18 As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. 19 And for their sake I consecrate myself, that they also may be sanctified in truth.
Before we took our brief break from our series on John’s Gospel, we ended with John 17:17, “Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth.” You might remember that as Jesus prayed that the Father would sanctify us in the truth, the call to us as Christians and as the Church is a call to holiness, a theme which we continue today. We’re focussing on just 2 verses this morning, but we will begin with verse 19 before coming back to verse 18.
The Church of Jesus Christ is unique for many reasons, and one of the most important characteristics or qualities which sets the Church apart from any other gathering of people is our call to be holy. We know this to be true, but it can place a tremendous burden on us, because we also know that even though our salvation is secure, we continue to struggle with temptation and sin, so how are we to understand our call to be holy, and is it even possible for us?
In verse 6 of Jesus’ High Priestly Prayer, He calls the Church, “the people whom you gave me out of the world.” In verse 16 He prays that Christians would know that we are “not of the world, just as I am not of the world,” and in the following verse He asks the Father to “sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth.”
As we move to verse 19, we see the result of a people called to holiness as He prays, “for their sake I consecrate myself, that they also may be sanctified in truth.”
The Church is under increasing pressure to buckle under the world’s pagan, Godless philosophies, and the challenge we face today is to decide whether we are going to take our call to be holy seriously or not. In other words, we must choose: are we going to serve Christ, or are we going to serve Satan? There really are only two options, because as Jesus said in Matthew 12:30 and Luke 11:23, “Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters.”
As we saw last time, God consistently calls His people to be holy, because He is holy. We need to take the matter of our sanctification seriously. In John 17:19 Jesus prays, “For their sake I consecrate myself, that they also may be sanctified in truth.” This is in the ESV translation. Many other English translations use the words sanctify and sanctified in verse 19, instead of consecrate and sanctified. They are often used interchangeably, but there is an important difference. Notice that Jesus says He will be consecrated, and we will be sanctified.
Jesus does not need to be sanctified in the same way that we go through the process of sanctification, because He is, was and always will be, perfectly holy. We are to grow in grace, while Jesus, as John writes in 1:14, is full of grace and truth. Our sanctification as Christians means that, through the work of the Holy Spirit who indwells us, we grow in holiness, while someone or something that is consecrated, is set apart for God’s purposes.
An example we are all familiar with is the prayer of consecration at Holy Communion services, where we pray that God would set apart the bread and wine from all common use for this holy use and mystery.
Contrary to what is taught in the Roman Catholic religion, the bread and wine remain exactly that - bread and wine, but they have now been consecrated or set apart for a whole new purpose as the people of God share in the Sacrament of Holy Communion.
The Old Testament priests were set apart for the ministry of offering atoning sacrifices to God. God said to Moses in Exodus 40:12-13, “You shall bring Aaron and his sons to the entrance of the tent of meeting and shall wash them with water and put on Aaron the holy garments. And you shall anoint him and consecrate him, that he may serve me as priest.”
All of the Old Testament priests were a shadow or a picture of Jesus, our Great High Priest, but He did not have to put on any outward holy garments, and the consecration He underwent was very different to Aaron, as Jesus consecrated Himself as our Priest through perfect obedience to the Father’s will. He consecrated Himself, or set Himself apart as the one, perfect sacrifice who would suffer and die as He took the punishment we deserve.
It was now, as He was about to go to the cross the next day, where Jesus consecrated Himself to make the true atoning sacrifice. Leviticus 8:30 says, “Moses took some of the anointing oil and of the blood that was on the altar and sprinkled it on Aaron and his garments, and also on his sons and his sons’ garments. So he consecrated Aaron and his garments, and his sons and his sons’ garments with him.”
Israel’s priests in Old Testament times were consecrated with the sprinkling of the blood of lambs, but when Jesus prayed in John 17 to consecrate Himself as our Priest, He would do so the next day with His own blood, which was shed for our forgiveness on the cross.
So while the words consecrate and sanctify are quite similar in their meaning, they are quite different. We could say that consecration is an event, while sanctification is more of a process. As Christians, God calls us to a life of progressive sanctification, a life of increasing Godliness as we turn away from sin. Paul describes this process when he writes that we are to “put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.” (Ephesians 4:22-24)
So sanctification in the life of a believer happens when we strive to put off sin and put on holiness instead by the power that Christ gives us.
As Jesus consecrated Himself to the Father for us, so He also consecrates us for Christian service. This consecration is also very similar to our justification, which takes place at the moment of our salvation. When Jesus sent the Holy Spirit to change our hearts so that we believed God’s Word and were saved, He clothed us in His righteousness. This is the act of justification which sets us apart or consecrates us for God and His purposes.
