“Sanctify Them”

And let me invite you to turn to John chapter 17.

And as we prepare to look there, we look to God. We say from our hearts individually and corporately,

Make the Book live to me, O Lord,
Show me yourself within your Word.
Show me myself, and show me my Savior,
And make the Book live to me.[1]

Amen.

Well, as you can tell, we’re returning to our studies in John 17. Some of you may have forgotten that we were even studying John chapter 17. That would be understandable. But we have for a number of Sundays been able, as it were, to go behind the curtain as we listen as Jesus, the Son, prays to God the Father on behalf of his disciples—disciples who clearly were in earshot of this prayer so as to be able to record it and to give it to us that we might have it for our own benefit. He’s praying for his disciples that are immediately present, and he’s praying, as we find in the prayer, for those who will become his disciples as a result of the work that his disciples in turn do.

He has most recently prayed for them, for their preservation, in verse 15: “I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one.” And so, asking for their preservation, he then turns and asks for their sanctification. And there in verse 17 we have our text for this morning: “Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth.”

Now, the word that is used for “holy” earlier in the prayer, where on this strange occasion—one of the very few occasions Jesus refers to his Father in this way—he refers to him as “Holy Father,”[2] that word there, that adjective, and the verb to “sanctify,” both of them derive from the same root word. And so, while the text simply says, “Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth,” we might equally well say, “Holy Father, make them holy in the truth.”

And what we actually have here in the space of just nine words is what the Bible has to say concerning the doctrine of sanctification. In an unplanned way, at least from our perspective, the study of last Sunday helps to lead us into the study of this morning, inasmuch as we were taught from Romans 8:31–39, succinctly, that God is “for us.” And the reason that God is “for us” in Christ is because he has justified us; he has made us his own by grace and through faith.

Well, in that same passage, in just a couple of verses before that, Paul has pointed out to his readers that while God is “for us,” or for them, so he has made us in order that we might be for him. And in the twenty-ninth verse—just quoting it for us so that we make no mistakes—in verse 29, he points out that we are there in order that we might “be conformed to the image of” the Lord Jesus Christ. I’m just looking for it myself: “For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers.”

If you ask yourself this morning the question, if you are a believer, “What is God doing with me?” the answer, actually, is very simple and very plain, and it is true for every single one of us in Christ: God is seeking, by the power of the Holy Spirit, to make us more like his Son Jesus. And when Jesus is praying here, “Father, sanctify them in the truth,” he is praying right along those lines.

Now, we only have nine words in our text, but the doctrine of sanctification is important. And so I want to address it in a topical way this morning and hopefully to our help. I want to consider, first of all, what it is, defining it biblically; and then to understand that it is displayed progressively; and then, thirdly and finally, hopefully, with time, to recognize that it is discovered submissively. All right?

Sanctification Defined Biblically

So, first of all: to come to some kind of definition in relationship to what the Bible has to say.

When we read the Old Testament, we discover that places, people, priests, utensils, buildings are described often as “holy.” And the thing that makes them holy, that distinguishes them as holy, is that they are set apart from one use in order to be set apart for another use. So, for example, a utensil that was to be placed within the temple or in the ark, it would be a routine utensil that was taken out of its routine usage and set apart for this particular usage in the framework of God. And it was thereby designated holy.

I won’t ask you to run through this with me, but, for example: “When a man dedicates his house as a holy gift to the Lord…”[3] He’s saying, “This is my house, and I give it to you; it’s to be holy.” That’s in Leviticus 27. “You shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation,”[4] speaking of his people in Exodus. Again in Leviticus: “Every devoted thing is most holy to the Lord.”[5] So when you see this word “sanctify,” when you think in terms of sanctification and what is being said and being done, it is along these lines.

Now, we begin there because the disciples read the Old Testament. The disciples would not have been caught off guard by what I’ve just said to you. They would have looked at one another, and they would have said, “Well, we understand that perfectly.” And then they would pause, perhaps, and realize, “And so Jesus is praying that we might then increasingly be holy as God is holy.”

