Few writers have grasped and explained the New Covenant life we have in Christ as has A.B. Simpson. This long section from the book, “Wholly Sanctified,” is one of the clearest explanations of how we are to live in Christ and how He wants to live in us so that we might become wholly sanctified. Enjoy it, but do not ignore what he is saying to us here.

“The literal translation of the old Hebrew word to consecrate is “to fill the hand.” It suggests the deepest truth in connection with sanctification, viz., that Christ Himself must be the substance and supply of our new spiritual life and fills us with His own Spirit and holiness.

After the most sincere consecration, we are but an empty possibility that He must make real. Even our consecration itself must look to Him for grace to make it faultless and acceptable. Our will must be purified and kept single and supremely fixed on Him, by his continual grace. Our purity must be the imparting of His life; our peace, His peace within us; our love, the love of God shed abroad in our hearts. Our very faith, which receives all His grace, must be continually supplied from His own Spirit.

He is the supply. We bring to Him an empty hand, clean and open, and He fills it. We are a capacity; He is the supply. We give ourselves to Him fully, understanding that we do not pledge the strength of goodness required to meet our consecration. Rather, we take Him for all, and He takes us, full recognizing the responsibility which He assumes to make us all the He requires and keep us in all His perfect will as we let Him through the habit of full surrender. What an exquisite rest this gives to the trusting heart and what an infinite grace on His part to meet us on such terms and bear for us so vast a responsibility!

In the upper portion of New York City many citizens may have often noticed, especially in the past years, a great number of miserable shanties, standing on the choicest sites. Though perhaps on the corner of a splendid new avenue or looking out on a magnificent prospect, the house is utterly unworthy of the site. Suppose that a millionaire should want to purchase the site, and that the owner should begin, before giving possession, to repair the old shanty for the new owner, putting fresh thatch on the miserable roof and a new coat of whitewash on the dirty walls.

How the purchaser would laugh at him and say, “My friend, I do not want your miserable old wreck of a tenement fixed up like this. At the best it will only be a shanty when you have done all you can do to it and I will never live in it. All I want is the ground, the site, and when I get it I will raze the old heap of rubbish to the foundations, and dig down deep to the solid rock before I build my splendid mansion. I will then build from the base my own new house according to my own magnificent plan. I do not want a vestige of your house. All I require is the location.”

This is exactly what God wants of us and waits to do in us. Each of us has a splendid site for a heavenly temple. It looks out upon eternity and commands a view of all that is glorious int he possibilities of existence. The house that is built upon it now, however, is a worthless wreck, and is past improving. Our patching and repairing is worse than waste. What God wants of us is simply that we give Him the possibilities of our lives and let Him build upon them a temple of holiness which He will make His own abode and which He will let us dwell in with Him as His happy guests in the house of the Lord forever.

From the very foundations, the work must be all new and divine. He is the Author and the Finisher of our faith, and the true attitude of the consecrated heart is that of a constant yielding and constant receiving.“

Picture via author, unnamed lake, Wallowa Range, Oregon.