Sanctify them by the truth thy word is truth.
In this prayer the Lord asks the Father to set His disciples apart. Two questions follow. What does it mean to be set apart? And why does the Lord name the Father's word as the means?
Sanctification has two sides, and the word works both of them.
Sanctification implies that we are, not only set apart from evil, but set apart in heart and life for Christ. The Lord's words show us that this devoted life of practical sanctification to Christ comes about in two ways. First, by the truth... On the one hand, the word exposes and judges our words, our ways and our walk. It judges even the secrets of our hearts, all that may spoil a life of devotion to Christ. On the other hand, the Father's word reveals to us the Father in all His love and grace and holiness as set forth in Christ.
This setting apart follows from knowing what is real.
The root idea of sanctification is setting apart. The Son has given the Father's word, which introduces us to all His love, His thoughts, His purposes, His glory. All this is truth; that is, reality of the most divine kind. The world lives so much in a region of unreality and make-believe. It works to set up systems that have no solid ground and that must pass away in the end. If we know divine realities, we must stand apart from the world's unrealities.
The Lord is speaking to the Father, so "your word" means the Father's word. Commentators warn against narrowing this prayer to a setting apart for service.
It is easy for people to misunderstand the Saviour's words, as those do who lower and narrow them to a setting apart for ministry. But He had at heart a deeper, more personal desire. He wanted the disciples themselves to be filled with the truth, shaped and formed by it... "Your word," the Father's word, "is truth." Truths had been made known before, but never the truth itself, until Jesus came, for He is the truth. He was the first, and He alone, to show openly what everyone and everything really is: God, man, even Satan; heaven, earth, hell, and all things in them.
The Lord did not name the law as the means of holiness. He named the word. The difference is the difference between a rule and an object the heart can love. (Older translations read "sanctify them through your truth".)
"Sanctify them in the truth." It is the word of God applied to judge every thought and feeling in me. He does not say, "Sanctify them by the law," but by the word. Persons take the law as a rule, but you want power; you want an object that seizes your affections. What object does the law give you? Where is the thing, the One, you are to love? Where is He? Who is He? The law tells me of nothing but a Judge. It sets no object before my soul to give me blessed and holy affections. The Father's word does give me this.
Because the word is the means, it is also the measure. We do not get to decide for ourselves what a set-apart life looks like.
This is a saying much to be remembered. It teaches us that we are not the judges of what sanctification or holiness is. God's word decides that. Holiness is the character, or mind, that God's word — the truth — forms in us.
That same word also lights up a world that is otherwise unreadable.
Christ is the truth: the word of God is truth about everything. Do I want to know what my heart is? The Word tells me. Do I want to know what God is? The Word tells me. What Christ as a Saviour is? What Satan and his schemes are? The Word will tell me. And therefore I have the Word to make all plain, when I want to go through the world, which is a labyrinth for anyone else.
Sanctification here is not an effort to squeeze the world out. It is a heart occupied with something better.
All the Scriptures are truth. But one truth in particular makes the child of God separate from the world: the revelation of the Father's name to his heart. That revelation sanctifies him, or sets him apart, to the love of the Father... he has, in the infinite kindness of God, the love that Christ dwelt in for his portion. So long as that love is filling his heart, there is not room in him for the world.
- Word given — the Lord asks the Father to set His people apart by the word, not by the law.
- Word reveals — it works two ways. It exposes what spoils devotion to Christ, and it shows the Father in His love and grace.
- Word defines — we do not decide what holiness is; the character formed by God's word is holiness.
- Word separates — if you know what is real in God, you cannot be at home in the world's make-believe.
- Word fills — when the Father's love fills the heart, there is no room left for the world. That is sanctification in practice.
As thou hast sent me into the world, I also have sent them into the world;
In the verse just before, the Lord asked the Father to set His disciples apart by the truth. Now He gives them the same commission the Father gave Him. What does such a sending involve? What do they carry, who is fit for it, and how far does it reach?
John's Gospel presents Jesus as the One the Father sent. Here that title stretches to cover His followers. One reference work traces the word "apostle" back to its root meaning:
The Greek word apostolos means "a messenger," "one sent"... It is also used in a much higher and stronger sense. It implies a divine commission in the one sent — first of the Lord Himself, and then of the twelve disciples He chose to be with Him during His ministry here... He was the Sent One.
One writer notes how often this Gospel returns to the theme, and where it lands:
It is remarkable how many times this Gospel calls the Lord the One whom the Father sent into the world. In slightly different words it says this more than forty times... He was, therefore, not native to the world, as though He sprang out of it. He came from above, and all that He was He brought with Him... Now something new comes about. In setting it up, the Lord was fulfilling His own words in His prayer to the Father — see John 17:18. He was departing, and they now were to be sent as from Him.
A sending needs a message. One commentator names it in a single line:
To carry what? Christ made known by the Father's word. I cannot be sent into the world if I am in it and of it. And I can only go there as sent by Christ if I am fully joined with Him in the spirit of my mind.
The pattern runs in two links. The Son makes the Father known, and the disciples make the Son known:
As the holy and perfect One, Jesus had been sent into the world by the Father, that He might represent Him and make Him known. Now He sends His disciples into the world in similar manner. They were to represent Him and make Him known. What qualified them for this was the sanctification of which the previous verse had spoken. If His plan had been to shut them away from the world, no such mission could have happened. It also could not have happened if the truth had not sanctified them.
