Daily Sanctification

Transcript (edited for readability).

It's a great joy for me to be here with you today. The joy is multiple. I'm glad to be here with Doxology, and I'm glad to be here for a Doxology reunion where the wives are present with the husbands. I bring you a greeting from the president of the Lutheran Church of Australia, Dr. Michael Semmler, who asked to be remembered to you.

Now, I speak American with a very strange accent. So please, if you don't understand something, something's going wrong. This is going to blow up in my face, isn't it? Yes. Okay. If you can't understand what I'm saying, just put your hand up and say, "Can you please put that in American?" Or in real English, as the case may be. So, but generally speaking, if there's something that I've touched on, and particularly this session where I'm going to cover quite a lot of ground, and some of it may be new to you, if you haven't understood something, if you want me to just develop something, or just ask a question, just put your hand up, and I'll try and pick you up, and just keep it there until I acknowledge that I've noticed you. So don't wait until the very end of the session.

The topic that I want to speak to you on today is daily sanctification. Daily sanctification.

I still remember a dream that I had in my late teens, early twenties, a very vivid dream, one of those dreams that has stuck in my mind ever since. I grew up in a small country community, and in those days, there used to be dances that would be held periodically, say once every two months or so, in the local hall. Now, this dream was centered around a country dance. I remember that I was standing outside this brightly lit hall, which was filled full of couples dancing. I was dressed, or more likely undressed, in my farm gear: barefoot, old shorts, daggy kind of a shirt, and with a country haircut, which we used to call a "basin." Now, do you know what a basin is? Well, in the country, blokes, when they got their haircut, would put a basin over their head and cut off everything. Well, in the dream, I had this awful, awful haircut. And I didn't have any money to pay to get into the dance.

But the reason I was there, I was standing outside the door, big double doors, together with all the blokes that were drinking and eyeing the girls inside. I was standing there, mesmerized, because there was this most beautiful, beautiful girl, that was the belle of the ball. And it was as if the spotlight was on her, wherever she was. She dazzled, and the light was round about her. My eyes were fixed, or transfixed, on her. And then, to my surprise, she came out of the ball in the middle of a dance and said to me, "John, I want to dance with you." My heart leapt high, and I said, "Yes, I'd like to dance with you." And dance we did. And danced as I've never danced before or since. It didn't matter that I wasn't dressed properly. It didn't matter that I had an ugly hairdo. Her status made up for my lack of status. Her beauty covered me. And I felt like I'd never felt before.

Holiness is very hard to talk about. The Old Testament talks about the beauty of holiness. That's one way of putting it. Holiness is beautiful. Holiness is indescribable, and we borrow holiness from our Lord, the way I borrowed beauty and status from that girl in the dream.

Some years ago now, many years ago, I visited New Guinea, and on this trip to New Guinea, I reconnected with a New Guinea pastor who had spent, I think, half a year with us in Adelaide before coming across to study for a master's degree in a Lutheran seminary here in North America. Now, I'd taught him Hebrew because he wanted to study in the Old Testament, so he did Hebrew with me before coming across here to the US. I remember the afternoon vividly. I was in his house, and it was fairly soon after he'd returned from North America. And I asked, "How did things go over there?" And there was a long silence, a long, very eloquent silence, before he said rather poignantly to me, "John, for them, nothing is sacred any longer. For them, nothing is sacred any longer."

Now, those words have seared on my heart, on my mind, ever since, because I reckon what he said about that seminary, and what he said about North America, applied for me and all of us in Australia. We live in a society, and we work in churches, where people no longer regard anything as sacred and holy any longer. And the sad thing about it is that we have no idea of how much we've lost, because we've lost a sense for what's sacred. It's like losing your sense of color or your sense of taste. For them, nothing is sacred any longer. That could be, if you like, the summary of Western political, social, but also theological history ever since the Enlightenment. We live in societies where nothing is sacred any longer.

Now, that's not quite true, because at the same time, we get resacralization. There are people who want to find sacredness, holiness, something sacred about sex. Particularly, not so much now anymore, but ten, twenty years ago, that was very strong. More recently, it's popped up again out of the ecological movement, where people want to see the natural world, and the order of nature, somehow as being sacrosanct, sacred. But none of it works any longer. We can't be pagan people at all.

