Christ’s sanctification of Himself

Call To Prayer 

Title: Christ’s sanctification of Himself

By: Michael Ntow

Date: 2/8/2022

I sanctify myself.
JOHN 17:19

We must engage our attention about the meaning of Christ’s sanctification of Himself. Clearly He cannot mean that He will do anything to increase His own holiness. That is impossible. He was perfect from the beginning, without blemish, without sin and without fault.

So when He says He is going to sanctify Himself, He cannot mean He is going to make Himself more holy than He was before. What it means, obviously, is that He is using the term in the primary sense of sanctification, namely, dedication, consecration, a setting apart for the special work of God and for God’s purpose in Him and through Him. It means an entire offering of oneself to God for His glory and for His purpose.

Then, in order to grasp the full meaning of this statement, the next word we must look at is “myself.” “I sanctify myself,” our Lord says. And by that He clearly means Himself as He is in His total personality, everything that He is, as God and man, all His powers, all His knowledge, all His perfection, all His ability, everything.

There is no word more inclusive than this word “myself.” It means my total self, all that I am in and of myself, all my relationships, all my privileges, all my abilities, and all my possessions. I sanctify myself in the full totality of my being and my personality. So what our Lord is really saying at this point is that all He is and has, He is now giving entirely and utterly to God “for their sakes” (John 17:19a) they being the Christians then in existence and for our sake too, those who are going to come into existence; all those people He has being talking so much about in this prayer, the people who had been given to Him by God, and for whom He has come into the world.

A thought to ponder 

Jesus’ sanctification means an entire offering of Himself to God for God’s glory and for His purpose.

Prayer point

Let us pray for the grace to be able to sanctify ourselves wholly for the work of the ministry.

God bless us all

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