For Their Sakes
12/12/2000.
“For their sakes I sanctify Myself, that they also may be sanctified by the truth.” John 17:19.(NKJ)
Introduction:
I read about a small boy who was consistently late coming home from school. His parents warned him one day that he must be home on time that afternoon, but nevertheless he arrived later than ever. His mother met him at the door and said nothing. At dinner that night, the boy looked at his plate. There was a slice of bread and a glass of water. He looked at his father’s full plate and then at his father, but his father remained silent. The boy was crushed.
The father waited for the full impact to sink in, then quietly took the boy’s plate and placed it in front of himself. He took his own plate of meat and potatoes, put it in front of the boy, and smiled at his son. When that boy grew to be a man, he said, "All my life I’ve known what God is like by what my father did that night."
The Basis for Our Sanctification .
Sanctification is essential so that we can come into the presence of God, it’s His way of dealing with us. Our Sanctification is also vitally important in evangelism as we discovered last week. But what’s the basis for our sanctification , how is our sanctification possible? how does it come about? Well we find it here in this verse before us today “For their sakes I sanctify myself” This verse is the very core of the gospel the very essence of what the gospel is all about.
The whole of the Christian gospel is in this one verse “For their sakes I sanctify myself”.
What Does Christ Mean By “I sanctify Myself”;
He can’t be talking about His own holiness. that’s impossible He was perfect from the beginning with out blemish. So what’s He saying, well He’s talking about sanctification in it’s primary sense of being set apart of being consecrated, being dedicated not about being made more holy. He’s talking about being set apart for the special work of God in him and through Him. It means a total offering to God of himself for His Glory and for his purpose. And the word myself has great significance, it means my total self all that I am, all of my privileges, all my relationships, all of my abilities , all of my possessions all that I am my whole being I offer to you father for their sakes. They being the Christians then in existence, and for our sakes too, those who were to follow, for their sakes I am giving my toil self to you.
His Sanctification Also Meant Giving Up Something:
Philippians 2:6-8 says “who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal to God, but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross.”
Which means that Christ didn’t regard being equal to God a prize that he wanted to hold onto. Here he is devoting Himself to this task of sanctify Himself for our benefit by laying aside the marks and the signs of His glory, as the hymn puts it ‘Mild He lays his glory by’ This was all part of this sanctification of himself for our sakes. He laid aside all the signs of His glory and submitted to being born as a babe in weakness and utter helplessness.
He offered Himself to the Father and said, I’m going to make myself responsible for the salvation of these people and I don’t care what it costs me.
Christ Now gives himself to God as a Sin offering for Us:
What I’ve been talking about so far is quite staggering and mind blowing. But there is something even more deeper than this. Jesus now turns to the Father and offers Himself as a sin offering on our behalf. He hands Himself passively to the Father and says, I’m ready to be made sin for them, lay their sins on me. I’m here offering myself for their sins lay them on me. He handed himself over that’s what sanctification is all about, total dedication. Or put in the language of scripture “cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree” Galatians 3:13 (Deut 21:23). to be crucified was to be cursed, it was an absolute disgrace, and here in effect Jesus says to the Father “as this is the only way I can be sanctified, I give myself and make myself a curse. Let their sin be layed on me so that they may be sanctified.’
Jesus was now submitting Himself to the most terrible thing He had ever contemplated, separation from His Father. He came out of heaven where He was co-equal with the father in the God-head and then He faces it that in order that in order that these people may be sanctified He has to undergo this separation from the Father.
And this is why our Lord died of a broken heart on the cross, because he lost contact with the Father He was separated from Him.
Oh what marvellous doctrine we are looking at in these words.
Our Lord Jesus Christ in heaven at this very moment is not the same as when he left heaven to come to earth. On leaving heaven He was God the Son, but when he returned to heaven He was God and Man, he has taken human nature with Him.
laid on him the iniquity of us all" (Isa. 53:6). Commenting on this verse Martin Luther wrote: "All the prophets did foresee in Spirit that Christ should become the greatest transgressor, murderer, adulterer, thief, rebel, blasphemer, etc., that ever was or could be in all the world. For he, being made a sacrifice for the sins of the whole world is not now an innocent person and without sins...but a sinner." He was, of course, talking about the imputing of our wrongdoing to Christ as our substitute.
Luther continues: "Our most merciful Father...sent his only Son into the world and laid upon him...the sins of all men saying: Be thou Peter that denier; Paul that persecutor, blasphemer and cruel oppressor; David that adulterer; that sinner which did eat the apple in Paradise; that thief which hanged upon the cross; and briefly be thou the person which hath committed the sins of all men; see therefore that thou pay and satisfy for them. Here now comes the law and saith: I find him a sinner...therefore let him die upon the cross. And so he setteth upon him and killeth him. By this means the whole world is purged and cleansed from all sins."
The presentation of the death of Christ as the substitute exhibits the love of the cross more richly, fully, gloriously, and glowingly than any other account of it. Luther saw this and gloried in it. He once wrote to a friend: "Learn to know Christ and him crucified. Learn to sing to him, and say, ’Lord Jesus, you are my righteousness, I am your sin. You have taken upon yourself what is mine and given me what is yours. You became what you were not, so that I might become what I was not.’" What a great and wonderful exchange! Was there ever such love?
Practical Application:
Well how does all this work out in practice? “For their sakes I sanctify myself, that they also might be sanctified through the truth”. How does this work out in practice?
