John 17:17 Commentary and Bible Study

The world is an ocean of lawlessness and disobedience to God, and it is a dangerous place in which we are set, commissioned to proclaim the gospel. You have to be so careful with the world, and that is in the background when you come to verse 17 – ‘Sanctify them,’ purify them. The word ‘sanctify’ means literally ‘set them apart’ – sanctify them, purify them, consecrate them, devote them; all these words have a share in its meaning. ‘Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth’, so that they must be subject to it, obedient to it, under the rule of the word, and then they will be duly purified. First of all these verses remind us of the moral law. Of course, I need hardly say that we are no longer under the law because the condemnation of sin and the judgement of God has been removed from believers in Christ on account of what Christ has done, through his atoning death on Calvary, and we believe in that and we embrace that and we depend upon that. We are not saved, redeemed, brought into union with God and blessed by virtue of our own law-keeping, but only by virtue of the atoning blood and the offered up righteousness of Christ. But once we are his, and are saved, we have an obligation by his help and by the help of the Holy Spirit to keep the law of God. The law does not determine our salvation, but we are still under the its standards for living as believers. Our success does not earn or contribute to our salvation, but we are under the moral law of God and obligated to it. The moral law of God, which as you know we must distinguish from the civil law given to the Jews of old and the ceremonial law which was the worship, which was given to them until the coming of Christ to teach and instruct them and to symbolise gracious things. The moral law was distinct from the ceremonial law and the civil law. Those things would be binding upon the Jews only until Christ came. That was for the Jewish order. But the moral law goes on, and stands for all time. The Ten Commandments are very profound. Each one names the chief sin in a family of sins, and if you only ever recite them, you only ever think of the chief sin. If you just stick to the letter of the law by reciting it, it may never dawn on you that you have only mentioned the chief sin in each family. The commandment not to kill is the head of a whole family including, as Moses explains and as Christ explains in the New Testament, kidnap, hatred or insulting people. Bearing false witness includes drawing attention to yourself or exaggerating. Adultery covers lust in the heart, the looking at images which you should not be looking at, and all disloyalty.Remember also that in the Ten Commandments every negative commandment, every prohibition, actually includes the opposite, positive virtue. For instance, Hebrews 13.5 tells us, ‘Let your conversation [your behaviour] be without covetousness; and be content with such things as ye have.’ So the prohibition of covetousness also binds on us the opposite, positive virtue, the duty of contentment and gratitude to God.