Now, he has given to us the privilege of getting an insight into this. It is a most remarkable prayer. And we’ve already seen how Jesus has spoken to his Father—verse 6—and he says to them, “You [have given] them to me, and they have kept your word.”[6] “You[’ve] [given] them to me, and they have kept your word.” And now he’s going on to say, “I’m going to leave them. And having asked you to keep them, I’m now asking you to make them increasingly holy and useful—that they will be distinctly set apart from and set apart to.” Now, again, that is what Paul is referencing in Romans 8, in a different way: that “you have chosen us in Christ, and your purpose is to conform us to the image of your Son.”

Now, let’s just think about it in terms of ourselves, if we have come to trust in Jesus. When we believed the gospel, a number of things happened to us, and one was that we were transferred. We by nature live in this world. We are creatures of this world. We are children of Adam. We are by nature sinful. We have no capacity to remove that from ourselves. That takes the intervention of God. And when God comes and intervenes in a life, he removes us from one sphere, and he puts us in another sphere—that we are transferred “from the domain of darkness” (this is Colossians 1) and “transferred … to the kingdom of his beloved Son.”[7] That’s Colossians 1. And when you read on, you realize that the reason that God has done this is in order that he may “present you” sanctified, “holy and blameless” in his sight.[8] The same thing when he writes to the Corinthians concerning what has happened to us in Jesus: He has made us new in order “that those who live [may] no longer live for themselves but for him who for [them] died and was raised.”[9]

When Jesus saves us, he provides us not only with justification but also with sanctification.

Now, again, if you think about it in terms of last Sunday morning: If last Sunday morning was to remind us that God is for us, then this morning is to make us aware of the fact that because he is for us, we are to be for him. For him—that those who live should no longer live for themselves, which is our nature, but for him who died for us and was raised for us; in other words, that our response to these things is a response of awe. It’s a response of gratitude. It’s a response of thanksgiving, as we will see.

Now, let me just say a number of things succinctly concerning sanctification.

It’s important we understand that sanctification is the fruit of being set apart in Jesus. It’s the fruit of his having set us apart in Christ. Sanctification is not that we have been justified, and now we’ve got to try and fix everything by ourselves. Sanctification, when we read it in these terms, is about living in ways that are consistent with what we have become in Jesus. Both justification and sanctification are distinct, but they’re not separate from one another. Because when Jesus saves us, he provides us not only with justification but also with sanctification.

And here’s the issue. Because you will meet people—and I hope you’re not one of them—who has determined that you can be justified without being sanctified. You can’t. For the only people that God justifies are those whom he sanctifies. And the idea that somehow or another, you can pray a little prayer, do a little something, and you’re all set, and all bets are off from that point—you can’t get to that by actually reading the Bible carefully. Because the same grace of God that sets us apart to him is the same grace that makes us increasingly like him. It is, if you like, just a continuum: that the work of regeneration whereby—we sung about it this morning—the work of regeneration whereby we are born anew puts us in a new position before God, justified and being sanctified.

And so I say to you again: If you’ve wondered what God is doing with you as a Christian, then I can tell you what he’s doing. He is making you more like Jesus. He is making you more holy. He is making me more holy. “Without holiness no one will see the Lord.”[10] Well then, it’s imperative that the same grace that sets us apart by justification is at work in our lives in order to complete the work which he has begun. Because otherwise, we will never see the Lord.

Now, we could prolong this, and I won’t, but it’s important that we understand this. Often, again, for me, my childhood nailed these things in song for me. We used to sing a song:

Things are different now.
Something happened to me
Since I gave my life to Jesus.

Things are different now.
There’s a change, it must be,
Since I gave my life to him.

Things I loved before have gone away,
And things I love far more have come to stay.

