Sanctified
If you were close to your time of departing this earth and knew you had but one more opportunity to pray for those you love and care about, would you pray an ordinary just get it done kind of prayer?
I would bet that you would pray a very deliberate and important prayer at such a time. That’s what Jesus did. Jesus prayed, and it is recorded in the gospel of John.
John 17:15 I do not pray that You should take them out of the world, but that You should keep them from the evil one. 16 They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. 17 Sanctify them by Your truth. Your word is truth. 18 As You sent Me into the world, I also have sent them into the world. 19 And for their sakes I sanctify Myself, that they also may be sanctified by the truth. 20 “I do not pray for these alone, but also for those who will believe in Me through their word;
Jesus was not of this world, and neither are those of us who have been born again by faith in Him. We are no more of this world than Jesus was.
Jesus also deeply desired our sanctification and attached it to the truth. It requires adopting the truth as God speaks it and has spoken it.
What did Jesus mean when He said I sanctify myself? Jesus was going to have to go through the Gethsemane experience, where He would wrestle in anguish over the type of death He was about to face and would submit Himself to the Father’s will regardless of the pain and suffering involved. He asked if there was any possible way this cup could pass from Him but qualified that if it were not possible, then the Father’s will be done. Jesus put the will of God and the way God had ordained for Him above His own safety and natural survival in that moment. He saw all of us and the millions of others who would be reconciled to God through His surrender, and He loved the Father so much that He was willing to sanctify Himself to the word of God regarding the means of our salvation and hope.
Jesus set Himself apart unto the will of God. That is what sanctification means. It means to be set apart. It involves having a purpose other than what is ordinary in this world.
Sanctification will always involve surrender to the will of God to believe that Jesus was the Son of God, He suffered and died to pay for the sin of the whole world, and He was raised again to life after three days just as God spoke He would be. He is coming again soon, just as he promised.
When we believe such truth, we are born again by the Spirit and made clean so we can receive the Holy Spirit, Who sets us apart! We are set apart by the fact that we have the Holy Spirit living within us, which the world cannot know unless they believe in the gospel as we did and receive HIm. By being born again and filled with the Holy Spirit by faith, we become very different from those of this world. We become sons of God, children of the Living God, and we are empowered by His Spirit to live according to His will for us. That is some powerful sanctification when we yield to it in faith as we should. Jesus did not pray amiss in John 17. He prayed with a laser focus and deep heart longing. Those who believe and love the will of God are the fruit of that prayer. Are you living as one who is sanctified?