This is what spiritual rebirth is all about. When we turn to God through Christ in repentance and faith, God doesn’t just make a few improvements here and there in our lives. No - we are completely and radically changed as we are born again. We are new creations, as Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 5:17, and until such time as we are born again, any good works we do, as sincere as they might be, are of no eternal benefit whatsoever.
Isaiah 64:6 says that before coming to salvation, all our righteous acts are like polluted garments, or filthy rags. Not a popular thing to say in our secular, pagan world, but this is what the Bible teaches.
It is only as we are justified and sanctified by the sacrifice of Jesus that we can be set apart or consecrated for the purposes of God. Without the blood of Christ and His atoning sacrifice being applied to us and received by faith, there is no forgiveness of sins, and we remain the enemies of God.
It’s the blood of Jesus Christ that makes all the difference. We are called to pursue holiness not in order to be holy, but because we have already been made holy in Christ. This helps to answer our question earlier: As sinners, is it even possible for us to be pursue holiness? The answer is a resounding yes, because it’s not about what we have done, but all and only through what Jesus has done for us on the cross. God accepts us because of Christ, and His righteousness is applied to us by faith.
And it is because we were set apart by Jesus for God’s purposes that we are now able to pursue lives of holiness. Paul explained how this works in Romans 6 when he wrote in verse 5, “If we have been united with Him in a death like His, we shall certainly be united with Him in a resurrection like His,” and in verses 11-14, “So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions. Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness. For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.”
As Jesus consecrated Himself by submitting to the Father’s will for His life, we are set apart to a life of worship and Christian service to God. In John 17 verses 17 and 19, Jesus emphasises that we are sanctified in the truth. What does this mean? Quite simply, we are to believe God’s truth, we are to love God’s truth, we are to speak God’s truth, and we are called to do God’s truth in a world of ignorance, unbelief, and rebellion.
At the end of Matthew’s Gospel we have what has become known as the Great Commission given by Jesus to His Church. “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” (Matthew 28:18-20) We cannot fulfill this commission if we are uncertain about what it is Jesus has taught us. And what has He taught us? The truth, as revealed in the Word of God.
Our best defence against the lies and deception of the world is to be solidly grounded in Biblical truth. This is important, because there is a difference between what Jesus was called to do by the Father, and our calling as the Church.
Jesus was uniquely called to perform the work of salvation for God’s people. He is the only one who could pay the price of our sin, but as we are called and set apart for God’s purposes, we are to obey the law of God as revealed to us in the Scriptures, as we live lives of sacrificial humility. This is how we fulfill Paul’s instruction to us in Romans 12:1. “I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.” We are to humbly and faithfully witness to and teach the truth of the Gospel.
We are all gifted differently, but our ultimate purpose is the same - to point the lost to Jesus Christ and the hope that He offers to them. The specifics of how we do this is different for us all, but we must each choose whether we are going to obey or disobey the calling God has place on each of us.
Jesus said in John 17:19, “For their sake I consecrate myself.” This is an important detail. Why did Jesus die? It was for our sakes. He surrendered His own life in order to not only save His own people, but to sanctify us for God’s service and God’s glory.
John Calvin wrote, “It is because He consecrated Himself to the Father, that His holiness might come to us; for as the blessing on the first-fruits is spread over the whole harvest, so the Spirit of God cleanses us by the holiness of Christ, and makes us partakers of it. He has presented us to His Father in His own person, that we may be renewed to true holiness by His Spirit.”
By the blood of Jesus Christ shed on the cross, we are not only justified in the sight of God, but we are also sanctified. Verse 19 again: “For their sake I consecrate myself, that they also may be sanctified in truth.”
And the purpose of all of this is explained to us in verse 18.
“As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world.” Here we begin to see part of the purpose of our sanctification. Yes, it is first and foremost so that we would be grounded in the truth so that we won’t be confused by the lies of the world and the devil, but also, it is because Jesus has sent us, His Church, into the world.
We are called to a life of holiness not only for our own benefit, but for the benefit of others. Jesus is talking in verse 18 of our mission in the world, and this becomes clearer when we read from verse 16 through to 19. “They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. 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.”
Jesus’ prayer reveals not only how He sanctifies us, but why He does so. He sanctifies us and consecrates us for a purpose - He has sent us into the world.
Verse 18 makes three important points about why Jesus has sanctified us.
Firstly, because He has sent us. This means we now live our lives for Him, and no longer for ourselves. As Paul reminds us in 1 Corinthians 6:19-20, “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.”
