“And those who are of Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.” Galatians 5:24
The phrase “those who are of Christ Jesus” implies ownership. We belong to the Lord. Ownership, in turn, implies consecration. We consecrate our being without reservation. One day we say, “Lord, every single member belongs to You. My eyes belong to You, my ears belong to You, my hands belong to You, my feet belong to You, my mind belongs to You, my emotions belong to You. Lord, I present myself.”
We have been purchased by the blood. Now, based upon that purchase, the Lord legally owns us. But He still does not force us. He waits for our consent. He waits for us to come to a point of seeing God’s economy in our lives — that we are to be filled with Christ. For this economy to be effective in us requires our consent for God to take us over. This is consecration. It is a handing over of our whole being for Him to have the freedom to supply us, energize us, and so operate in us that all our members would be willingly and exclusively presented to Him for His full occupation of our hearts.
Consecration means that we have no more rights, no more choices. It means that we are devoted and consecrated for the one purpose of conformity. It implies the pathway of the cross — the termination of the self, the flesh, and all that comes out of our self. This is consecration. A consecrated person inwardly applies the cross. But often we lose the freshness of our consecration. We may have consecrated to the Lord years ago, but what about today? Maybe we have backslidden from our consecration. We may have taken back our eyes so that we look at what we want to look at. We may have taken back our ears so that now we listen to what we want to listen to. But this is not the case with those Paul describes in this verse. “Those who are of Christ Jesus” belong to Him, are consecrated to Him, and “have crucified the flesh.”