The command is yield yourselves, not a certain portion of your time,
nor a certain portion of your money, nor a certain portion of your
effort, nor your sins, nor your depraved appetites, nor your forbidden
indulgences. You cannot consecrate your alcohol, nor your tobacco, nor
your opium, nor your card-playing, nor your dancing, nor your theatre-
going to God. He wants none of these things. All actual and known sins
must be abandoned at conversion. Consecration is for a subsequent and a
deeper work. None but a Christian believer can thus present his body
unto the Lord. Sinners may repent, but Christians are enjoined to
"yield themselves unto God, as those who are alive from the dead;" not
as those who are "dead in trespasses and sins." Whatever surrender the
sinner may and must make in order to be saved, the believer must make a
deeper, fuller, more complete surrender, of a different character and
for a different purpose. That purpose is that he may be wholly
sanctified, filled with the Spirit, and used to the utmost extent of
his capacity for the glory of God.
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