Just as the original disciples were sent into the world to proclaim the good news to the lost, so we are sent. They faithfully preached that salvation comes by grace alone through faith alone, in Jesus Christ alone, as revealed in the Scriptures alone, to the glory of God alone, and the message we have for the lost is no different.
While Jesus’ prayer in verse 18 was specifically for the original disciples, its truth applies to all Christians of all ages, which is what we’ll begin looking at next week. We carry the same message of hope, teaching the same doctrine that the apostles taught, and we are empowered by the same Holy Spirit as our brothers and sisters in Christ were in the 1st century.
So the first point is that it is Jesus who has sent us.
Equally important, we need to be clear about where He has sent us: “I have sent them into the world.”
In verse 11 Jesus prayed that the Father would keep us and protect us, but we must understand that the Gospel message is for the world. This challenges us, because it is so easy to become discouraged as the world system becomes more Godless and more evil with each passing day.
We have all kinds of pagan, sinful ideologies constantly rammed down our throat, and if the truth be told, it is really exhausting, especially when we dare stand up for the truth and speak out against them, because we are then accused of being intolerant, religious bigots.
But God, in His infinite wisdom, and His absolute sovereignty has called us to be His messengers in our fallen world. We are here for a purpose, and that is to share the Gospel with the lost. The good news is that we don’t do it alone, because it is God Himself who sanctifies and consecrates us for this enormous task, and it is through the power of the Holy Spirit that we do these things.
It’s hard though, isn’t it? Sometimes we just wish that Jesus would return today and put a stop to all this madness. There are other times when we might feel like just circling the wagons and retreating into our safe Christian cocoons, but what good will that do for those who are still lost? As Paul writes in Romans 10:14, “How then will they call on Him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in Him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching?”
That verse should pierce our hearts. As tempting as it is to shut the world out, we just can’t, because Jesus has sent us into the world. A hostile, vicious and hate-filled world, yes, but it’s a world that God loves so much that He sent His only Son to die on the cross for that world, and if you believe and embrace that truth, and you are saved, you also have to know that same Jesus has sent you into that same world to share the hope you now have.
We have work to do, and God has placed us in this time and in this place in human history for a purpose.
James Montgomery Boice wrote, “For Christians it is possible today to be born of Christian parents, grow up in that Christian family, have Christian friends, go to Christian schools and colleges, read Christian books, attend a Christian Church, watch Christian movies, get Christian employment, be attended by a Christian doctor, and finally die and be buried by a Christian undertaker on holy ground. This might seem an entirely desirable approach were it not for Jesus’ prayer: ‘As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world.’”
He continues by saying, “What does it mean to be in the world as a Christian? It means to not be like the world. It does not mean that we are to abandon Christian fellowship or our other basic Christian orientations. All it means is that we are to know non-Christians, befriend them, and enter into their lives in such a way that we begin to infect them with the Gospel, rather than their infecting us with their worldliness, which is the wrong way around.”
There is a lot of wisdom in the old saying that for many non-Christians, we are the only Bible they will ever read…
So we are sent by Jesus, we are sent into the world, and the third point in verse 18 is that we are sent into the world as the Father sent Jesus.
A. W. Pink wrote: “Christ was sent here on an errand of mercy, to seek and to save that which was lost; so we are here as His agents, His instruments, to preach His Gospel, to tell a world dead in sin of One who is mighty to save. Christ was here full of grace and truth, so we are to commend our Master by gracious and faithful lives.”
Our task is to share the Gospel. We are to tell the lost that there is hope, and that hope has a name: Jesus Christ. The first point to make here is that we are not responsible for the salvation of the lost. It is God who saves, not us, but again, as Paul wrote in Romans 10:14, “How then will they call on Him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in Him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching?”
God’s sovereign plan of salvation requires both that Jesus should die and that we should witness in His name. “As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world.” The Reformation Study Bible notes on this verse say, “Jesus is the supreme pattern for Christian missions. Any true Christian is sent into the world to bear witness to Christ and to reach out to the lost where they may be found in order to lead them to the Saviour.”
Our sanctification is actually not for our benefit, but for the benefit of others, and ultimately for the glory of God. We are called to faithfully represent Jesus Christ in this lost and dying world. Jesus set Himself apart for us, and now He has set us apart for Him. The Father sent Him into the world, and now He sends us into the world. Just like the often-used line in war movies goes, “Soldier, you have your orders.”
Are we going to faithfully obey those orders? We must not forget that we don’t do this in our own strength. Jesus has sent us His Holy Spirit, and He intercedes for us even now. He is praying for us, that we would be faithful to Him, right until the end when He returns for us, or calls us home, whichever comes first.