Continual Burnt Offering: Daily Meditations, August 20 (17:17-19)
“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” — John 17:17-19.
SANCTIFICATION is two-fold, positional and practical. All believers are sanctified (that is, set apart to God) by the one Offering of our Lord Jesus Christ, and in this sense, “perfected forever” (Heb. 10:10,14). But we are called to walk in conformity with our place in Christ. This is practical sanctification and by the Word of truth ministered to the heart in the power of the Holy Spirit. In our Lord’s high-priestly prayer in John 17 He stresses the importance of this. He set Himself apart to go to the cross and to the throne that our hearts might be occupied with Him where He now is, in order that we might be separated from all that is of the world.