You see, for pagan people, there are many, many sources of sacredness, holiness. And the whole of paganism has to do with the fear of sacrilege. Do you know what's sacrilege? To desecrate what's holy. You won't understand, say, traditional Aboriginal religion, or traditional New Guinean religion, or you could go anywhere in the world. You don't understand Islam unless you see that it's driven by a conviction of the importance of the holiness of Allah. Pagan people believe there are many different sources of holiness, and you've got to be very careful that you don't desecrate what's holy, and that you respect the holy things.

Now, I could speak much about that. It was common in the ancient world for pagan people to place idols in their houses. Idols of gods or goddesses. And you can see it still when you go to India, for example. Every Hindu house has its altar, has its shrine, has its god or goddess. They'll have it in their businesses. They'll have it everywhere. They will have idols everywhere, and they will wear idols as jewels on their persons: as earrings, as nose rings, as finger rings, over their throat, on their ankles. Now, for pagan people in the ancient world, their jewelry was never just of secular significance. It always had religious significance.

Now, why do you wear idols and symbols of idols on your head or on your hand or in your house? Well, those idols were holy, and the holiness of those idols protected you from evil spirits and made sure that you had good luck, that you had the right spirits on your side. And so you placed them on your body. And your houses were shrines for the deity, for the god or goddess, and that would make and keep you holy, and keep you safe.

Now, in contrast to that, we have something quite different, something very, very significant in the ancient world, in ancient Israel. I don't know if you've ever had a close look at what God commands in Deuteronomy chapter 6. God says, "Hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. And you shall teach them diligently to your children, and you shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, that's your right hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates."

In ancient Israel, the people of God didn't wear jewelry. They didn't wear the kind of jewelry that people did in the nations all around them. They didn't wear jewelry that was amulets and good luck charms, the way people still do today. Instead, they used the most holy name of God to make and keep them holy. To the present day, every pious Jew says part of this passage in their evening and morning prayers. They say this confession of faith, they say the Shema morning and evening. And in doing so, they sanctify themselves, they make their day holy. They claim God's protection and God's blessing for themselves. They use the most holy name of God, Yahweh, the Lord, in their daily confession of faith.

Just listen to it: "The Lord," that's Yahweh, that's His proper name, "is our God. The Lord is one." It's God's commitment to them that makes them holy, and since He is one, He is the only source of holiness. There's no other source of holiness for them. And as part of this, God's commitment to them involves that they, every day, do two things: they listen, and they love. "Hear, O Israel." What is Israel to hear every morning, every evening? Their confession of faith: "The Lord is our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love," or "so that you will love the Lord your God, with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind."

And most significantly, they are not just to speak the most holy name of God in their family, morning and evening meals, but they are to place the most holy name of God — did you notice? — on their hearts, or in their hearts, and on their hands and on their foreheads. And by placing God's name on those parts of their bodies, their whole body became a living, walking, talking, holy place, a shrine. The name of God in their heart, the name of God on their hands, the name of God over their heads, making them and their bodies holy. If the name of God was on their heads, it meant that God sanctified all their thinking and planning. If it was on their hands, it sanctified all their work. If it was in their heart, it meant that everywhere they went, they carried God with them. And more than that, they were to put the most holy name of God, that made everything else holy, on the doorposts of their houses and over the entrances to their villages, making them holy places.

That's Old Testament. Pagan people had access to their gods by means of idols. So what did pagan people put in their holy of holies? An idol. If you wanted to have access to God, you approached an idol. God forbade the use of an idol in the tabernacle and temple in the Old Testament. Well, how was God present? How did people access God at the tabernacle and temple? It was through His name. If you read Deuteronomy, God says that He places His name in the holy of holies. And then in the Aaronic benediction, something remarkable happens. This is in Numbers chapter 6. The priest stands in front of the altar at the high point of the daily service, and he places the name on the people before they leave and go back to their homes and villages and towns. The name that was placed in the holy of holies, God's presence there, is now placed on the people, and the people then carry God and His blessing with them, in their daily lives, out into their communities. Now, that's just the short story. There's much more than that.

