THE UNIFIED LIFE – THE TOTAL LIFE

Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God – 1 Corinthians 10:31

“One of the greatest hindrances to internal peace which the Christian encounters is the common habit of dividing our lives into two areas – the sacred and the secular. As these areas are conceived to exist apart from each other and to be morally and spiritually incompatible, and as we are compelled by the necessities of living to be always crossing back and forth from the one to the other, our inner lives tend to break up so that we live a divided instead of a UNIFIED LIFE.

Our trouble springs from the fact that we who follow Christ inhabit at once two worlds – the SPIRITUAL and the NATURAL…This tends to divide our total life into two departments. We come unconsciously to recognize two sets of actions. The first are performed with a feeling of satisfaction and a firm assurance that they are pleasing to God…

Over against these sacred acts are the secular ones. They include all of the ordinary activities of life which we share with the sons and daughters of Adam: eating, sleeping, working, looking after the needs of the body and performing our dull and prosaic duties here on earth…

This is the old SACRED-SECULAR antithesis. Most Christians are caught in this trap…They try to walk the tight rope between two kingdoms and they find no peace in either. Their strength is reduced, their outlook confused and their joy taken from them…The sacred-secular antithesis has no foundation in the New Testament…

The Lord Jesus Christ Himself is our perfect example, and He knew no divided life. In the Presence of His Father He lived on earth without strain from babyhood to His death on the cross. God accepted the offering of His total life…Paul’s exhortation to “do all to the glory of God” is more than pious idealism…It opens before us the possibility of making every act of our lives contribute to the glory of God…”