Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth. As thou hast sent me into the world, even so have I also sent them into the world. And for their sakes I sanctify myself, that they also might be sanctified through the truth (Jn 17 vv. 17–19).
In order that we may understand that petition offered on behalf of his followers by our Lord on the eve of his death, let me very briefly remind you of the context. Our Lord is about to go to his death on the cross, about to go out of this world back to heaven and to the glory that he had shared with his Father from all eternity, so he prays for these men whom he is leaving behind him in the world and he gives various reasons for praying for them. He reminds his Father of who they are and what they are; then he comes to his particular petitions for them and his first petition is that God should keep them. He says that he has kept them himself while he has been with them and that none of them is lost ‘but the son of perdition; that the scripture might be fulfilled’. Now, however, he is going back to God, and his great prayer is that God should keep them from the polluting influence of the world, and especially from the evil – that is, the evil one. When we considered this great first petition,1 we noticed that our Lord was very careful to put it in a negative form, as we find in the fifteenth verse: ‘I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil.’ We considered the various reasons that are given here, and in the Scripture everywhere, why we should never pray to be taken out of the world and why it is for our good and for the glory of God and the extension of his kingdom, that we, his people, should be in this world, and should remain here and use our lives to the full while we are left here.
Now here in this seventeenth verse we come to the second petition: ‘Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth.’ But though I call this the ‘second’ petition, it is, of course, intimately connected with, and is, in a sense, a continuation of the first. His great desire is that his people should be kept by God, yes, but not by being taken out of the difficulties and problems. How then are they to be kept? And the answer is that they are to be kept by being sanctified; not by being taken out of the world, not by the false solution of monasticism—by a desire to quit life somehow or other—that is not God’s way of keeping his people. His method is to ask his Father to sanctify them in the way that is illustrated and emphasised here.
We must, therefore, consider this. What does our Lord mean when he prays, ‘Sanctify them through thy truth’—or ‘in thy truth’—’thy word is truth’? What is ‘to sanctify’? We need to be very careful at this point in our definition of the term, because we must interpret it bearing in mind that the same word is used in the nineteenth verse: ‘And for their sakes I sanctify myself, that they also might be sanctified through the truth.’ In verse 19 our Lord uses exactly the same word about himself as he uses with regard to his followers here. So we must start by arriving at a true definition of what is meant by ‘sanctify’.
Now it is generally agreed that there are two main senses in which this word is used throughout the Bible. The first sense of ‘sanctify’—and we must always put this one first because it is the one most emphasised in Scripture—is to set apart for God, and for God’s service. So you will find that this term ‘to sanctify’ is not only used of men; it is used even of a mountain, the holy mount on which the Law was given to Moses. Mount Sinai was sanctified, it was set apart for a special function and purpose, in
order that God might use it to give his revelation of the Law. The word is used, too, of buildings, and of vessels, instruments and utensils, and various things that were used in the Tabernacle and the Temple. Anything that is devoted to, or set aside for God and for his service is sanctified. So, you see, there is a double aspect to this primary meaning of the word. It means, first, a separation from everything that contaminates and perverts, and the second, positive, aspect is that something or someone is devoted wholly to God and to his use.
Now it is quite obvious that the latter aspect is the only conceivable meaning to this term in verse 19. When our Lord says ‘and for their sakes I sanctify myself, he means just that, and nothing else. He cannot be referring to inward purification, because he was already perfect. The word means exactly the same thing in John 10:36 where we read, ‘Say ye of him, whom the Father hath sanctified, and sent into the world, Thou blasphemest; because I said, I am the Son of God?’ When our Lord tells the people that God the Father had sanctified him, and sent him into the world, he means that the Father had set him apart, it is that sense of the word ‘sanctify’.
You will find that this primary meaning of the word sanctify is often applied to Christian people. Read, for instance, 1 Corinthians 6:11, where Paul tells the Corinthians that there was a time when some of them were guilty of terrible sin—drinking, adultery, etc. ‘But,’ he says, ‘ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God.’ You notice he says they are sanctified before he says they are justified. Now with our superficial and glib ideas about sanctification, we always say, ‘Justification first and sanctification afterwards.’ But Paul puts sanctification first, which means that they have been set apart by God, and taken out of the world. That is the primary meaning of sanctification and in that sense it comes before justification.
