X
OUR LORD-SANCTIFYING HIMSELF
"Lord, teach us to pray."--Luke xi. i.
"And for their sakes I sanctify Myself ..."--
John xvii. xix.
"I have an exceedingly complex idea of sanctification,"
says John Wesley in his Journal. And that
must surely be an exceedingly complex sanctification,
pursuit, attainment and experience which
embraces both our Lord and all His disciples,--
both Him who knew no sin, and those disciples of
His who knew nothing but sin.
But what exactly is sanctification? What is
sanctification both in its complexity and in its
simplicity? Well, "Sanctification," according to
the Catechism, "is the work of God's free grace,
whereby we are renewed in the whole man, after
the image of God, and are enabled, more and more,
to die unto sin, and to live unto righteousness."
Now, to begin with, in all the complexity and
completeness of our Lord's sanctification; could
He have subscribed to that catechism? Could He have
signed what all our deacons sign? When He examined
Himself before every approaching passover, would
He have found all that going forward
within Himself? Yes,--most certainly, He would,
every single syllable of it. For it was of His
Father's "free grace" that He, the man Christ
Jesus, the carpenter's son, was what He was, and
did what He did. He was "renewed in the whole
man" also, ere ever He was a man. And for thirty
years, this, our Lord's sanctification, grew in all
its complexity and completeness till He was manifested
to Israel as the very Image of God among
men. And, while all His days "dead to sins," He
was enabled more and more every day to die to sin
and to "live unto righteousness," till in the text,
and within a few hours of His death on the cross,
He is still sanctifying Himself--that is, surrendering
Himself, dedicating Himself, devoting Himself, to
fulfil and to finish His Father's will, and to accomplish
the salvation of all whom the Father hath
given Him. "For their sakes I sanctify Myself;
that they also might be sanctified through the
truth."
It was only after an immense "complexity" of
ceremonial, indeed, but also of moral and spiritual
sanctification, that the high priest in Israel was able
to enter the Holy of Holies, there to make acceptable
intercession for the people. And in the whole of
this great intercessory prayer of our Lord, and in
the whole of the corresponding Epistle to the
Hebrews, we see through what an inwardness and
spirituality and "complexity," both of personal
and of official sanctification, our Lord was prepared,
and made perfect, for His crowning office of our Great
High Priest. The angel Gabriel described Him as
"that holy thing" before He was born. "For
such an high priest became us, who is holy, harmless,
undefiled, separate from sinners, and made higher
than the heavens." In His own words, and with
His eyes lifted up to heaven: "Father, the hour is
come: and for their sakes,"--looking round on the
Eleven,--"I sanctify Myself."
Now, here again, my brethren,--for it meets us
at every turn,--as He was; so are we, in our measure,
in this world. As many of us, that is, as are chosen,
and called, and ordained, and anointed for the sake
of other men, as well as for our own sake. We are
to be God's remembrancers on the earth. We
are to be men of prayer, and especially of intercessory
prayer. We are to be, for a time, in this
world, that which our Lord is everlastingly in heaven.
We are to be kings and priests unto God and His
Father by the blood of the Lamb. As He was
sanctified, as He sanctified Himself, for their sake,
so is it to be with us. As He was in His life of
holiness, and consequent intercession, so are we to
be in this world. We must sanctify ourselves for
the sake of others. We must first sanctify ourselves,
and then pray, first for ourselves, and then for others.
And that is not our Lord's command and example
only. Apart from all that, it stands to reason,
and it stands to experience. Every kind of
prayer, not intercessory prayer only, which is the
highest kind of prayer, but all prayer, from the
lowest kind to the highest, is impossible in a life
of known and allowed sin. The blind man's retort
upon the Pharisees is his retort upon us to
this day,--"Now we know that God heareth not
sinners." No! No man's prayer is acceptable
with God whose life is not well-pleasing before God.
The very ploughing of the wicked is sin. We all
know that in ourselves. The man in this house
with the least and the lowest religious experience,--
he has enough in himself to convince him that sin
and prayer cannot both live at the same time in the
same heart. Admit sin, and you banish prayer.