Things are different now.
Something happened to me
Since I gave my life to him.[11]

That’s a Christian testimony! Jesus is making me different. It’s not that I anticipate being in a new domain; I am in a new domain. “If anyone is in Christ, they are a new creation.”[12] And he is taking this creation, this new creation, and he is fashioning it in such a way that it might become all that he intends for it to be.

Sanctification, we might say, is the process of being made less like myself and more like Jesus—less like me and more like Christ. Our wives could justifiably say, “I wish you were a bit more like Jesus, Alistair.” But I echo that. You know, we sing the children’s song, “I want to be like Jesus.” And the final verse goes, “[But I am] not like Jesus.”[13] What is the gap?

Well, John Owen says that sanctification is “the Universal Renovation of our Natures”—“Renovation of our Natures by the Holy Spirit into the Image of God, through Jesus Christ.”[14] It’s a work of renovation. If justification is the building of a whole new building, then the work of sanctification is putting the building together in a way that is fit for the residency of the Holy Spirit.

Sanctification, we might say, is the process of being made less like myself and more like Jesus.

Well, that’s enough on trying to say something about defining it biblically.

Sanctification Displayed Progressively

Secondly, we need to notice that it is then displayed progressively. Progressively—that God is at work in our lives. And that’s what Jesus is praying here. Don’t forget that our text is John 17:17: “Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth.” God is at work, changing us from what we were to what he means for us to be.

Now, our standing before God as justified sinners is not a matter of degrees. You can’t be more justified or less justified. By distinction from that, sanctification is a matter of degrees. Justification is a legal statement—as we saw last time—that God has declared, because of the work of Christ, we are not guilty. “There is … now no condemnation to them [that] are in Christ Jesus.”[15] It’s not a matter of a question. However, that is legal and external. The doctrine of sanctification is making clear that what is true for us now is internal, and it is subjective, so that we can grow in grace and in the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ.[16] And that is what Jesus is praying for his disciples: that we might exactly do that. It’s a lifelong project. It will be brought to completion, but it doesn’t happen overnight.

And that’s where, in the oft-quoted metaphor from Mere Christianity, I find great help. And it seems apropos to remind you of it. This is C. S. Lewis, and he writes as follows:

Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what he’s doing—just making some basic repairs. But then he starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and doesn’t seem to make sense. What is the explanation? It is this: that you thought you were going to be made into a decent little cottage, but he is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it himself.[17]

What is God doing today in your life as a Christian? He is sanctifying you by the Holy Spirit. He is, if you like, chiseling away at us: chiseling us—and chiseling is probably a good metaphor, again—chiseling us into the image that God intended, knocking pieces off of us, realigning elements in us, smoothing out where the friction has marred and spoiled us in different ways, but all with a loving purpose: working in a way to promote growth in our holiness, to sanctify us. To sanctify us.

Now, it’s important that we understand what is true here. When we actually come to faith in Jesus Christ… So, somebody has shared the gospel with you. You knew about the Bible. You knew about God. You knew about Jesus. You knew a ton of stuff. You maybe went to religious school. But there came a day when suddenly, you heard the voice of Jesus say… And you heard his voice—not audibly, but it was as though he might just as well have tapped you on the shoulder. And suddenly, all the panorama of religious background that you had enjoyed was crystallized in a moment when you actually personally responded to Christ. You admitted that you were sinful. You believed that Jesus died in order to deal with that. And as a result of that, the Holy Spirit came to indwell you. You were made new. You were made different.

But as soon as you have entered into that new dimension, you quickly realize that you brought with you your own fallen nature—that part of you that still loves the idea of sin. And as a result of that, there is immediately set up an internal conflict—the conflict that Paul references in Romans 7 when he says, “The good that I want to do I don’t end up doing, and the bad that I don’t want to do, I find myself doing it.”[18] Why is this? Well, it is because of this very thing: that the conflict is between our new nature, implanted in us by the Holy Spirit, and our fallen nature that we haven’t yet left behind. So I am sinful and I am rebellious, but I am also God’s adopted child.

