I Am Sanctified in Christ

Sanctify them by the truth; Your word is truth. As You sent Me into the world, I also have sent them into the world. I sanctify Myself for them, so they also may be sanctified by the truth. - John 17:17-19

This is a prayer that Jesus prayed for His disciples: you and me. I feel so unworthy to have had the Only Son of God the Creator, the Savior of God's people to have prayed for lil' ole' me. But I suppose that's the point, isn't it? Who else could pray this prayer and have it mean so much and touch our souls so deeply? Just Jesus - the epitome of sanctification.

Sanctification means to be made clean, to be purified, to make Holy, to consecrate mentally (huh? we'll dig into this one!), to be set apart for special use, to be honored, to be freed from sin, and it means to give moral or social sanction to someone.

What does sanction mean? This is very interesting, friend: A sanction is a formal decree, a solemn agreement, a consideration, principle, or influence (as of conscience) that impels to moral action or determines moral judgment. It's also described as the detriment, loss of reward, or coercive intervention annexed to a violation of a law as a means of enforcing the law.

In other words, a sanction is a formal agreement that in order to influence people to do the right moral thing, something (or in our case, someone) has intervened in the law to enforce that law.

Jesus was perfect. He lived, died, and was raised from the dead with no reward in order that He would fulfill the Law of God, which is to be free of sin. The only reason humans can be free of sin is that Jesus sacrificed Himself, and therefore fulfilled the Righteous Law of God. That law was summed up by Jesus beautifully in Mark 12:30-31, which says: And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ This is the first commandment. And the second, like it, is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”

Love God. Love others. Christ is the fulfillment of this law.

Jesus set us apart.

Who is 'us'? Those who proclaim His name as the Son of Man and the Savior.

Who did He set us apart from? Evil ones who deny that Jesus is the Savior.

This is the sanction.

Jesus is our sanctification. We are made sinless through Him and because of Him. That's it. There's no other way, dear one. We can work really hard - the hardest - and do the most to be perfect and sinless while we're here on earth, but without Jesus, you won't be sanctified. It's impossible.

Jesus made us clean, purified, and Holy by His life, His death, and His Resurrection. And that last part? The resurrection? Yeah, it's really something because it changed everything. EVERYTHING.

Now, it is possible to be a sinless and pure human on earth. Some people will argue with this, and I believe that's because they want to justify their sin and be able to continue in it. I don't know - that's my opinion, and I'm open to being wrong. However, Jesus called us to live like Him (see 1 John 2:6, 1 Peter 2:21, and John 13:13-17) and He's not going to ask us to do something we don't have the power or authority to actually accomplish.

Let's get real here, friend. Do you believe you have the Holy Spirit living and dwelling within you? If so, TRULY, then you have the same power and authority to live as Christ did here on Earth. Remember: He was fully human just as much as He was fully God. Are you ever going to BE Jesus? No. Don't be silly. You're you and you'll only ever be you. But you can and should strive to be like Jesus. You've been given everything you need to accomplish this.

Is this difficult? You betcha! Welcome to planet earth. Everything here is difficult, especially if you're a Believer of Yeshua. And yet we're here to build the Kingdom of the Most High God, Yahweh. We're not here to build up our own Kingdom. We're here to bring souls to Christ, and we do that through living our lives like Him. We can only do that because we have sanctification through Him.

This is where the term 'consecrate mentally' comes in. The word consecrate means to make or declare sacred. So, to be sanctified by Jesus means that our minds are made sacred. There are a slew of bible verses that talk about having a mind of Christ, and that'll be my challenge for you today: get into God's Word and find out what He says about having a 'right mind'.

If you want to do a deeper study on what Sanctification means, I have a 40-Day Bible SOAP Study pack you can download and work through. Get that here. If you don't have a printer at home, I'll send you the pack in the mail. Order the physical Study Pack here.

Here's a tricky question: Are we sanctified before we die? I'm not going to answer that because frankly, there are completely opposing views on it, and I want you to make up your own mind in prayer with the Father. I'll leave a couple of articles below in the Resources section for you to read through if you'd like to take a deeper dive into this.