Sent and Sanctified; Sanctified and Sent (2)

 

 

As we recall that the word “sanctified” has a double meaning (to be set apart, to be purified), we can learn to hold both meanings together in our hearts and minds, seeing them as a whole, as complementary to one another, as necessary to one another.

 

We cannot know purity in Christ without also knowing dedication to Him, without also living as those who have been purchased by His blood and who no longer belong to themselves. Nor can we know dedication to Christ without living in His holiness, without a continuing cleansing and formation into His holy image.

 

When Jesus says, “For their sake I sanctify Myself,” we understand that there is a distinction between Him and us as it relates to purification, for Jesus Christ has always and forever been pure and spotless and sinless. He “knew no sin” (2 Cor. 5:21). Our High Priest has ever been “holy, innocent, undefiled, separated from sinners and exalted above the heavens” (Heb. 7:26).

 

We also find hope and comfort in that “We do not have a High Priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but One who has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin” (Heb. 4:15). Because Jesus has been “tempted in all things as we are” and yet is “without sin” we can “draw near with confidence to the throne of grace, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need” (Heb. 4:16; see also Hebrews 2:10 – 18).

 

Jesus is with us in every moment of our sanctification, in every facet of our lives. We can live in this confidence, receiving His mercy and grace to help us face temptation, to enable our putting off the “old man” and our putting on the “new” (Eph. 4:20 – 24; Col. 3:9 – 11).

 

Not only does Jesus’ righteousness become our righteousness, but His holiness becomes our holiness, the “righteousness of God in Him” (2 Cor. 5:21) is both imputed and infused, after all, we are becoming one with the Trinity (John 17:21 – 26).

 

Jesus says, “You are already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you” (John 15:3). When we recall that the word “clean” speaks to us of pruning in this context, we see the work of Christ in our sanctification, for pruning speaks of sanctification and sanctification entails pruning. Let’s note the connection of pruning and the “word” which Jesus has spoken. The Word cleanses us (15:3), the Word sanctifies us (17:17), and even though we are already “clean” our feet still need to be washed as our way of life (13:10).

 

Let us recognize the association of Christ sanctifying His Church with His Word in Ephesians:

 

“Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her, so that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, that He might present to Himself the church in all her glory, having not spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that she would be holy and blameless” (Eph, 5:25 – 27).

 

O friends, no self-help teaching can sanctify. No self-centered “Christian” message can form us into the image of Jesus Christ. We are not called to be “better Christians" (whatever that means), we are called to be as Jesus Christ (Rom. 8:29). Only the Word of God can do the work of God; if we will not preach and teach and live His Word we will not see and experience His work in us or in others.

 

Only the Word can convict with godly sorrow and transform us into Christ. Only the Word can reveal Jesus Christ. Only the Word can unveil the glories of heaven. Only the Word can sustain us through sorrow and grief and trial. We can only truly base our lives on His Word, we can only truly trust His Word, only His Word is a matter of life and death. Let us not give our lives to the word of man, but rather to the Word of God which is Jesus Christ (John 1:1 – 18).

 

When Jesus prays, “Sanctify them in the truth; Your word is truth,” let us remember that moments before this prayer, Jesus says, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life” (14:6). Jesus and His Word are one, as John proclaimed in the first chapter of his Gospel.

 

Just as the term “sanctify” holistically holds together two thoughts, just as the Incarnational mystery speaks of two natures yet one Person, so “the Word” is holistic and Incarnational. The Word is Christ and Christ is the Word, the Word becomes flesh in Jesus Christ, and the Word continues becoming flesh within us. The “us” in which the Word becomes flesh is as individuals and as the Bride, the Church, the Temple, the Body of Christ.

 

Among other things, all of this reminds us that our lives must be a work of the Holy Spirit, this is beyond our capacity to understand and to generate, we must not only be born of the Spirit, we must continue in the Holy Spirit, our lives are to be supernatural (John 3:1 – 8; 2 Cor. 3:17 – 18; Gal. 3:1 – 5; 5:1 – 24; Heb. 12:18 – 24; Rom. 8:12 – 39).

 

When we speak of being sanctified in the truth, we must mean more than a mere intellectual knowledge of the truth, more than ascribing to a set of doctrinal statements, even more than knowing the content of Scripture. To be sanctified in the truth is to encounter Jesus Christ, knowing Him as our Way of Life, knowing Him as our sanctification. Do we say, “Jesus is my sanctification”?

 

“By His doing you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification, and redemption” (1 Cor. 1:30). The Person of Jesus is our righteousness. The Person of Jesus Christ is our sanctification. The Person of Jesus is our redemption. No wonder Paul writes, “That I may know Him” (Phil. 3:10).

 

When we consider the intimacy of the Upper Room with its theme of us being drawn into the koinonia of the Trinity, it should be no surprise that Jesus is saying, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but though Me” (14:6). We come to the Father through intimacy with Jesus, through knowing Jesus as the Way, the Truth, and the Life. We come to the Father through knowing Jesus as our righteousness, sanctification, and redemption.

 

If John 14:6 is simply a doctrinal statement, a statement of belief, without it also being a statement of existential experience, we are on dangerous ground, we are on the ground of the scribes and Pharisees. As Jesus says, “It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing; the words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life” (John 6:63). We may think that by knowing the data of the Bible, the information of the Bible, the teaching of the Bible, that we know God. But if we are not seeing and knowing Jesus Christ, we are on dangerous ground. “You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; it is these that testify about Me” (John 5:39).

 

The Word must be made flesh in us.

 

In order for the work of sanctification to occur within us, we must submit to the truth. This means that we confess and repent as we are convicted by the Holy Spirit and the Word, and it also means that, by the grace of God, we obey the Word of our Lord Jesus Christ. (See Hebrews 4:12 - 13; James 1:19 - 25; 1 Peter 1:22 – 25; Matthew 7:24 – 27).

 

The propensity of the professing church in American is to stand in judgment of the Word of God rather than to submit to God’s Word. I am writing of people who profess to have a high view of Scripture, not of those who are honest enough to make no pretense ot believing the Bible. One of the challenges of Sunday school classes and small groups I’ve observed and participated in, is that many men and women stand in judgment of the Bible rather than seek to obey it. If a passage doesn’t agree with them, if they don’t understand it, if it isn’t “practical,” they dismiss it, rather than saying, “Lord, I don’t understand this. Help me to see what You are saying. Help me to obey You.”

 

There is no sanctification without obedience to God’s Word. There is no sanctification without surrender to Jesus Christ our Lord.

 

This then requires our sacrifice (Romans 12:1 – 2). We sacrifice ourselves as Jesus sacrificed Himself. The Lord willing, we’ll continue to reflect on this in the next post in this series.