Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth.
John 17:17 NIV
People will tell you not to care about haters but if you’ve genuinely been hated by a majority for a long time, there’s a higher chance that you will care. It is the reason celebrities use drugs to mask their pain or become obsessed with what people say about them. Ignoring persistent, strong hate is never easy.
John 17:17 is a prayer…one of the many prayers Jesus rendered on behalf of the disciples. In this verse, Jesus prayed that God would preserve them in the wicked world they were to remain in. Their knowledge and defense of the truth was going to make them easy targets for hate, so Jesus had to pray for them. (Jn. 17:14)
The world doesn’t like those who stand for what’s godly and the strong opposition it wages is enough to drag even the strongest believer into the realm of compromise. It takes a great level of preservation and sanctification to remain firm in the truth, to remain firm in what is godly. Hence, Jesus prays for our preservation and sanctification.
For a believer to be truly sanctified, they must be consecrated for righteous living and service to God. We have way too many believers who have failed to recognise its dual role. They either emphasize on the call to holiness and ignore the other or emphasize on service and disregard holiness.
But the truth is that sanctification is a call to both holiness and service. Remember, this prayer was rendered by Jesus on behalf of the disciples when He was about to leave the earth. He knew they would be targets of the weakness of their flesh. He knew that a great work was about to be committed into their hands. Jesus was praying that not only would they stand strong in their faith and the truth they have received but that they would also be set apart and ready vessels for their mission work which was about to begin, as He was leaving Earth.
Jesus prays “sanctify them by the truth, your word is truth”. Let’s break this up into two phases so that we understand this prayer a little better.
Sanctify them by the truth
The moment a believer begins to blur the clear line between truth and lie, he loses his sanctity. We are set apart for God’s use by the truth. The clear distinction between the Pharisees and the disciples was not in titles, or because the disciples followed Jesus up and down–matter of fact, the Pharisees were almost always where Jesus was. The distinction was their belief in Jesus as Lord. The disciples believed but the Pharisees didn’t. The establishment of this truth in the heart of the disciples is what set them apart for God’s use. The truth sanctifies us. We must know it and we must live in it.
Thy word is truth
We are made to understand that the truth and God’s word are equal to one another. The word of God is truth and the truth is the word of God. If we attempt to attain sanctification by any other means, we will fail at it. The only way is to be sanctified by the word of God. In a world of lies and half-truths, the only thing that will keep us set aside for God’s use is His word. The longer we dwell in it and it in us, the more we are separated unto Him. Many things and people claim to be the truth but those claims are false. None of them can truly make a person sanctified. The word of God, on the other hand, is truth and has the capacity to sanctify.
I wonder why Jesus didn’t just tell the disciples to be sanctified in the word of God. Why say it as a prayer. My guess is that the work of sanctification is only carried out by God. Although it is important for us to know the truth, live in and by it, ultimately, it is God who does the work of sanctification. (1 Cor. 6:11)
May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.
1 Thessalonians 5:23 NIV
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