But, on the other hand, entertain, and encourage,
and practise prayer, and sin will sooner or later
flee before it: and entertain and practise
intercessory
prayer, and you will, by degrees, and in
process of time, sanctify yourself to an inwardness
and to a spirituality, and to a complexity, and to a
simplicity that hitherto you have had no experience
of, no conception of, and indeed no ambition after.
Now, having said "ambition,"--Who has this
holy ambition? Who has the ambition to be bound
up in the bundle of life with the Saviour of men?
Who has the high heart to shine at last as the brightness
of the firmament, and as the stars for ever
and ever? Are you able to drink of your Lord's
cup of sanctification, so as to sit with Him on His
throne? Are you willing to wear, not only the ring
and the shoes of a returning prodigal, but, in addition,
the crown and the mitre of a king and a priest
unto God? Then,--take this text out of your
Lord's mouth, and make it henceforth your own.
Look at Him! Look every day at Him! Never
take your eyes off Him!" "Lift your eyes to
heaven"--just like Him; and, like Him, say,
as He said that great night of sanctification and
prayer, "Father, Holy Father! For their sakes I
also sanctify myself."
The first human ears these wonderful words ever
fell on were the ears of the Eleven. Their Master
had chosen the Eleven to be the future preachers of
the Gospel, and pastors of the flock. They heard all
their Lord's words, both of counsel and of comfort,
and of prayer that night; only, they did not understand
what they heard. But, after their Master's
Crucifixion, and Resurrection, and Ascension, and
after the Pentecostal Outpouring of the Holy Spirit
--then, all these things came back to their understanding
and their remembrance. And, as time
went on, there was nothing in that Great Prayer
the Apostles remembered more in their daily ministry
than just this: "For their sakes I sanctify Myself."
They remembered these words every day, and they
saw something of the unfathomable and inexhaustible
depth of these words, as they worked out their
own salvation, and the salvation of their people; in
a daily life of increasing holiness and intercessory
prayer. And those ministers of our own day are
the true successors of the Eleven, who most closely
imitate them in their life of sanctification: and that,
with a view to intercessory prayer. He alone deserves
to be called a minister of Christ and of His Church
who, on the day of his ordination, looks round on
his people, and says,--"For their sakes I sanctify
myself;" and more and more says it with every
returning Sabbath morning. "For their sakes,"
he will say, "I dedicate and devote myself. For
their sakes I keep myself at peace with God. For
their sakes I practise the Presence of God. I seek
more and more to please God for their sakes. To
please Him and to please them. For their sakes I
sanctify myself." And, what an incomparable
sanctification that is, and what a shipwreck it is
for any minister to miss it! What a complex, what
a spiritual, what an endless, what an incessant
sanctification! In every new sermon there is some
new sanctification for a preacher, and for his people.
First and best for him; and, then, after him, for
them. "Sanctify them through Thy truth: Thy
word is truth." In every pastoral visit, at every
sick-bed, at every death-bed; at every open grave,
what a complex sanctification for a true minister
every day! And, then, every night, what a correspondingly
complex intercession for his people!
Every man in his congregation,--little known to
the man himself,--has some new and secret and
stolen sanctification hidden about him for his
minister. Every man's humility, lowliness of mind,
and love: every man's rudeness, ill-nature, ingratitude,
and insolence, hardness to move, stubbornness
to turn, pride not to be told the truth. And,
in the face of all that, a minister's own folly, ignorance,
unteachableness, offensiveness, idleness,--
and all the other vices of the ministerial heart
and life and office. Men and brethren, what a
complex, what a splendid sanctification is here!
Not for you. At any rate, not immediately for
you: but for your ministers; and, then, through
their consequent intercessions, for you. What a
scope! What a field! What an opportunity!
For
that man's sake, what meekness and humility
in his minister! For
that man's sake, what forgiveness
and long-suffering! For
that man's sake,
what courage and boldness! And for
that man's
sake, what patience and what hope against hope!
