August 20
The Continual Burnt Offering" S anctify 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."
Sanctification is two-fold; positional and practical. All believers are sanctified (that is, set apart to God) by the one offering of our Lord Jesus Christ, and in this sense, “perfected forever” (Hebrews 10:10; Hebrews 10:14). But we are called to walk in conformity with our place in Christ. This is practical sanctification and by the Word of truth ministered to the heart in the power of the Holy Spirit. In our Lord’s high-priestly prayer in John 17 He stresses the importance of this. He set Himself apart to go to the cross and to the throne that our hearts might be occupied with Him where He now is, in order that we might be separated from all that is of the world.
There amidst the joy eternal
Is the Man who went above,
Bearing marks of all the hatred
Of the world He sought in love.
He has sent us here to tell
That His love is changeless still.
He has sent us, that in sorrow
And in suffering, toil and loss,
We may learn the wondrous sweetness,
The deep mystery of His cross—
Learn the depth of love that traced
That blest path across the waste.