Or take 1 Peter 1:2: ‘Elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ’—sanctification comes before the believing, and the sprinkling with the blood and the justification. So in its primary meaning this word is a description of our position. It means that as Christians we are separated from the world. Our Lord has already said that in verse 16—let me emphasise again the importance of watching every single statement in this prayer and noticing the perfect cohesion of it all—’they are not of the world’. Now he says, ‘Sanctify them through thy truth.’ They have been set apart, he says in effect; set them still more apart: it means this separation from the world. God said to the children of Israel, Thou art an holy people unto the Lord thy God: the Lord thy God hath chosen thee to be a special people unto himself (Deut 7:6). And that is applied in 1 Peter 2:9 to the Christian church: ‘Ye are,’ it is said again, ‘a peculiar people’, a special possession for the Lord. It does not mean that the nation of Israel was sinless, but it does mean that they had been set apart as God’s peculiar, special people; and the same is true of the church and of all Christian people. We are a holy nation, set apart for God and for his service and for his purpose. That is the primary meaning.
But there is a second meaning and this is equally clear from the Scriptures. This is that we are not only regarded as holy, we are made holy and, obviously, we are made holy because that is how we are regarded. God sets us apart as his peculiar people, and because of this we must be a holy people: ‘Ye shall be holy: for I the Lord your God am holy,’ says God (Lev 19:2). So that we are to be holy because we are holy, and that is the great New Testament appeal for sanctification. So this second meaning is that God does a work within us, a work of purifying, of cleansing, and of purging, and this work is designed to fit us for the title which has been put upon us. We have been adopted, taken out of the world and set apart, and we are now being conformed increasingly to the image, the pattern, of the Lord Jesus Christ; so that we may in truth be the people of God: in reality as well as in name. So this is obviously a progressive work. The first is something that is done once and for all, and it is because we are set apart that we are justified. God has looked upon his people from all eternity and has set them apart—we dealt with that at great length in verses 6, 7 and 8.1 He sanctified them before the foundation of the world, and it is because of that, that they are justified, and, again, because of that, they are sanctified in this second sense.
So the question is, which of these two meanings is to be attached to the word in the seventeenth verse? It seems to me that there is only one adequate answer to that: obviously both meanings are involved. Let me put it like this: as his followers we are separated from the world—’They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world’—they are separated for God’s special service, to represent him in the world. For he says in verse 18, ‘As thou hast sent me into the world, even so have I also sent them into the world.’ He has already said that he is to be glorified in us and through us; we have been set apart for this special task of glorifying Christ, of bearing the message to an unbelieving world; and because we have been set apart for that, we must be fitted to do it. We must be kept from the evil, and from the tarnishing effect of the world. We must be fit to represent the Father, to proclaim his message and to glorify his dear Son. In other words, this petition is that we should become more and more the special people of God. Our very task and calling demands that we must be a holy people since we cannot represent a holy God unless we ourselves are holy.
Therefore, we are obviously here face to face with the great New Testament doctrine of sanctification. Now I shall not use this as an occasion for giving a full-orbed description and account of that doctrine—although in a sense I shall be doing so, because I shall be dealing with fundamental principles—but at this point we shall deal with the subject solely in terms of what we are told about it in these three verses.
So then, let me give you the divisions as I understand them. We shall not deal with them all in this study, but let me give you the complete outline. Our Lord here deals with three great matters with regard to this subject of our sanctification. First: Why does our Lord pray for our sanctification? And a complete answer is given here to that question. The first answer is that he does so because that is the way in which we are to be kept from the world and from the evil. He also prays for it because of the task which has been allotted to us (v. 18), and thirdly, he prays for it because the whole object of his going to the death of the cross is that we might be sanctified—’And for their sakes I sanctify myself, that they also might be sanctified ...’ (v. 19).