You say, “Well, how can the two things coexist?” Well, I found it helpful—and I’ll just mention this to you—I found it helpful… And I had thought about this a long time ago when I read something about the beginning of 1 Corinthians. But if you have a moment to turn to 1 Corinthians… If you turn it up, it’ll be much more helpful if you have it in front of you. Shouldn’t take you time to find 1 Corinthians; it’s right before 2 Corinthians and right after Romans.

Now, what I want to point out to you is this: the way in which Paul addresses the Corinthians. If you know anything about the Corinthian church, to say it was a sort of… It was a tough spot; let’s put it that way. All kinds of shenanigans going on at the Communion services. It’s beyond comprehension, really, what was taking place.

Now, it is to those people that he begins his letter. Look at it:

Paul, called by the will of God to be an apostle of Christ Jesus, and our brother Sosthenes,

To the church of God that is in Corinth…

Notice: “to those sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints together with all those who in every place call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours.”[19] He doesn’t say these people are going to be sanctified. He says these people are sanctified.

Now, if you go to the thirtieth verse of the chapter—which is progress—and he says in 30, “And because of [Jesus] you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption”[20]—so that in Christ, all of this is given to us. Sanctification is not imputed to us as justification is. But when we’re regenerated, as soon as the Spirit of God comes to live in our hearts and we are justified before God, that sets immediately in motion the reality of sanctification.

Now, if you have seen the little clip that got annexed from a long address that I gave in the South some time ago, and you’ve seen this thing about “the man on the middle cross”—right? And in that thing there, I say that, you know, he wasn’t baptized, and he wasn’t in a Bible study, and so on, and so how could he possibly end up in heaven? And his answer was “Because Jesus said I could come.” But since God doesn’t justify those whom he doesn’t sanctify, then the thief had to be sanctified.

And if you think about it—and I want to make sure that people, when they listen to this, they don’t get this wrong, and so I’m just correcting myself as I go—but the fact of the matter is, the work of the Spirit of God in that man’s heart changed him. In the dying embers of his life, he had prayed, he had confessed his sin, he had rebuked his friend, and he had commended Jesus—all things that were indicative of the fact that the work of God’s grace within his heart was immediately setting in process that which will be completed when he sees Jesus in a new heaven and a new earth and he is made like him.

Now, I interrupted myself. And you need to go, if you’re still in 1 Corinthians, to chapter 6 and to verse 11. We are familiar with 9 and 10, where he’s speaking about the deeds of the flesh and so on. And then, wonderfully, he says in verse 11—talking about drunks and revilers and greedy people and all kinds of things—he says, “And such were some of you.” “You’re not the church of the… I don’t know what you are! You’re a bunch of broken people in this church. You were like that.” But look: “You were washed”—past tense—“you were sanctified”—past tense—“you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.”

And so it is a twofold thing, isn’t it, that in terms of the reality of the work of God, it’s not in question, but the work that his goodness has begun is now being completed. And when the apostles write about this… For example, when Peter writes about it in his first letter, he gives you about twelve verses on the nature of salvation. From verse 3 to verse 9, it’s one long sentence in the Greek. And all he is saying is “This is the wonder of salvation. What an amazing thing that God has done this for us!” And then he immediately, having given to us all these indicatives of what is true, he then comes with the imperatives, and he says, “So then, you should be holy as God is holy.”[21] He’s not asking us, then, to become something that we are not but to become that which we are as now being conformed to the image of Jesus.

Paul does the exact same thing, more familiarly, I suppose. Eleven chapters of Romans: hardly any imperatives in it at all, nearly all indicatives—maybe half a dozen imperatives in eleven chapters. And then it gets to chapter 12, and here come the imperatives: “Therefore…” “Therefore…” And he says, “This is what you are to be: Be being transformed by the renewing of your minds.”[22]

Well—and succinctly, again, in 1Corinthians, but verse 19 and following: “You are not your own, … you were bought with a price.”[23] That’s the reality. So you can’t walk around saying, “I can do whatever I want to do. You know, I was chosen in God; therefore, I can do what I like.” No, the doctrine of election is not “God chose me, and therefore, I’m free to do what I choose.” The doctrine of election is that “God chose me, and therefore, I must do what he designed me to do.”

