Dedication Part 4: Dedication fulfilled

Dedication finds its fulfillment in the placing or positioning that God gives it. And this fulfillment of dedication in God’s positioning will be in power. This power comes from God. We must not try to position ourselves as we see fit, nor must we even try to use our own strength to succeed in this positioning. It is no energy of our own and none of our own strength for God is going to position and place us and he is going to give us all the energy and power.

Romans 12:4-For just as we have many members in one body and all the members do not have the same function,

We are placed or positioned as a member in a body of Christ. In this very place, we find our positioning and anointing of the power for all our dedication.

Many times, we often waste our time doing good things or helpful things, but it is not really according to what God really wants. There must be a whole new set of priorities. Dedication must be according to what God is after, the fulfillment.

We are initially in Adam’s family tree. How does God move us out of Adam and move us into Christ? God’s way of taking us out is that he wraps the whole family of Adam and carries us to the cross in his son. When God looks down on the cross, he sees his lovely son Jesus. But he also sees something else: The whole wretched family of Adam, wrapped up and nailed to the cross in Christ. Jesus is called the last Adam. God sees nothing good out of Adam’s race. Hence, he gets rid of the whole family, all the thoughts, the imaginations, the intents of the heart. He wraps entire race in his son and nails it to the cross. Then he buries it in the tomb and says that is the last of Adam, the last Adam.

So when God looks down, he sees us in his son. When Jesus was buried in the tomb, we were buried in him. When he rose from the grave, we rose. When God the father has poured out the spirit upon his son, upon the head, we also get a glimpse that the holy spirit’s outpouring comes upon the head plus the whole of the body.

How do we get from Adam into a position in Christ? How to we move from one family to become a member of the body of Christ?

We must look at it from God’s viewpoint. The moment an individual comes by faith to look to Calvary, to what Jesus has done, God puts us into a position in the body. But God recognizes that what the great majority of people would only get is by bits and pieces. For example, an individual comes to Christ says ‘Thank you Lord for dying for me!’, how much does he know of all of this and how much does he experience of it in reality? The reality of it comes just according to the measure of it as he has apprehended and God appropriates the precious blood. God looks and sees the whole thing, but what we see is according to the apprehension that by simple faith we say ‘Thank you Lord for dying for me!’

Our problem is not just that we need to be redeemed or saved from the things we have done, but God needs to deal with something in our lives, our self. We begin to cry out, ‘Oh, wretched man that I am! Lord, I’m tired of plucking fruit off the tree all the time. Lord, isn’t there something else, something better?” Yes, there is. He must look back to Calvary again.

When we born, we were born crucified, but all we knew was that we were born. When we were born, we were there on the cross. We saw Jesus dying for us. But as we look back again, we see that he not only died for us. He died as us. We died in him.

There at Calvary, we see God’s remedy of the old life. It is a blessed day when we realized that he buries the whole wretched mess in the tomb.

So much of the time, we try to dedicate something of the old as if it though God could use it. The old creation cannot please God. It is impossible. God has placed the old Adam life in the tomb. But there is a rising from the grave. We have been crucified, buried together and now we rise together with him.

For years, we can be so caught up emphasizing that Jesus died for us and we died for him, but we still haven’t got out of the grave. We must not only come to know that we have all the negative works dealt with but now, we live by his life. That is a whole new apprehension! We are a failure. It is impossible that we can live a Christian life. We can only live by the life of the son of God. We can understand this, but most importantly, we must come to the living appropriation of Jesus Christ as our lives. God sees it as all done, finished. Here we are resurrected. Not only resurrected to move around as we wish, but he is going to position us.

After being a partaker of his life, we then begin to discover that our lives have some restrictive aspects. It is not just life in us. The life of the son of God works in a certain way. We cannot live this life just for ourselves. This life brings us into the relatedness of others. So we enjoy being with the company of the Lord’s people because we are part of a body.

1 Corinthians 12:11-For by one spirit we were all baptized into one body, whether slaves or free, and we were all made to drink of one Spirit.

We are planted into the body of Christ and baptized into the body and we are made to drink of one spirit.

Our dedication in fulfilling the thing that God really wants is the realization that we are a member, a member in the body of Christ.