He Will Do It: Sanctified by the Word Until He Appears

The night before the cross, Christ prayed for His own, and He named the means by which the Father would set them apart: "Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth" (John 17:17). The prayer does not ask the Father to sanctify them beside the word, or after the word, or by some work that leaves the word behind. Through thy truth. The instrument is stated in the request itself. And the same Lord, one night earlier in the same upper room, had already spoken the result over the same men as a present fact: "Now ye are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you" (John 15:3). Clean already — and still prayed over, to be sanctified. Both stand, and neither cancels the other. The word that has cleansed is the word that goes on cleansing. What Christ has spoken makes clean; what the Father keeps speaking keeps clean.

Paul takes the prayer out of the upper room and sets it over the whole assembly. Christ gave Himself for the church for a stated end: "that he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word" (Ephesians 5:26). Mark whose act it is. He sanctifies. He cleanses. The bride does not wash herself into readiness, and the washing is not water without the word — it is the washing of water by the word, the spoken truth applied like water to what is soiled. The end of that washing is presentation: that He might present the church to Himself glorious, without spot or wrinkle (Eph 5:27). The spotless bride is not a second work after sanctification. She is sanctification arrived at its destination.

Why can a word wash? Because this word is not dead print handled by living men; it is a living word that handles men. "The word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword" (Hebrews 4:12). Quick — alive. It pierces to the dividing of soul and spirit, and it discerns the thoughts and intentions of the heart, and no creature is hidden from the sight of Him to whom we must give account (Heb 4:12-13). This is how the word sanctifies and does not merely inform. It goes below the act to the intention under the act. It names what a man hides from himself. A sanctification that never exposes could never cleanse; the sword exposes first, and the exposure is itself a mercy, because what is named before God can be dealt with by God.

And this word is not a fragment. "All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness" (2 Timothy 3:16), "that the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works" (2 Timothy 3:17). All of it, breathed out by God, and all of it profitable — doctrine that teaches the truth, reproof that convicts of error, correction that straightens what is bent, instruction that trains in righteousness. Nothing in the list is optional furniture. The reproof is part of the profit. The correction is part of the furnishing. A man furnished by the word he refuses to be reproved by is not furnished at all; he has kept the tools he liked and returned the rest. The stated end is a man of God perfect — complete, lacking nothing the work requires — and the completeness is measured in good works, not in information stored.

The Psalms had already sung this doctrine in the first person, as practice. "Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way? by taking heed thereto according to thy word" (Psalm 119:9). The question is practical — how shall a way be cleansed, a path kept clean in a defiling world — and the answer is not a feeling, a resolve, or an environment. Taking heed according to the word. And the next verse gives the storage that makes the heed possible: "Thy word have I hid in mine heart, that I might not sin against thee" (Psalm 119:11). Hid — laid up in advance, in the heart, before the hour of pressure arrives. The purpose is stated without decoration: that I might not sin against thee. Scripture does not promise purity to the man who reaches for the word after he has fallen and calls the reaching repentance. It describes a word already hidden doing its work in the moment it is needed, like a guard already posted at the gate.

Then the Lord joins truth to freedom, and freedom to Himself. "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free" (John 8:32). The promise is spoken to those who abide in His word (John 8:31) — the knowing is not a glance but an abiding — and the freedom in view is freedom from sin's mastery, for everyone who commits sin is sin's slave, and it is the Son who makes men free indeed (John 8:34-36). And the truth that frees is not an abstract quality floating free of a person. "I am the way, the truth, and the life" (John 14:6). The truth is a man. So the chain tightens to its center: "the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us" (John 1:14). The word that sanctifies is not finally ink on a page, though God has given it in writing and commands it be kept. The word that sanctifies is the Word who became flesh, who speaks the Father's words, and whose speaking cleanses. To receive the written word while refusing the Word it testifies of is to keep the washing and refuse the water. The Scriptures are they which testify of Him (John 5:39).

From cleansing now, the chain runs to likeness then. "Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is" (1 John 3:2). Now are we the sons of God — present possession, not future hope only. And yet what we shall be has not yet appeared. The final sanctifying act in the chain is a seeing: we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. The word that cleanses by being heard gives way at the end to a vision that transforms by being seen — and even that is no new doctrine, for we are already being changed into the same image as we behold the glory of the Lord (2 Cor 3:18). The appearing does not begin the likeness. It completes it.

And between the cleansing and the appearing stands this sentence: "every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as he is pure" (1 John 3:3). Read it in its order. The hope comes first — hope in Him, fixed on His appearing — and the purifying follows the hope as its fruit. John does not describe a man purifying himself in order to earn the appearing. He describes a man whose hope has seized him, and the hope does the purifying through him. "Even as he is pure" sets the measure: not purity as the age defines it, not purity as the conscience negotiates it, but as He is pure. Left standing alone, the verse could be misread as self-sanctification, man as his own washer. The chain will not let it stand alone. The same apostle who wrote "purifieth himself" wrote first that we are clean through the word He has spoken, and Paul, praying the same doctrine over Thessalonica, settles the agency beyond argument.

"the very God of peace sanctify you wholly; and I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ" (1 Thessalonians 5:23). Wholly — the whole man, spirit and soul and body, nothing held back from the sanctifying, and the horizon is the coming of the Lord, the same appearing John saw. The petition is that God sanctify, and that God preserve. And then the ground under the whole prayer, in one short sentence that carries the entire chain on its back: "Faithful is he that calleth you, who also will do it" (1 Thessalonians 5:24). Will do it. Not: will watch whether you do it. Not: will assist if you begin it. The God who calls is the God who performs. The purifying of the man who hopes is real, commanded, and necessary — and it is the faithfulness of another that guarantees it, the same faithfulness that spoke creation, that hid nothing of His means, and that has never yet left a called man half-washed.

So the chain holds from end to end. Clean through the word already. Sanctified through the truth continually. Washed by the word, cut open by the word, furnished by the whole Scripture, guarded by the word hidden in the heart. Freed by the truth, because the truth is a Person, and the Word was made flesh. Sons of God now; like Him when He appears, for we shall see Him as He is. And over the whole road, from the first cleansing to the final likeness, one inscription stands: Faithful is he that calleth you, who also will do it.