And how will that be worked out progressively? Well, I just give you three words.

First of all, if you like, mentally—or better still, perhaps, intellectually. If the work of sanctification is progressive, what about in our minds—transformed by the renewing of our minds? Think about our minds in the present context. I mean, if you think about your mind, you could go nuts, thinking about your mind. When you think about the fact that you can actually speak to somebody—that they make movements with their larynx and their tongue and everything else, with breath passing over, and you can understand it, and you can distinguish—it’s truly amazing!

And think about the use of our minds. Think about our minds in the present context, when you think, “God is wanting me to be renewed in my mind—in my mind.” Our minds at this point in the twenty-first century are bombarded, not just on a daily basis but on a minute-by-minute basis—bombarded by podcasts, by emails, by videos, by music. We have what Neil Postman—not in his book Amusing Ourselves to Death but elsewhere—what Neil Postman referred to as “information glut.” “Glut.” Our teenagers—and younger than our teenagers—are absorbing on a moment-by-moment basis notions, ideas, concepts, mistruths, flat-out lies that challenge the notion of our being conformed to the image of Jesus. Life is like a huge journey to who-knows-where on a daily basis—fast-moving sights and sounds experienced, and with very little center to them or very little meaning to them.

And then you come to church. For twenty-five minutes somebody says to you, “You know, the Bible says that he is at work within us to sanctify us and to make us holy and to transform us in our minds, mentally.” The question is: How much endeavor do you want to spend, do I want to spend, to have my mind secured by the truth of God’s Word? And do I think for a minute that I can allow my mind to be bombarded at multiple levels, hour by hour, day by day, and get by with a little scribble of the Bible every so often, if it happens to pass my fancy? It won’t happen. Mentally.

Physically. Physically. You just go to a children’s song:

Take my feet and let them be….

Take my hands and let them move
At the impulse of [your] love. …

Take my lips and let them be
Filled with messages from thee.[24]

What is that children’s song saying? It’s saying, “Lord, I want to be sanctified. I want to become like you.”

“Do you not know,” says Paul, “that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God?”[25] What I do with me, physically, is either advancing things in relationship to becoming like Jesus or is making me increasingly “a walking contradiction, partly truth and partly fiction.”[26]

Mentally, physically, and, actually, totally. Totally. You say, “Well, I don’t know if I want to do ‘totally.’” Well, you don’t have an option, folks. None of us do. First Thessalonians 5: “Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely.”[27] “Completely.”

Do you have any rooms in the house of your life that are shut off to God? Can God walk through the house of your life and mine, and we don’t have to hide anything? That’s the question. That’s what he’s saying: sanctify you completely—your whole spirit, soul and body, kept blameless at the coming of Jesus.

Sanctification Discovered Submissively

Well, we need to just say something about how this is then discovered submissively. This last heading is not very good, but it’s just an attempt to try and keep it within the framework. Come up with another one for yourself. But it’s the second half of what Jesus is saying here in the seventeenth verse: “Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth.”

Bottom line: By the Holy Spirit, God’s Word is the means by which God works to make us more like Jesus. The psalmist: “The sum of your word is truth, and every one of your righteous rules endures forever.”[28] “Turn my eyes from looking at worthless things; and give me life in your ways.”[29] David in 2 Samuel: “And now, O Lord God, you are God, and your words are true.”[30]

The fact is that God sent his Son into the world, and he gave him his word. Remember that? Jesus says, “The words I speak are not my own. They’re the words the Father gave me to speak.”[31] Jesus then takes those words, and he gives them to his apostles—those for whom he’s praying here immediately. And those apostles are then going out from Jerusalem and out into the world to, first of all, declare the word of God by preaching; and then, by the administration of the Holy Spirit, that is then inscripturated for us so that the world then might hear the Word of God—hence Wycliffe Bible Translators, hence what we’re doing in order to see the Word of God in the lips and lives of people.

