Consecration is the offering of the whole self to God. In the Church of the Firstborn framework, it is not merely a financial program or an experiment in communal economics. It is the law of a Family Kingdom governed by love, Priesthood, stewardship, and union.
Several publications touch this doctrine, especially Celestial Family Union and a Perfect Law of Theocracy, The Church of the Firstborn & Its Formal Organization, and The Road to Eternal Life. Together they place consecration inside the larger order of Celestial Marriage, Adoption, Total Commitment, and the Father’s Family Order.
Consecration Means the Whole Life
The Law of Consecration begins with material stewardship, but it does not end there. Scripture requires the Saints to consecrate properties, labor, gifts, and increase to the Lord’s work; the higher doctrine presses deeper, requiring the heart itself to be offered to God. The point is not poverty for its own sake, but a life no longer divided between God and self.
Fred’s treatment connects this with Joseph Smith’s teaching that those who would obtain the fulness of the Priesthood must be willing to sacrifice all things. In that setting, consecration becomes Total Commitment: the covenantal offering of one’s being, possessions, family responsibilities, and daily labor to God and His Kingdom.1
United Order and Stewardship
The United Order is the practical and temporal side of this law. It is not state coercion and not ordinary capitalism. Its governing principle is voluntary consecration: stewardship, accountability, generosity, and family care under righteous Priesthood order.
The law answers Christ’s warning that no man can serve two masters. A consecrated order makes it possible for daily labor to be given through love in service to God and neighbor, rather than being consumed by self-interest or by service to a world that does not love God.2
Higher Aaronic Stewardship
The temporal side of consecration also belongs to Priesthood order. The Aaronic Priesthood, especially in its higher administration through bishops and stewardship, is tied to the practical ordering of properties, care for the poor, and united temporal life. That order prepares the Saints to enter a prosperous and self-sufficient mode of living under God, rather than remaining dependent upon the world’s economy.3
Union in the Father’s Family
Consecration also belongs to union. The Father’s Church is not built as a loose association of isolated believers, but as a Celestial Family Order governed by covenant. Adoption organizes sons and daughters into a Family Kingdom; Celestial Marriage creates fathers and mothers; consecration binds that order together in shared love, stewardship, and one heart before God.
For that reason, this doctrine should be studied together with the Law of Adoption, Celestial Marriage, the Holy Order, and the Church of the Firstborn. Economic sharing alone is not the fulness. The fulness is a consecrated Family Order in which every gift is returned to God and every lawful stewardship serves eternal life.
Related Pages
- The Two Gospels
- Law of Adoption
- Plural Marriage
- Church of the Firstborn
- Aaronic Priesthood
- The Holy Order
Key Publications
- Celestial Family Union and a Perfect Law of Theocracy
- The Church of the Firstborn & Its Formal Organization
- The Road to Eternal Life
Notes
- Fred C. Collier, Celestial Family Union and a Perfect Law of Theocracy, 85; compare Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, 322. ↩
- Collier, Celestial Family Union and a Perfect Law of Theocracy, 93–95. ↩
- D&C 42; 51; 72; 107:68–76; Fred C. Collier, Doctrinal Teachings of Fred C. Collier, Vol. 2, 256–66. ↩