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{The Application
Application for the Ungodly
Surrender and Deliver Yourselves Up to God in Christ
Christ Appoints Your Station and Condition}
The Lord Jesus will appoint to you your station and condition in life, whether it is higher or lower, plentiful or impoverished, prosperity or affliction. Be content that Christ will both choose your work and choose your condition. Be content that Christ should both command you and ordain your condition in life. Make me what You wish, Lord, and set me where You will. Let me be a vessel of silver or gold, or a vessel of wood or stone; only let me be a vessel of honor of whatever form or metal. Whether I am higher or lower, finer or coarser, I am content. If I am not the head, eye, ear, one of the noble or more honorable instruments You employ, let me be the hand or foot, one of the more laborious, lowest, and most contemptible of all the servants of my Lord. Let my dwelling be on the dunghill, my portion in the wilderness, and my name and lot among the cutters of wood, drawers of water, or doorkeepers of Your house—anywhere I may be serviceable and useful. I put myself entirely into Your hands. Put me where You wish; associate me with whom You wish; put me to doing; put me to suffering. Let me be employed for You or laid aside for You, exalted for You or trodden underfoot for You. Let me be full or empty, have all things or nothing. I freely and heartily resign all to Your pleasure and control.
Now this is your closing with Christ as your King and sovereign Lord. And in this is included your renouncing the devil and his works, and the flesh and its lusts. You also are consenting to all the laws and ordinances of Christ and His providential government.
Beloved, the essence of Christianity lies in this kind of closing with Christ to which you have just been exhorted. When you have chosen the incorruptible crown:
You have chosen God to be your portion and happiness.
You have ventured and laid up your entire life and all your hope with Christ, throwing yourself entirely on the merit of His righteousness.
You have understandingly and heartily surrendered and given yourselves up to Him, resolving to be forever at His command and under His control and providence.
When these things are true, you are Christians indeed and never until then. Christ will be the savior of none except of His servants. He is the source of eternal salvation to those who obey Him (Hebrews 5:9). Christ will have no servants except by their consent; His people are a willing people (Psalm 110:3). And Christ will not accept partial consent, but only full consent, to all that He requires. He will be all in all or He will be nothing (1 Corinthians 15:28; Ephesians 1:23; 4:6).
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