John 17:17 Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth.
This short concise verse has a voluminous amount of God's Word for those with open spiritual eyes. To sanctify is to set apart for something; God has set us apart for spreading His word to the ends of the earth. Thus, our Sanctification process begins at the heartbeat of our justification, our salvation.
We do not work for our justification or salvation; through God's grace and our faith, that is faith that we cannot do it on our own and trust that God can do it. Our sanctification, on the other hand, is something we do have a part of. It is not us working towards an end; God is working through us to carry out His mission on this earth. For this sanctification process to be successful, there must be spiritual nourishment. This verse says that to be fed spiritually by the truth is the Word of God.
Charles Spurgeon once wrote: "The more truth you believe, the more sanctified you will be." The management of the truth of God's Word on our minds will separate us from the world and into the service of God. We should not only separate ourselves from worldly values and standards, but we should seek to learn more concerning God's orderliness of principles. We should strive to be more connected with His view of the world and his absolute truth instead of the relative truth of the world. We should strive to keep ourselves from the influence of worldly attractions, and then we will experience the only absolute joy known to humankind, the pleasure of a life dedicated and surrendered to Christ Jesus. When the truth of the Word of God encapsulates our hearts, minds, bodies, spirits, and souls, there will be a transformation in our lives that will bring us joy and comfort that we previously could not even have imagined.
With our minds, we learn the truth from the Word of God. With our hearts, we love the truth of God's word, the Son of God (John 14:6; John 1:14). Finally, with our wills, we surrender to the Spirit of truth (John 14:7; John 16:13) and abide by the truth of God's Word every day of our lives. For our sanctification to be fruitful and prosperous, we must have all three of these aspects working in harmony.
We need to do more than just detach ourselves from the worldly system of values; we should immerse ourselves in God's design of values. We need to come out and be separate from the one and established and sanctioned in the other. As God's Holy Word apprehends our hearts, it will change our lives. We must both comprehend and appreciate it and apply it to our lives to make this happen.
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