The Bible teaches us a new vocabulary for understanding the Christian life, and one crucial word it gives to our identity is “sanctified.” Today, Sinclair Ferguson explores what it means to be people who are set apart for God.
Welcome to another week on Things Unseen. I suppose most of us have met Christians who don’t much like it when we mention the word doctrine or get irritated when we use words like justification. Actually, it’s more than a little strange because, often enough, the same people get upset with us if we don’t know what a bunt is in baseball, or don’t understand the difference between a birdie and an eagle on the golf course, or if soccer is their thing, that we don’t understand the offside rule upsets them, or if it’s cricket, they’re upset if we don’t know the difference between fielding at silly mid off and fielding in the gully.
Every branch of life, every aspect of human knowledge has its own vocabulary—terms it uses that contain essential information, sometimes in a kind of shorthand. So, important words, big words in that sense, really are important in the Christian life. I say all this just to prepare you for this week’s theme. It’s one big theological word: sanctification—certainly a big word in the Bible.
Strictly speaking, the noun sanctification isn’t used all that often, but the verb to sanctify is used, I think, about 150 times in one form or another. And the result of being sanctified, being holy, is used another a hundred times, meaning “something or someone that’s been sanctified.” The Hebrew and Greek verbs that are used in the Bible for sanctify both mean “to set something apart.” Yes, in a negative sense, it means being set apart from an ordinary, from a common, from a day-to-day use, but it also has a positive sense: being set apart for a special use, being set apart for something or someone in particular.
It’s like this: you go into a furniture store. And you think: “Now that’s exactly what we need. It will fit right in with our other furniture and furnishings. Let’s buy it.” But then as you look more closely, you see there’s a card on it that says, “Reserved for Mrs. Smith,” and you can’t have it.
That’s what sanctify means in the Bible. It means to be reserved—that nobody else can have. It means to be set apart for God. It means being dedicated to His use so that nobody and nothing else can have us. So, being holy, being sanctified, means that the Lord has put His “reserved” sticker on our lives.
This is why, if you think about it, being sanctified—being a saint—is not something that’s true only of special Christians. You actually can’t be a Christian at all without being a saint, someone who has been set apart for the Lord—sanctified. That’s why Paul quite often greets the recipients of his letters as “the saints” who live in one place or another. The Lord has claimed them. The Lord has reserved them for Himself. The Lord has set them apart from the world.
I still remember how thrilled I was as a young Christian to learn that I was actually a saint. I think I felt before that a bit like the ugly duckling in the Hans Christian Anderson tale. If you’re of my generation, you’ll maybe remember Danny Kaye singing the song in the movie Hans Christian Anderson about the ugly duckling whose feathers were all stubby and brown, and the other birds said in so many words, “Get out of town, get out, get out, get out of town,” and he went with a quack and a waddle and a quack and a flurry of eiderdown.
Well, the poor creature got very depressed, and all through the winter, he hid himself away. He was ashamed to show his face, afraid of what others might say, and then a flock of swans saw him and told him that he wasn’t actually an ugly duckling at all. He’d been a cygnet. The swans “spied him there and very soon agreed, you’re a very fine swan indeed,” says the song. And he takes a look in the lake and he sees: “I’m a swan! Whee! I’m not such an ugly duckling.” And the song ends:
Not a quack, not a quack, not a waddle or a quack But a glide and a whistle and a snowy white back And a head so noble and high Say who’s an ugly duckling?
Not I! Not I!
Well, you’ll be glad I didn’t attempt to sing it, but I wonder if you get the point. I’ve often thought of that song as a picture of how some of us feel as Christians because it’s so easy to forget who you really are as a Christian and what it means right down at the roots of your being. And we certainly live in a world that often seems to despise Christians and to make us feel small, to make us feel we’re no better than ugly ducklings in the world’s eyes. But you see, if God has put His hand on you, if He’s set you apart, if He’s said about you, “You are reserved for My Son, the Lord Jesus Christ,” then you’re not an ugly duckling. You’re a saint. And when you know that you’re a saint set apart for God, it can make all the difference in the world.
So, remind yourself of that today. If you’re a Christian, you’re a saint, and it should make you want to sing.