Well NT doctrine clearly states that everything is in the Lord Jesus Christ. Everything that we enjoy, everything that we shall be , is because of our relationship with Him. We are in Him and He is in us. We are parts of Him so therefore we are sharers of all that He is. All that He has done on our behalf. Therefore all that belongs to Him belongs to us, and by His sanctification of himself He has made our sanctification possible.
Before you and I could ever be sanctified the barrier of sin between us and God had to be removed, that’s why the cross of Calvary is absolutely necessary to sanctification. Sanctification ultimately means being like God, sharing His life, having perfect communion with him. But before that’s possible the barrier of sin had to be removed.
We trample on the blood of the Son of God if we think we are forgiven because we are sorry for our sins. The only explanation for the forgiveness of God and for the unfathomable depth of His forgetting is the death of Jesus Christ. Our repentance is merely the outcome of our personal realization of the atonement which He has worked out for us. It does not matter who or what we are; there is absolute reconciliation back to God by the death of Jesus Christ and by no other way, not because Jesus Christ pleads, but because He died. It is not earned, but accepted. All the pleading which deliberately refuses to recognize the Cross is of no avail; it is battering at a door other than the one that Jesus has opened. Our
Lord does not pretend we are all right when we are all wrong. The atonement is a propitiation whereby God, through the death of Jesus, makes an unholy man holy.
Then the next thing that happens is that in Him we are reconciled to God. sin has been taken out of the way, the guilt has been removed and now God in a miraculous manner puts us into Christ. He incorporates us, He grafts us into Him. Like a new branch being grafted into a tree, we are grafted into Christ. We are now In Christ. As we are grafted into him we receive all that is true of Him.
We receive a new nature, we receive a divine nature,. We are now empowered to live this life on earth in the same way Christ lived it. We receive the Holy Spirit Himself, who enters us, dwells in us and begins to form Christ in us----we are created anew in Christ Jesus.
Philippians 2:12-13 “ Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is who God works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure” From the very moment the Holy Spirit enters our spirit he begins a work in us, at times we aren’t conscious of it either, he creates a desire in us to do God’s will by working on our will. He empowers us and links us more closely to Christ, forming Christ character in us. as I surrender my will more fully to his will i become increasingly filled with all His treasures of wisdom and love. Christ’s life flows into mine, as the branch takes on the life of the vine so my life takes on the life of Christ. the NT is full of this kind of teaching but all that I’m trying to point out today is that all of this would not be available to us if He had not sanctified himself. This is our sanctification also because Jesus says here that He has done this in order that we might be sanctified in truth.
Conclusion :
I can’t finish today without pointing out what led Him to do all of this, and it’s there in that brief statement “For their sakes I sanctify myself” Who are they, that’s us as we were before being saved, self willed creatures, people who listened to satan rather than God, people who put their desires before God’s His enemies.
“For their sakes” for you and I as we were guilty sinners it is for us that he has done all of this--for them says the Son of God I sanctify myself, the holy one the one without blemish. Can you imagine a greater contrast between “them” and “I”. And yet He says “I sanctify myself” which not only means giving of His total personality but also that He did it voluntarily and willingly.
There is nothing in our sinful nature which deserves what Christ did for us. There has never been any request made by man to God to be saved. The whole idea of salvation came from God alone.
printed in the May 24, 1999 issue of Christianity Today.
("Surprised by Death") by James Van Tholen It seems that Pastor Van Tholen had been diagnosed with cancer, received treatment, and returned to his pulpit to talk about his experience. The doctors told him that they could not cure him and in fact he probably did not have long to live. What do you say to your congregation in a moment like that? He remarked that for the first time in his life, he felt as if he had begun to understand God’s grace. He wasn’t afraid of dying per se, but suddenly he realized that at the age of 33, he wasn’t going to live to be 40 or 50 or 60 or 70. He might live a few more weeks or months, but without a miracle of God, he wouldn’t live much longer than that. That’s when it hit him. For years he had subconsciously expected to live to some ripe old age. And that meant he had plenty of time to improve himself, to get rid of bad habits, to repair broken relationships, to grow in grace. Now for the first time he realized he didn’t have enough time to do it. He would have to go out into eternity less than he wanted to be—with some habits unchanged, some relationships unrepaired, some spiritual growth not accomplished. That’s when he realized that he would have to depend completely on the grace of God. Not just theoretically but practically and totally. If God’s grace wasn’t enough, then he was in trouble because there wasn’t enough time for massive self-improvement. Romans 5:6-8 became precious to him because it speaks of Christ dying for us while we were "yet" sinners. Our salvation hangs on that little word "yet." Not just that we were sinners once upon a time but that in some profound way even though we are saved, we are still sinners desperately in need of grace.
Here I am says our Lord send me. There was no compulsion from the Father either, the Son desired to do this. He gave Himself freely, willingly and voluntarily.
I guess that this is seen very clearly in the garden of Gethsemane. “If it be possible let this cup pass from me” But if it’s not possible if there’s no other way I’ll go through with it though I know what it’s going to cost me.
Jesus’ agony was so great in anticipation that he sweated drops of blood, but He still went willing to the cross of Calvary with all of it’s shame, suffering and agony.
Yes Jesus willing endured it all FOR YOUR SAKE and FOR MY SAKE, not simply that we might have our sins forgiven, but that we might be sanctified.
AMEN