There is no contradiction here. Being taken out of the world by grace is what makes the sending into it possible:
It flowed from One apart from the world and above it, whom the Father had sent into it on an errand of infinite love for the Father's glory... So the Son sent the disciples, joined with Himself in heaven and charged with the Father's testimony to the world. Had they been of the world, they could not be sent into it; but, as taken out of it by grace in Christ, they were not of it, and could be sent.
So the Christian's place has two movements: taken out of the world, then sent back into it:
Notice here again that He, Christ Himself, is the standard. Our separation from the world matches Christ's own separation from it. And our being sent into the world, in verse 18, follows that same standard. The Lord takes us out, breaks our links with this world, and then sends us back that we may be here for Him.
The word "world" also fixes how far the errand reaches:
He does not merely say, "Sanctify them in your truth"... but further He says, "As you sent Me into the world, so I have sent them into the world." It was no question of the land of Judea now. The world was before them. So, if there was the intimacy of setting apart to the Father, there is also a universality of mission.
Being set apart is not an end in itself. It gives the disciples a standing in two directions:
This separation from evil, and sanctification to God, is in view of the disciples' service — that they may be morally fit to carry out their mission... Already the Lord has viewed the disciples as in His position before the Father; now He views them as having His place before the world.
- Sent — the Lord is the Sent One of the Father, and He hands that same commission on: they are sent as from Him.
- Carrying — what they bear into the world is Christ made known, as He made the Father known.
- Separated — being not of the world is not withdrawal from it, but the one qualification for being sent into it.
- Everywhere — the field is no longer one land but the whole world.
- Fitted — being set apart by the truth is what makes them fit to hold His place before the world.
and I sanctify myself for them, that they also may be sanctified by truth.
In this prayer Jesus has just asked the Father to set His disciples apart by the truth. Now He turns to something He does Himself, and He does it for them. But how could the sinless Son need any setting apart at all?
The ESV says "I consecrate myself." Older translations, which the writers quote, use the word "sanctify" for the same thing. The word does not mean becoming purer. It means taking a separate position, and the writers press that this is the only sense that fits a holy Person.
The basic idea of sanctification is "to set apart." The only way we can understand it here is this: the Lord Jesus Christ set Himself apart from the world by being present in heaven in His body. "For their sakes I sanctify Myself" — I am taking a position so that I can be the object their whole heart is set on. The more we learn of our oneness with Him in that place, and of our shared life with the Father and the Son, the more we will be set apart in heart, mind and spirit from the evil world we live in.
after
Other places where Scripture uses the word point the same way.
Things without life — altar, basin, vessels — were sanctified under the law. No inward change happened in them, and no increase in holiness. But they could be put in a separate position, given over completely to the service of God. The Lord Jesus Himself was "sanctified, and sent into the world" (John 10:36). And again, as He left the world, He said, "I sanctify Myself" (John 17:19). There could be no inward change in Him, no sanctification in the sense of growth. Holiness of the most intense kind, divine and absolute, was always His.
In verse 17 He asks the Father to sanctify them. In verse 19 He asks no one. He acts Himself.
He is holy in Himself, holy as God is holy. So the only sanctification possible for Him was a setting apart like this. And notice: according to this verse, He does it Himself. That is another witness to His Deity, for no mere man could set himself apart in the glory of heaven!
The whole act is aimed away from Himself. He had no evil to leave behind. They did.
He was in the world as Surety for His people. So it is for their sakes that He separates Himself from the world, by death and resurrection. Our Lord was holy, innocent, undefiled and separate from sinners. He needed no moral separation from the evil in the world. But His own people, who were in the world, needed the practical sanctification that nothing but His grace could give.
Which moment do the words point to? Ridout ties the setting apart to death and resurrection. Kelly rules out two other readings:
The Lord does not sanctify Himself for them simply by becoming man. Nor does He do it by dying as a sacrifice, as Chrysostom and Cyril of Alexandria taught, and many after them. For on the cross God made Him, who knew no sin, to be sin for us. It is as glorified, after death and resurrection, that He becomes the pattern of His own.
Verse 17 gave the word; verse 19 gives a Person. The two work together.
Now I get something more than the word; it is Christ Himself who is the substance of all that the word speaks about... He has gone up to glory, and there sets Himself apart as the object for our hearts... I have now got an object: it is the truth, which will judge everything that is in my heart. This it is that sanctifies me, by showing me the One whom I love, and who has said that I am going to be like Him.
The place He has taken sets the measure for daily life.
He is set apart to God as the pattern Man in heavenly places, so that the Holy Spirit may take it and apply it to us here. I see this perfect Christ set apart for me in heaven, and I say I must walk according to that pattern. I will walk in love, because Christ also has loved us, and given Himself for us... The starting-point of all my measure of conduct is the place in which I am already set in Christ.
- Set apart — Here "sanctify" means to take a position, not to grow purer. He was always holy, so no other sense fits Him.
- Set apart by Himself — He asks the Father to sanctify the disciples. He sanctifies Himself. No mere man could do that in the glory of heaven.
- Set apart for them — He needed no separation from evil. They did. Grace alone moves Him to take this place for their sakes.
- Set apart as Object — The word reveals God's mind. Christ in glory is the living Person that word describes, so the heart has someone to fix on.
- Set apart as pattern — Looking at Him where He now is sets the measure of daily life. I walk according to the place I am already given in Christ.