Sanctify them by Your truth. Your word is truth

"While I was with them in the world, I kept them in Your name.  Those whom You gave Me I have kept; and none of them is lost except the son of perdition, that the Scripture might be fulfilled.  But now I come to You, and these things I speak in the world, that they may have My joy fulfilled in themselves.  I have given them Your word; and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world.  I do not pray that You should take them out of the world, but that You should keep them from the evil one.   They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world.  Sanctify them by Your truth.  Your word is truth.  As You sent Me into the world, I also have sent them into the world.  And for their sakes I sanctify Myself, that they also may be sanctified by the truth.

- John 17:12-19

Last week we read through Jesus' Farewell Discourse to the Apostles.  See In My Father's house are many mansions;   Peace I leave with you, My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you;  I am the vine, you are the branches;  This is My commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you;  When He, the Spirit of truth, has come, He will guide you into all truth and That your joy may be full.  In yesterday's reading, we began reading Jesus' prayer to the Father concerning His disciples.  John's Gospel tells us:  Jesus spoke these words, lifted up His eyes to heaven, and said:  "Father, the hour has come.  Glorify Your Son, that Your Son also may glorify You, as You have given Him authority over all flesh, that He should give eternal life to as many as You have given Him.  And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.  I have glorified You on the earth.  I have finished the work which You have given Me to do.  And now, O Father, glorify Me together with Yourself, with the glory which I had with You before the world was.  I have manifested Your name to the men whom You have given Me out of the world.  They were Yours, You gave them to Me, and they have kept Your word.  Now they have known that all things which You have given Me are from You.  For I have given to them the words which You have given Me; and they have received them, and have known surely that I came forth from You; and they have believed that You sent Me.  I pray for them.  I do not pray for the world but for those whom You have given Me, for they are Yours.  And all Mine are Yours, and Yours are Mine, and I am glorified in them.  Now I am no longer in the world, but these are in the world, and I come to You.  Holy Father, keep through Your name those whom You have given Me, that they may be one as We are."

"While I was with them in the world, I kept them in Your name.  Those whom You gave Me I have kept; and none of them is lost except the son of perdition, that the Scripture might be fulfilled."  My study bible tells us that "the son of perdition ('destruction') is Judas Iscariot.  Old Testament prophecy (Ps. 41:9; 109:2-13) alludes to Judas.  Judas's actions also herald the 'falling away' that will occur in the last days (see 2 Thess. 2:3, where 'son of perdition' refers to the Antichrist)."


"But now I come to You, and these things I speak in the world, that they may have My joy fulfilled in themselves.  I have given them Your word; and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world.  I do not pray that You should take them out of the world, but that You should keep them from the evil one."  A note reads:  "Inasmuch as Jesus comes from the realm of divine existence, He confers a heavenly identity and life on those who are joined to Him.  In fellowship with Him, the disciples attract the world's hatred.  The second-century Letter to Diognetus (6:3) states:  'Christians dwell in the world but do not belong to the world.'  Reborn in Christ, Christians have their citizenship in the Kingdom of God (3:1-5).  Yet their vocation is in the world, where they are protected by God against the evil one.  'Remember, O Lord, Your Church to deliver it from all evil . . . ' (Didache 10:5)."

"They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world.  Sanctify them by Your truth.  Your word is truth."   To sanctify, in the definition my study bible provides, is to "consecrate, make holy, separate, set apart from the world, and bring into the sphere of the sacred for God's use."  It tells us, "St. John Chrysostom interprets this verse:  'Make them holy through the gift of the Spirit and by correct doctrine.'"

"As You sent Me into the world, I also have sent them into the world.  And for their sakes I sanctify Myself, that they also may be sanctified by the truth."  What is the purpose of discipleship?  Surely it is to follow in His footsteps, in His word (as He has taught), to abide in Him.  But abiding in the Son also means abiding in the Father and in the Spirit:  where One is so all the Trinity are found.

Today's reading speaks much of sanctification.  According to Abbott-Smith's Lexicon of the New Testament, to sanctify is to "to make holy, consecrate, sanctify; to dedicate, separate."  It also means to set apart for God's use, as my study bible implies.  So to be drawn out of the world, as Jesus speaks of here in today's passage, is to undergo a sort of transformation with a particular purpose.  Jesus "takes us out of the world" in the sense that we are transformed from just the product of our environment, of our genetics, and all that we understand of the world, into something that reflects also God's love:  that is, God takes all that we are, everything in all our resources, our whole being, and puts us through a process of salvation.  What God has created is good:  but abiding in Him we are taken on a journey, where everything we know and everything we are is taken into a light that the world can't teach us.  Things we've learned through difficult experience, for example, might be responded to in a different way - in that light of abiding in Him - than we might learn from the world around ourselves.  Most of all, we remember that to abide in Christ's word is to abide in His love, and therefore to learn His love.  St. Paul will talk about spiritual gifts, in 1 Corinthians 13: "Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal.  And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.  And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing"  (v. 1-3).  Truly to learn what it is to love, to truly live a loving life, is not easy nor simple -- at least, not in my experience.  But to love is of God, and therefore it is the journey of being "set apart," of not necessarily relating as the world would teach us, a gradual kind of taking of all that is in us and in our lives and turning it over to God for God's purposes, as the definitions of sanctify teach us.  It may mean we don't go along with a crowd, we don't live to please the world, but to please God is to live in His love, to abide in Him, and to follow His commandments.  Let us remember His final commandment, to love one another as He has loved us in the persons of the Apostles, and in the presence of the Helper, the Spirit of truth of which He's spoken in these last weeks through John's Gospel.  In this way, we remember, we remain in the Father's name as well.  The world itself becomes transfigured through this process, as our sanctification means we share the love we learn, the truth He gives us.