Now, as Christians, as the new people of God in the new covenant, God calls us to be holy. We're called to be saints, holy people of God. You remember that Peter, in his first letter, says this, 1 Peter chapter 1, verses 15 to 16, after his introductory section. He says, and this is the key passage, which then is unpacked in the rest of his letter, "As He who called you is holy," that says God is holy, "you also are to be holy in all your conduct, since it is written, you shall be holy, for I am holy." Now, immediately after that, Peter explains what that means in quite concrete, practical terms.

Each one of you is called not to do holy things first and foremost, but to be holy. That's not just pastors or pastors' wives; every single Christian is called to be holy. It's a matter of being. Now, what does that mean in practical terms, if you look at the following verses from verse 17 down to chapter 2, verse 10, or even beyond?

First of all, it means that your conduct, your way of life, is to be reverent. You are to revere God. Why revere God? Because you live all the time in the presence of God. As holy people, you stand in the presence of a holy God. And everything you do is done in God's presence. Therefore, you are to live holy lives, reverent lives, respecting God's holiness. It's as if the picture is that your whole life is lived in the sanctuary of a church.

And you are to love each other. Why? Because you are fellow saints, holy people. You belong to a holy brotherhood that has been constituted by being given rebirth through the living and abiding word of God. You are to put off all kinds of evil, because you're holy. Fourthly, you are to nourish yourselves with the pure milk of God's word. You are to nourish yourselves as holy people with the word of God. And lastly, you are called to be — and here you get two pictures. On the one hand, you're called to be part of God's holy temple here on earth. Like living stones, you are to be joined together with Christ, the foundational stone, and you are part of God's temple, God's house here on earth. And then he says that you're not only part of God's temple, where God lives, but then you are to be holy priests, offering well-pleasing sacrifices to God the Father, through Jesus Christ. So you're called to be holy. You're called to live priestly, holy lives.

Now, what does this mean? Good Lutheran question, isn't it? What does it mean, however, in very practical, down-to-earth terms? That's because of what kind of people you are.

Peter begins by quoting a very, very important passage from that much neglected book, Leviticus. And I've done something to make sure it's not so neglected anymore. The whole of Leviticus is summarized in chapter 19, verse 2, where God addresses, gets Moses to address, the whole congregation of Israel. Not just the priests, not just the high priest, not just the priests and the Levites, but the whole assembly, the whole liturgical community, is addressed. And God speaks to the whole liturgical community. And He says to them, "You," you plural, not you singular, "you plural, you will be holy. Why? For I, the Lord your God, am holy."

Now, if there's ever a passage that has been misunderstood, particularly in the Anglo-Saxon world, and I think here, North America, more than anywhere else, but we also have this problem in Australia — most people understand this as a demand from God for spiritual self-improvement. Okay? "You are to make yourselves holy." And you make yourself holy by one of two things: either by the things you do, or more commonly by the things you don't do. Don't drink, don't smoke, don't have sex, and then you're holy. Or else, do all the right things, and then, by improving yourself morally, you become more and more holy. Basically, in our community — and this is one of the reasons why we have such problems spiritually — we equate holiness with morality.

In Australia, we call people "holy Joes." That's a term for somebody who, to put it in rather rude Australian terms, is a sanctimonious so-and-so. Somebody who's basically immoral, but pretends to be hypermoral, and goes around prying into people's lives and criticizing them for not being as good as they would like to imagine that they are. So the basic misunderstanding here — and it runs deep, it runs deep, even not just outside the churches, but most of all in the churches, and worst of all in Protestant churches — is that when God says, "You shall be holy," people take this as a demand for spiritual self-improvement. And it might be by spending a lot of time in prayer and being very, very pious and going to church every day. You know the sort of story; I don't have to unpack it for you.

Now, that's not what God says here, in the Old Testament and through Peter in the New Testament. The starting point is God saying, "Why? I, the Lord your God, am holy." God is the only being who is holy in heaven and on earth and all creation. He is the source of all holiness. There is nobody and nothing that is holy apart from God. Now this is fundamental. God is the source of all holiness. And He presents Himself to His people as the one and only holy God.