The second great matter which is dealt with here is the method of sanctification: ‘Sanctify them,’ he says, ‘through thy truth’—in thy truth—’thy word is truth.’ The way in which God sanctifies us is obviously vitally important, and our Lord deals with it here; we are to be sanctified in the truth.
And the third subject with which he deals is the question of what it is that ultimately makes our sanctification possible: and again he gives the answer in verse 19: ‘for their sakes I sanctify myself.’ Without that we never could be sanctified, it would be quite impossible. So the whole basis of sanctification is ultimately our Lord’s action and work on our behalf, supremely upon the cross.
So let us then start our consideration of this great matter by dealing with that first question, though we shall not deal with the whole of it in this study. The first question is, Why does our Lord pray thus for the sanctification of his followers, indeed, as he says in verse 20, of all his people, you and me and all Christian people at all times? As we saw, his answer is that he does so in order that we may be kept from the world and its polluting, tarnishing effect; and above all that we may be kept from the evil one. ‘I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil.’ And this is God’s way of doing that.
Now we come here to the vital subject of the relationship of the Christian to the evil which is in this world. It is a subject which is very often misunderstood, and this has constantly been so throughout the long history of the church; indeed, I suggest to you that it is very frequently misunderstood at the present time. So let me, therefore, put it in what I regard as the most definite form. What is the relationship of the church, and of the Christian, to general morality? What is their relationship to measures which are designed to produce and to preserve the overall moral condition of society? What is to be the relationship of the church and the Christian to councils dealing with moral issues, to temperance societies and organisations designed to defend the observance of the Sabbath and things of that kind? There are large numbers of such organisations in the world at this present time. In the light of what we are told here about the relationship of the Christian and the church to the world, and to the polluting effect of evil, it seems to me that we must think about this question, and I would like to put the following consideration to you.
Let me put it first of all in the form of a blunt assertion which I shall proceed to justify. My reply with regard to the relationship of the church and the individual Christian to such matters and organisations is that the Christian’s interest in such things is not direct but indirect. Let me put it in this way: all these matters are a part of the function of the state and not of the church as church, nor of the Christian as Christian—of the Christian as a citizen of the state, certainly, but not of the Christian qua Christian.
Let me then show you the value of these things. The functions of the state are of necessity good because the state has been appointed by God; let us never forget that. It is therefore a good thing to point out things which are wrong. Some organisations quote from statistics and show the harmful effect of certain practices; temperance societies, for instance, prove the evil effects of alcohol. Again, some societies are concerned to show that if a man works seven days a week, his work will be less effective than if he works only six. It is a good thing to give the body physical rest and they use that as an argument for Sunday observance. These things are perfectly all right and we should be glad of them and pay due attention to them. Teaching about morality, in and of itself, is right. It is good to warn people against the consequences and the dangers of wrong actions, and it is right that the law of the land should be enforced. It is wrong to break the law, and it should be the business of all citizens to see that the law of the land and of the statute book is enforced.
I want to go further: it is right that the state should enforce God’s law, because the state derives its own being from God. Christian people, let us never forget this. The state is not a human contrivance, it is not man who has conceived the idea of the state and of law, it is God who ordained it. God has ordained the bounds and the habitation of every nation; God has called magistrates and the powers that be, and put them into being. I can say, therefore, that as God has organised the state, indeed all the states in the world, it is the business of all to see to it that the state does its work properly. And one of the duties of the state is, therefore, to see that God’s name is honoured and glorified, and that God’s day is kept.
And my next step is, obviously, that if all that is right, it is therefore the business of the Christian, as a citizen of the state, to see that all that is done. It is not right to say that because a man is a Christian he should have nothing to do with politics or to say that legislation is thoroughly unscriptural. ‘Ah,’ says someone, ‘politics is a dirty game.’ But that is the very reason why Christians should speak out, for if God has decreed that the state is the way in which the world should be governed, Christian people should be concerned to see that it is done in the right and true way. One often wonders whether what is so frequently said about national and local politics is not true simply because so many Christian men and women find politics difficult and unpleasant, and are guilty of avoiding it all. It is the business of the citizen to see that the state functions in the best way and one of the functions of the state is to remind men of God, and to see that the rulers are God-fearing people.