And for
all men's sakes, what self-condemnation
and constant contrition of heart! But who, is
sufficient for all these things? Who but he that
has something of the mind and experience of Christ
as to the universality, and the malignity, and the
irremediableness of sin; as also of the power of
prayer, and prayer out of a holier and an ever-holier
life? O young men! O gifted young men! O
ambitious young men! O courageous and greathearted
young men! Choose the pulpit for your
life-work! Choose the pastorate! Choose, and
endure to the end in this incomparable sanctification.
Only, rather beg your bread, rather break
stones on the roadside than enter the ministry,
unless you are determined to know nothing, day
nor night, but to sanctify yourselves for their sakes!
But, almost more than any minister, let every
father and mother among us see to it that they
make this blessed Scripture the law and the rule
of their family life. Let very Nature herself come
in here to supplement and to strengthen grace.
Let all fathers, and all mothers, look round upon
their families every day, and say together before
God: For their sakes we sanctify ourselves. Every
father and mother makes daily intercession before
God in the behalf of their children. But, if they
would succeed in that, they must do more than
that. They must add sanctification to intercession.
They must learn of Christ the true secret of His
intercessory and prevailing prayer. They must lay
this too long-neglected text to heart,--"For their
sakes I sanctify myself."
What is it that makes you pray with such secret
tears for that son of yours? What is it that makes
you so remorseful as you see him growing up so fast
in your house, and not at the same time growing
in grace, and in wisdom, and in the favour of God?
Is it not that you cannot but see so much of yourself
in your ill-fated son? So much of your own
willfulness and selfishness, and pride, and bad temper,
and incipient sensuality, and what not. It is what
he has inherited from you that causes you such
remorse, sometimes, that ever he was begotten of
you. It is this that makes you pray for yourself,
and for him, with such passionate importunity. All
that is well; but even all that is not enough. Have
you ever tried sanctification,--self-sanctification,--
upon your son, upon yourself, and upon God?
Try still more sanctification of yourself, before you
despair, and give up hope. I say it in His house
and in His presence: and He will speak out, and
will contradict it if it is not true.
God cannot resist
a parent's prayer when it is sufficiently backed up
with a parent's sanctification. I say it to you, in
His hearing, that, though He will not answer your
most importunate prayer by itself: yet, because
of your sanctification added to it, He will say to
you: Be it unto you all that you will! Make
experiment by still more sanctification. Sanctify,
clean out of yourself, all that it so pains and confounds
you to see reproduced in your son. Contemporaneously
with your prayers and your counsels,
carry you on a secret assault both upon God and
upon your son through a still more secret and a
still more complete sanctification of yourself. Leave
nothing undone so that all your prayers and all
your reproofs may have their full and unbroken
force, both upon God and upon your son.
It is a very fine sight to see a father taking on
a new, and a better, and a more modern education
alongside of his son. What a happy household
that is when a father is open to all his sons' tutors
and schoolmasters both in nature, and in providence,
and in grace--the father, and the son still keeping
step together in the great school of life. That is
wise, and noble, and beautiful, and very fruitful.
Now, let all fathers, in like manner, sanctify themselves
through their sons. Let them modernise
and freshen up, and carry on, and complete their
sanctification also, seeing themselves as in a glass,
in their son's sin and salvation. It is supremely
for this that God setteth His solitaries in families.
It is of such a family that the prophet speaks when
all the rest of the earth has been smitten with a
curse. All the earth, that is, but that house where
the heart of the father has been turned to the child,
and the heart of the child to the father: that
house in which the father says, in the words of the
text,--"For the sake of my son I will sanctify
myself."
It is altogether too dreadful to speak about--
the "curse" with which God smites some unsanctified
fathers. And, who can tell, among so
many fathers here, but that curse may not have
begun to fall? There may be a hidden horror in
some father's heart here that he does not, and cannot
love his son, as all other fathers are blessed in loving
their sons, and in their sons loving them. Such a
man feels himself to be a monster among fathers.