Seven times in the book of Leviticus, God says, "I am the Lord," that's Yahweh, the holy name, "I am the Lord who makes you holy," or who makes him holy, a person holy, or it holy, something holy, or them holy. Seven times God presents Himself as the one who makes people and things holy. So holiness comes from God. He gives it. And notice that in Hebrew, this is a participle, which indicates that it's ongoing activity. He doesn't just make somebody holy, okay, by waving His wand over them, say, "Okay, now you're holy." And you operate, if you like, out of your own holiness from this point onward. He says, "I'm the one who makes and keeps on making people holy." Holiness is an ongoing gift, you see. You can't possess holiness. It comes from God. It's given to those who are rightly connected with God, those who are justified, to use New Testament terms. Those who are justified are sanctified. They share God's holiness, but you don't possess God's holiness. You keep on receiving it, the way you keep on receiving the sunshine. You don't possess the sunshine. If you go outside there, you receive the sunshine. Now, this is important for understanding the biblical teaching on holiness: that you never possess it. You keep on receiving it always and every day.

Now, most important for the New Testament is that whereas in the Old Testament there are degrees of holiness — the closer you come to God, the more you share in God's holiness. So God, whose holy place is up in heaven, makes a sanctuary, a holy place, for Himself here on earth, in the holy of holies of the tabernacle, in the temple. And the high priest, who can enter the most holy place, is the most holy person in Israel. The priests are the next most holy, because they can approach the altar. Then the Levites, because they can move around the whole courtyard. And the people are holy too, because they can come into the sanctuary at the great festivals. But there are degrees of holiness. Can you see it? So the high priest is most holy. Next to him, the priests; next to them, the Levites; and then thirdly, you have the people of Israel. All of them are holy, but they have a lesser degree of holiness.

Now, the remarkable thing about the New Testament, and I don't have time to unpack what lies behind it, is that all of us are equally holy. Now, that's not quite right, and that's phrased very badly for our North American context. "Equally holy," equality and all that kind of stuff. No. All of us equally receive and borrow and share in the holiness of Jesus. Paul says Jesus is our sanctification. Since you are united with Jesus in baptism, since you have faith in Jesus, you share — and this is the good news, and if you don't remember anything else about this weekend except this — you share in the holiness of Jesus. Can you imagine that? When God the Father looks at you, He sees you in Jesus and Jesus in you. And He sees you as holy as Jesus is holy, because Jesus shares His holiness with you. His holiness covers all your unholiness, all your impurity, all your sin. His holiness makes each one of you as beautiful, in God's eyes, as Jesus is beautiful in God's eyes. So when God the Father looks at you, He says what He said to Jesus at His baptism: "You're My beloved daughter, I'm well pleased with you. You're My beloved son, I'm well pleased with you." Jesus is our holiness. Jesus is our sanctification. He makes and keeps us holy. As long as we're connected with Him, we share in His holiness. Wonderful, that is.

And because of this, then Paul says we are holy in Christ, or we are saints in Christ. Remember those kinds of expressions in Paul's letters? Now, that might be a bit hard to get your head around, but it's really not terribly difficult. Let's take these lights here. They're shining. They don't generate light. They don't even generate any energy that produces light. They receive electricity, and as long as they keep on receiving electricity, they shine with light. So they borrow electricity. If you like, they borrow electrons, they borrow light from the generator. In the same way too, we borrow our light, the light of our holiness, from Jesus, by being connected with Him.

Now, in Leviticus chapter 19, verse 2, God says — and I translated it as, "You will be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy." This can be understood in three ways and needs to be understood in three ways in Hebrew. Now, unfortunately, the English doesn't really do justice to the Hebrew. I've translated it as, "You will be holy." But in Hebrew, first of all — and I won't explain this to you, because you've all forgotten your Hebrew, so if you're really worried, I can justify this — number one, it needs to be translated as a fact, a statement of fact: "You are holy." Why are you holy? Because I the Lord your God am holy. It's a declaration: "You are holy." And behind that lies God's promise. It's also a promise of God: "You will be holy." So, "You will be holy." Anybody who hears this in Hebrew can hear it as a promise, can hear it as a statement of fact, but then can also thirdly hear it as a demand. But notice the sequence. First of all, you hear it as a promise: "You will be holy." Then you hear it as a statement of fact: "You are holy." And only thirdly then, as a soft demand — it's not imperative — "You shall be holy." Since you are holy, you shall be holy. Now, "Be what you are," kind of thing.