But you will see at once that the purpose of all this is simply to set a limit to sin and to the results of sin and wrongdoing. All that I have been describing can do nothing more than control sin and keep it within bounds. I think it is obvious that it is an entirely negative work. All these enactments and all the councils and committees concerned with morality, and the Lord’s Day Observance Society, and all these movements, can never make anybody a Christian. It is a very great sin to confuse law and grace. These movements are really only concerned with law, and it is their function to keep people under the law until they come under grace. And that is the right thing to do. People say that you cannot, by an act of Parliament, make a man worship God, but you can prevent him from desecrating God’s Day, so you can and should keep him under the law until he comes under grace.
It is because of this, then, that I go on to say that really these laws and regulations and various other things have nothing to do with the Christian as such, and that is why I said earlier on that these things are not primarily the business of the church. That is also why I, as a minister of Christ and as a minister of the church, never speak on temperance platforms. I have never spoken for any one of these organisations designed to observe the Sabbath, nor have I ever spoken on a morality platform. My reason is that it is the business of the church to preach the gospel and to show what I would call, with Paul, ‘a more excellent way’. That is why the church must always be very careful to ensure that nothing she does or says should ever detract from or compromise her message and her gospel. The church derives her power entirely and solely from God and in no sense from the state, or from the law. If there is one thing about which we should be more jealous than anything else it is that within the church we recognise no law, no leader, no ultimate king save the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the sole head of the church—no state, no man, no monarch, no one else, but the Lord himself.
The church, in other words, must never hide herself behind the law of the land and she must never try to enforce her message by using the law of the land, for that is to compromise her gospel. It is to make the unbeliever out in the world say, ‘Ah these people are trying to force this upon us, they are using the law in order to get it done.’ No, at all costs the church must keep her message pure and clean, and she must take her stand upon the purity of the gospel and upon that alone. Indeed I do not hesitate to go so far as to say that the church, claiming as she does that the gospel is the power of God unto salvation, must be prepared to say that her gospel will work in spite of the world, whatever its state, whatever its condition; that even if hell be let loose on the face of the earth, her gospel is still powerful.
‘But wait a minute,’ says someone, ‘don’t you think that you ought to see that these other things may help you to preach the gospel? It is an easier thing to preach the gospel to good people than to bad.’ As a preacher of the gospel I must reject that. I would query, as a matter of fact, whether it is easier to preach the gospel to good people than to flagrant sinners. I think that historically the opposite is probably true. But apart from historical facts like that, I must stand on the basis that the gates of hell shall not prevail against the church; that as the power of the church is the power of the Holy Spirit, it matters not what the world may be like, for this gospel is the power of God unto salvation, and in order to get right down into the dregs and do its own work, it needs no help from the state. It does not need to hide itself behind the law, because it can stand on its own feet and trust in the power of the living God.
But to look at it a little more particularly, let me put it like this. The Christian, is not sanctified in those ways at all, but in a much more positive way: the gospel way. In sanctification the Christian relies upon the work of God in his soul. ‘Sanctify them,’ says our Lord, in effect, to his Father. ‘It is your work, it is something that, ultimately, you alone can do.’ We rely upon God’s work, and, of course, this work of God in the soul is regeneration; it is the making of a new man, the creating of a new being, the giving of a new life. So the gospel way of attacking this problem is not negative, like that of the state, but positive.
