Sanctify You Wholly..

"And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly" (1 Thess 5:23-24)

Do we pray to be sanctified? And if so, when we pray to be sanctified, are we prepared to face the great standard of these verses? Are we prepared to say - "Lord, make me as holy as You can make a sinner saved by grace, and by any means necessary"? For the most part, we seem to take the term sanctification much too lightly. Are we prepared for what sanctification will cost? As one author has said, sanctification will cost an intense narrowing of all our interests on earth, and an immense broadening of all our interests in God. One strong characteristic of a Holy Ghost filled believer should be a strong familial likeness to the person of Jesus, and a conscious striving toward the removal of anything unlike Him.

Sanctification means intense concentration on God's point of view. It means every power of body, soul and spirit is chained and kept for God's purpose only. Isn't this what we are to conclude from the word "wholly" (1 Thess 5:23)? Surely such radical obedience is what we see in the Shulamite woman: "Awake, O north wind; and come, thou south; blow upon my garden, that the spices thereof may flow out. Let my beloved come into his garden, and eat his pleasant fruits" (Song 4:16). Her production of fruit for her Beloved is her chief concern. Her pleasing Him is top priority, even to the extent that she invites the dealings of God (north winds)! Are we really prepared to ask for such a thing? Are we prepared for God to do in us all that He separated us for? And then after His work is done in us, are we prepared to separate ourselves to God even as Jesus did, for an eternal purpose? He said, "For their sakes I sanctify Myself" (Jn 17:19). The reason some of us have not entered into the experience of sanctification is that we have not realized the meaning and purpose of sanctification from God's standpoint. Sanctification means being made one with Jesus so that the disposition that ruled Him will rule us. This fruitful disposition is for a divine purpose, even as the Shulamite displayed towards the end of her maturation: "Come, my beloved, LET US GO FORTH into the field; let us lodge in the villages" (Song 7:11). How funny that all the Lord did IN her, was to be, in the future, done THROUGH her! Are we prepared for what that will cost? It will cost everything that is not of God in us: "But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord" (2 Cor 3:18). Friend, are we really prepared to set ourselves apart for the Holy Spirit's ministrations in and through us? "As thou hast sent Me into the world, even so have I also sent them into the world" (Jn 17:18). How else can the world see Jesus?