I don't know whether you've noticed, particularly those of you who are pastors, but all of you who have read the New Testament closely, that Paul never speaks about Christians as "Christians." Never, not one time. In fact, there's only one place where Christians are called Christians in the New Testament, and it's used as a kind of a term of abuse. Paul usually refers to Christians in one of two ways, both of them immensely significant. He either calls Christians "brothers" — and that has a wider sense than what we hear, but I don't want to go into that — that's the commonest term that he uses for Christians, "brothers." The second commonest term is "saint," holy ones, holy people. Now, all of you know Luther's catechism well enough, and you know your Lutheran theology, and you know that each one of you is a saint. And because you've had that drummed into you ever since you became a Christian or were catechized, when you read the New Testament, you don't read it with the ears that the first readers or hearers would have heard it. In the Jewish context in which Paul wrote his letters, the first thing that people would have thought about when you spoke about the holy ones, the saints, would be the angels. So when Paul says, "You are saints," he says, "You have angelic status." Now, like the angels, there are two things that follow. You have angelic status, and since each one of you has angelic status, it means, number one, you live and move and exist in the heavenly realm, as well as in the earthly realm. Because the angels belong to that spiritual realm, the invisible realm, which is all around us. And secondly, the angels are those who stand and serve in the presence of God. You not only live in the heavenly realm, but you live and move and exist in the presence of the living God.

We are holy, not in ourselves, but we're holy in Jesus. And we are sanctified through Him and by Him and with Him. We participate, and we share, in His holiness through our union with Him in baptism. Remember what Paul says in Ephesians chapter 5, verse 25 and following. Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her, that He might sanctify her — "sanctify her" means make her holy — having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word. So cleansing: first we are purified, and then we are sanctified, so that He might present the church to Himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. Remember that dream that I had? Christ loved the church, gave Himself up for the church, so that He could wash her, sanctify her, give her a complete makeover, and turn her into His beloved, beautiful bride. Without spot or wrinkle — I love that wrinkle bit, and the spot too — and without blemish, that she might be holy.

Through baptism, Christ unites us with Himself. He takes on our sin and He gives us His purity. He takes on our unholiness, and He gives us His holiness. Now, there's a makeover that's worth patenting and selling: a spiritual makeover. This means, to complete the picture, that we are sanctified by faith. We're not just justified by faith, but we are sanctified by faith in Jesus. We are made holy through faith, but we are also made and kept holy through the Holy Spirit. Now, the Holy Spirit is called the Holy Spirit, not only because the Holy Spirit is divine, but the Holy Spirit makes and keeps us holy. If we receive the Holy Spirit, if the Holy Spirit is given to us, it means that we are holy. The work of the Holy Spirit is to share Christ's holiness with us. That's His job in our lives.

Can I summarize this? Because I don't know if you can get your head around this. It's not so difficult; it's very difficult, I think, for me intellectually. But the way I make sense of it is just in terms of my own experience, my own intuition, if you like. It makes sense of all the things that I've ever experienced spiritually in my life. I cannot make myself holy. You can't make yourself holy. Even if you lived the most wonderful moral life on earth, you can't make yourself holy. It's impossible for human beings to do that. Only God can make anything and anybody holy. And that means that we borrow our holiness from God. Sure, we are holy, but we have a borrowed holiness. Luther doesn't use that term, but he says that we have an alien holiness, just as we have an alien righteousness. Alien in the sense that it's not a person from outer space, but "alien" means that it belongs to another and never belongs to us. We have a borrowed holiness. Or another Luther expression is that we have passive holiness. Now, this doesn't mean that we are passive in the sense of not at all active, but it means that we do not generate holiness, but we receive holiness. It's holiness that's always received by virtue of our union with Christ.

Okay, can I just pause therefore for a minute, and if there are any questions, before I start unpacking the consequences of this in very practical terms? Yes, brother?