Let me elaborate that a little by putting it in the form of a few propositions. The gospel and the church are not so much interested in less sin, as in more and positive holiness. All the other movements I have been describing are interested in avoiding sin, but the Christian life is about sanctification. Though a man may refrain from all worldly pleasures, and may never drink, though he may never, even, do any of the things which are wrong in and of themselves, yet, if he does not see himself as a vile, hopeless sinner who is saved only by the shed blood of the Lord Jesus Christ, he is as lost and damned as the most profligate sinner in the world. The church and the Christian should not be interested only, or even primarily, in the general social effects of salvation, but in the fact that men and women should be brought nearer to God, and should live for his glory. When the church gives the world the impression that she is interested in revival only in order to heal certain moral sores, she is denying her own message. I am not primarily interested in revival in order that the streets of our cities may be cleansed; I am interested in it because I believe that for any man not to glorify God is an insult to God. I know that such a man is held bound, and my desire for him is that he may come to know God and glorify him in his daily life. The church is not interested primarily in the social consequences of irreligion. As I read my history, I see that it was because our fathers and grandfathers made that very error, towards the end of the Victorian era, that Christendom is in its present position. They became so interested in social conditions that they forgot this primary truth. They thought that if everybody was kept in order by certain Acts of Parliament, all would be well. But that is morality, and not Christianity.
So let me come to my next proposition. The church, and the Christian, and the gospel, are not so much concerned about removing the occasions for sin, as in removing from man the desire to sin. ‘I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil ... Sanctify them ... ‘ Our Lord is saying, in effect, ‘I am not so concerned that you should take the occasion for sin away but that you should take out of man the desire to take advantage of the occasion.’ You see the difference? The gospel of Jesus Christ does not so much take the Christian out of the world, as take the world out of the Christian. That is the point. ‘Sanctify them’: whatever the world is like around and about them, if the world is not in them, the world outside them will not be able to affect them. That is the glory of the gospel; it makes a man free in the midst of hell.
Or again let me put it like this: the gospel is not so much concerned about changing the conditions as about changing the man. Oh the tragedy of the folly and the foolishness that has been spoken about this! They say, ‘But surely you must clear up the slums before these people can become Christians?’ My friends, one of the most glorious things I have ever seen is a man who has become a Christian in the slums, and then, though remaining in the same place, has transformed his home and house there. You need not change the man’s conditions before you change the man—thank God, the gospel can change the man in spite of the conditions.
Do not misunderstand me. I started by saying that it is the business of the state to change the conditions. I am now talking of the function of the church qua church, and I would finally put it in this way: our main concern should be not so much to limit the power of evil, as to increase the power of godliness within us. Let me give an illustrataion at this point. The gospel is not primarily concerned to remove the sores of infection, or to put us out of the danger of infection; what the gospel does is to build up our resistance to infection to such a point that it renders us immune to it. The church is not concerned with trying to destroy the infection. Until our Lord returns again the infection will be there; until Satan is cast into the lake burning with fire, the infection will continue. You cannot stop it. It will be there in spite of all your councils and committees. The Christian is not primarily concerned about that. The business of the Christian and the church and the gospel is to see that you and I take so much of the pure milk of the word and the strong meat of the word that our resistance is built up to such an extent that we can, as it were, stay in a house of infectious disease, and be absolutely immune. The germs are there, yes, but we are filled with these anti-bodies that destroy them the moment they attack us.
‘Sanctify them’—that is sanctification, and its whole approach is not negative, but entirely positive. Sanctification means that we become like the Lord Jesus Christ. He was so immune that he could sit with publicans and sinners and not be contaminated by them. People could not understand it, the Pharisees could not understand it. ‘This man is a friend of publicans and sinners,’ they said. But because of his resistance, our Lord could sit there without danger at all; and what our Lord prays is that we may be made like him. He says, ‘As thou hast sent me into the world, even so have I also sent them into the world.’ ‘Sanctify them.’ Make them like me, render them so immune from the assaults of temptation that whenever an attack comes they will always be guarded against it. ‘I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil’, and that is the ultimate way in which we are kept. We are to be sanctified and holy; we are to become like him, charged with his power and filled with his holiness and righteousness, knowing God and walking with him in the light. And as long as we do that, the world will hold no dangers for us. Though in it, we shall not be of it; we shall be walking through it in the light with God.
1 Volume 2, Safe in the World (Crossway Books, 1988)