under the control of the Lord. How is this possible? p ie secret is revealed in I Thessalonians 5:24: “ Faithful is he that calleth you, who also will do it.” This then is God’s work. However, we are not to be passive, in the sense that we just sit around waiting for God to do it. It is a matter of the will’s yielding to His working. This is indeed active. The Apostle Paul expresses it this way in Philippians 2:13-14: “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling: For it is God who worketh in you, both to will and to do of his good pleasure.” All God wants from you and me is the property: He wants our God-conscious part, man’s spirit; our self-conscious part, man’s soul; and our sense-conscious part, man’s body. If we give Him the property, He will build the life. He is interested in the whole man. This is the potential of dedication. In this day of a struggle for the loyalties of mankind, let us who claim that we know the Lord, yield to Him, spirit, soul and body so that the potential of our dedication may be realized.
" . . . many o f us never get beyond 'Sunday religion!’ D e d i c a t i o n i s t h e w h o l e s p i r i t o f m a n . ”
FEBRUARY, 1963
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