Well, if that’s the extent to which God has gone, what about us, in terms of the place of the Word of God personally? Personally—the place of daily devotions, the regular reading of the Word, in the awareness of the fact that the Word of God appeals first of all to our minds. You have to think. It actually, as you think, reshapes the way you think. It actually penetrates our consciences. That’s why I began saying, “Show me myself.” Well, when it shows me myself, I say, “Well, what’s the answer to myself? Show me my Savior.” So we look from ourselves to the one who has saved us and to the work of the Spirit, who is sanctifying us. And it stirs us to action.

By the Holy Spirit, God’s Word is the means by which God works to make us more like Jesus.

This is J. C. Ryle: He says, “Believers who neglect the Word [of God] will not grow in holiness and victory over sin.”[32] You can take that to the bank. If your Bible is not an open book to you, if your nourishment in the Word of God is not daily nourishment, then you actually are—you’re starving yourself from the very product that has been provided to you in order that you might be completed in this way.

I want to say, just finally, a word about the place of the Word of God not only privately but corporately. Corporately. When Moses at the end of Deuteronomy is gathering the people together, it says this: “And all the people gathered and…” No, that’s actually Nehemiah. Sorry. In Nehemiah, when they say to Nehemiah, “Bring out the Book,” it reads, “And all the people gathered and told Ezra to bring out the Book. And so Ezra brought the law before the assembly, both men and women, all who could understand.”[33]

What I thought I was going to quote to you is Deuteronomy 31:12. This is the word: “Assemble the people, men, women, and little ones, and the sojourner within your towns, that they may hear and learn to fear the Lord your God, and be careful to do all the words of this law.” There is no question about the priority of preaching. Unfortunately, it’s usually just the preacher who says that. So, to sit out and listen to the preacher, you say, “Well, yeah, I suppose it’s job security or whatever it might be.” But the fact is that the means by which the authority of God, the voice of God, through the Word of God to the people of God is experienced in a unique way in this kind of context—it’s not like any other kind of context. You are supposed to be entirely passive. It is in that passivity, in that non-activity, that we ask God to speak, that we ask that we might hear the voice of Jesus, that we might look way beyond whoever the preacher is and be encountered by God.

Sinclair Ferguson has helped me as much with this as anybody. And, I think, as elders, we recognized it, too, when we read the book Devoted to God. Because in that book, at one section, he explains just why it is important for Christians to place their lives under the preaching of the Word; in other words, to become, what he says, “actively passive”—to become “actively passive.” Because “it is expounded to us”; it is not expounded “by us.”[34] And he goes on to say—and is very honest about it—he says, “My perspective on this is controverted and is actually controversial.”[35] And this is what he says about Bible studies, and particularly group Bible studies: He says, “Neither of these, valuable as they may be, can substitute for the transforming power of the preached word” of God.[36]

Now, if you think about this, go back fifty years in the nation, and any church such as ours, it wouldn’t even be a question about whether you have a service in the morning or a service in the evening. You just did. Was that just conformity to a shibboleth, or what was it? No, it was an expression of desire. It was an expression of hunger. Consider the difficulty that church leaders have now to establish, for example, an evening service. What’s it about? Well, he says, it’s about a loss of appetite—a loss of appetite both for worship and for the Word of God. And then he says, “Surely no young man in love with a young woman would be content to arrange to meet her for only one hour a week, [and] always at the same time?”[37] The ultimate issue is desire.

You see, we’ve become an activist generation. We think if we’re not doing something, something must be wrong—all the things you can do with the Bible. The big issue is: What’s the Bible doing to me? And I have to sit under it. I have to be subjected to it. Not the word of a man! The Word of God. The only role that we have is to be a voice-piece for a little while. You come, and you go.

