This week we begin worship with:
Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. And for their sake I consecrate myself, that they also may be sanctified in truth.
Our verse this week is part of the High Priestly Prayer, that Jesus prayed following the Upper Room Discourse and the institution of the Lord's Supper. It may have been spoken on the way to or at the Garden of Gethsemane (See transition at John 14:31).
Knowing that His time on earth was short, and that His work to guard what was entrusted to Him would soon end, Jesus prays that God the Father would ". . . keep them in your name, which you have given me, that they may be one, even as we are one" (John 17:11).
But there was a second unfinished task. Jesus had also been entrusted with the word (John 17:14). He had faithfully spoken that word, but the word had not yet had its full effect. Jesus prayed then that God the Father would continue that process and "sanctify" (hagiazō) them through the word.
To sanctify is the opposite of the verb to "profane". To profane takes something holy and makes it unsuitable for the act of worship. To sanctify means to make something suitable for the act of worship.
This prayer, in part, was answered though Paul who explained the process of sanctification in the first half of his letter to the Romans and the new form or worship in the last portion of that book, where he explained that we are now "holy and acceptable" so we can be a "living sacrifice" (Romans 12:1-2).
May the word spoken today encourage and equip us to do so.
No comments:
Post a Comment