Your son has grown up to manhood in the house of
an unsanctified and unprayerful father. And,
as was prophesied in a thousand scriptures, and
seen in a thousand of your neighbours' houses,--
as a father sows in his son, so shall he reap. You
took your own way with God, and your son is now
taking his own way with you. You despised God's
counsels, and all that your son has done has been
to despise yours. "If I am a father," you say,
"where is mine honour?" But God said that
first, and said it about you. Try the deliverance
of the text before you absolutely destroy yourself.
You have done everything a father can do, you say.
No, you have not sanctified yourself. Try sanctification
upon God, and upon yourself, and upon your
son. Die this very day to your proud heart; and
having begun to die, so die daily. "O Almighty
God! O God of all grace! Pity a most miserable
man! Sanctify me: break me to pieces: melt
me to tears; do what Thou wilt with me: do all
that I need to have done: only, if it be possible,
take this hell out of my heart, and give me back
my lost love for my child, and his for me!"
Till your neighbours--instead of loud and angry
words--will hear the voice of Psalms in the
tabernacles of the righteous: "For He hath torn, and
He will heal us; He hath smitten, and He will
bind us up." Sanctify yourself, then, from all the
remaining dregs of pride, and anger, and temper,
and tyranny in your heart and life, as also from all
those appetites that inflame and exasperate all
these evil things. Sanctify yourself to please God,
and to pacify conscience, and wait and see what
God will do to you in His pity and in His love. He
has no pleasure in the death of the wicked: make
you, therefore, a new heart, and a new spirit, saith
the Lord. Sanctify yourself; and wait and see.
There is perhaps not one of us come to years,
who has not some child or some other relation;
some old schoolfellow or college friend; some partner
in business; or some companion in sin, or some one
else; that we are compelled from time to time to
pray for, as we see them going down in sickness, or
in poverty, or in vice, or it may be even in crime.
Men differ greatly in the tenderness and in the pain
of their hearts and their consciences in such cases.
But we all know something, no doubt, of this
remorse and this horror at the ruin and the misery
of men we once knew so well. It is many years
since you have even seen him. You did what you
could to assist him; and since then you have tried
hard to wash your hands of him. But, like the
cock-crowing, which, as often as Peter again heard
it anywhere to the end of his life, always called
back to his unhappy mind his denial of his Master:
so there are things that you cannot help hearing,
that call back your long past to your conscience.
Your conscience may be very unreasonable and
very unjust,--but be quiet she will not. "Thou art
the man! but for thee that poor shipwreck might
to this day have been a happy and a prosperous
and a good man." I cannot tell you the terrible
shock a case of that kind gave to myself last week.
There is a man still in this life I had neglected to
pray for, for a long time past. Days and weeks,--
and I never once mentioned his name. I used to
sanctify myself for his sake: but daily self-denial
is uphill work with me; and I had insensibly slipped
out of it. But, as God would have it, a letter came
into my hands last week, that called back my
present text to my mind. I may not tell you all
that was in that letter, but the very postmark made
my heart to stand still. And as I opened the letter
and read it,--Shall I tell you what I felt? I felt
as if I had murdered my old friend. I felt as if he
had been drowned, while, all the time, I had refused
to throw him the rope that was in my hand. I felt
his blood burning like vitriol on my soul. And a
voice cried after me on the street, and would not be
silent even in my sleep, "Thou art the man!" I
could get no rest till I had resolved, and had begun
to
sanctify myself again unto importunate prayer
for his sake. To deny myself, to watch unto prayer,
and to take his name, night and day, back to God.
"I cannot let Thee go unless Thou dost save that
man: if he is lost, how can my name be found in
Thy Book?" How I will persevere and succeed,
in my future sanctification for his sake,--I cannot
tell. The
event alone will tell! At any rate, I
have preached this sermon this morning out of my
own heartsore experience, as well as out of this
great intercessory text.