The fact—and I’ll end with this—the fact that there is no evening service tonight is both an irony and an exception in light of what I’m saying. And I acknowledge that. But here’s the deal: It is only an exception to some, but it is not an exception to most.

When we began in ’83, we set out with the conviction about the priority of the preaching of the Bible on the Lord’s Day. We determined that we would do that. The Sunday evening services emerged out of a total vacuum in 1983, teaching particularly the children as they came and, actually, teaching the adults from the children’s material, because the adults weren’t that theologically adept at that point in any case—at least, many of them were not.

Headline in the British press this week: a hundred church buildings in Scotland for sale. You want to buy a church in Scotland? Now’s your chance. Why is that? Because they gave up on this. The real test of the future of Parkside Church, I suggest to you, and its effectiveness is not going to be seen in the morning service but in the evening. Because the evening is always different. And the reason it is, is because we’ve shuffled in in the morning, whatever our attitude was; we’ve had the Word of God preached to us; our hearts have been seasoned; we’ve been lifted up in praise; and now we have another framework out of which to come to the evening service. Why is it that the singing is so different in the evening? Why is that? It’s this.

What is God doing with you? Well, he predestined you to be conformed to the image of his Son. We are being transformed into his image. And one day, when we see him, it will all be complete, because we’ll be just like him.[38]

Father, I want to pray that you will help us navigate through all these many words; that the Spirit of God might do the work of God in our hearts; that correction, rebuke, training in righteousness[39] we may be ready to receive. And so we pray that you will continue to fashion us in such a way that we become increasingly like our Elder Brother, Jesus. And we pray it in his name. Amen.

[1] R. Hudson Pope, “Make the Book Live to Me.” Language modernized.

[2] John 17:11 (ESV).

[3] Leviticus 27:14 (ESV).

[4] Exodus 19:6 (ESV).

[5] Leviticus 27:28 (ESV).

[6] John 17:6 (ESV).

[7] Colossians 1:13 (ESV).

[8] Colossians 1:22 (ESV).

[9] 2 Corinthians 5:15 (ESV).

[10] Hebrews 12:14 (NIV).

[11] Stanton W. Gavitt, “Things Are Different Now” (1941). Lyrics lightly altered

[12] 2 Corinthians 5:17 (paraphrased).

[13] A. K. Miller, “I Want to Be like Jesus.”

[14] John Owen, Πνευματολογια: Or, a Discourse Concerning the Holy Spirit (London, 1674), 338.

[15] Romans 8:1 (KJV).

[16] See 2 Peter 3:18.

[17] C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, bk. 4, chap. 9. Paraphrased.

[18] Romans 7:19 (paraphrased).

[19] 1 Corinthians 1:1–2 (ESV).

[20] 1 Corinthians 1:30 (ESV).

[21] 1 Peter 1:16 (paraphrased).

[22] Romans 12:2 (paraphrased).

[23] 1 Corinthians 6:19–20 (ESV).

[24] Frances Ridley Havergal, “Take My Life and Let It Be” (1874).

[25] 1 Corinthians 6:19 (ESV).

[26] Kris Kristofferson, “The Pilgrim, Chapter 33” (1971).

[27] 1 Thessalonians 5:23 (ESV).

[28] Psalm 119:160 (ESV).

[29] Psalm 119:37 (ESV).

[30] 2 Samuel 7:28 (ESV).

[31] John 12:49 (paraphrased).

[32] J. C. Ryle, Expository Thoughts on the Gospels: St. John (New York: Robert Carter and Brothers, 1878), 3:200.

[33] Nehemiah 8:1–2 (paraphrased).

[34] Sinclair B. Ferguson, Devoted to God: Blueprints for Sanctification (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 2016), 49.

[35] Ferguson, 49. Paraphrased.

[36] Ferguson, 49.

[37] Ferguson, 49n1.

[38] See 1 John 3:2.

[39] See 2 Timothy 3:16.