Section 4
the way the Lord sends us into the world for His testimony.
THE WORDS BEING THE TRUTH
In verse 17 the Lord prayed, "Sanctify them in the truth; Your word is truth." The Father's word carries with it the Father's reality. When the word says, "God is light," it conveys God as light. Hence, it is the reality, the truth, unlike Satan's word, which is vanity, a lie (8:44). The word, being the truth, works as reality in the believers to sanctify them.
God's living word works in the believers to separate them from anything worldly, separat ing them from the world and its occupation unto God and His purpose, not only positionally (Matt. 23:17, 19) but also dispositionally (Rom. 6:19, 22). This is what it means to be sanctified by the Lord's word as the truth, the reality. This sanctification not only changes our position but also our disposition, our inward being. In the Bible, sanctification has these two aspects—the positional aspect and the dispositional aspect. In Matthew 23:17 we see that the gold is sanc tified by being put into the temple. When the gold is in the market place, it is common, unholy, but when it is put into the temple, its position is