[Question] You said in the Old Testament, holiness was spatial, or at least you move from the holy of holies outward. There are degrees of holiness. In the New Testament, it's people that become holy through Christ, by His borrowed holiness. He is called the temple, the tabernacle, in St. John. And then Luke's Gospel breaks the Jewish taboos, touching dead bodies, lepers, et cetera. It makes them holy. And so through His word He makes us alive, does the same thing, makes us whole, makes us holy. Is that correct?

That's absolutely right, except it's, in a sense, just as spatial in the New Testament as in the Old Testament. And that's one of the big deficiencies of modern theology: we think only in terms of personal relationships, we don't think in spatial terms, the way both Old and New Testaments do. Secondly, God doesn't communicate His holiness through people, but through things, both in Old Testament and New Testament. Hence it's spatial. And this is where the great big divide exists in modern theology. If I can just go ahead, and I'll develop this, if you like: for all modern Protestant and liberal theology, people are the means by which you are sanctified — so people and personal relationships. Holy people make others holy. The biblical teaching is that the holy things make and keep us holy. Big difference.

And you've also imbibed a bit of modern ideology, and particularly modern hippie theology, with Jesus breaking Jewish taboos. Jesus doesn't break Jewish taboos. He quite deliberately takes on the impurity of people so that He can give them His purity and His holiness. So it has nothing to do with breaking taboos. Incidentally, it does break a taboo. But if you want to put it in the most dramatic terms, He allows Himself to be desecrated so that He can share His holiness with us. Right? This is your typical question that always comes up. And the problem is that you cannot define holiness, because if you're going to define something, it means that you've got to define it in human-created terms. God's holiness is that respect in which God is different from anybody or anything that He has created. Now, if you define something, you speak of it in terms in which, say, God is like human beings, or is like His creation. Now, when you talk about God's holiness, you're talking of the way in which God is totally unlike anything He's created. It's His difference — not His remoteness, but His difference. And so God never defines His holiness anywhere in Old Testament or New Testament, except in very practical terms. How is holiness defined? It's defined in terms of the spatial relationships within the tabernacle and temple. It's defined in ritual terms, in terms of the transaction between people and God in the daily service. It's defined in the New Testament in the life of Christ. So do you want a definition of God's holiness? Have a look at the life of Jesus, from His conception through to His ascension. And you have holiness defined in human terms, translated into human terms. And can you see, it's quite different to a philosophical definition, or even an abstract theological definition. By the way, Luther is brilliant on this.

[Question] Yes. In creation, when God says, "and it was good," then at the conclusion, "it was very good" — is He saying more than "I did a good job, I guess"? Is that connected with this, that part of His goodness is His holiness?

Two different things. Goodness, yes; holiness, no. Because — and we'll be coming to this — God created the world in order to sanctify the world. And you'll see it in the story of creation. At the end of the sixth day, God saw everything He made, and it was very good, and then there's the seventh day, and He sanctifies and blesses the seventh day. He blesses the seventh day, so it's a means of blessing, and He sanctifies the seventh day as the means by which He shares His holiness with His people. And that looks to the eternal Sabbath of God, and the whole rest of the Bible unpacks what's meant by sanctifying the seventh day. Now, that's a space here, an X, that waits to be filled.

[Question] Yes? I think it's like electricity is invisible, and the light bulb gives proof that there is electricity. And in the sanctification in our lives, that we live sanctified lives by which God speaks to the people, we prove that we have that borrowed holiness.

Fantastic, and that's what it's all about. And that's why God connects holiness with love. Holiness with love — because it's not that love is holy, that the two are the same, but the outworking, the evidence of holiness, is a particular kind of love: self-sacrificial, self-giving love. Yes, absolutely the case. Holiness is, if you like to put it this way, not an idea, not a thing, but a power. It's invisible. You can't see it. You can't define it. It can only be adequately expressed, not in abstract theological terms, but in terms of praise: confession of faith and praise of the holy God. And that's why it figures so prominently in the liturgy. The Gloria: "You alone are holy, You alone are the Lord, You only, O Christ." And then the "Holy, holy, holy," et cetera. Yes, Fritz.

[Question] To talk, as you were, in terms of degrees of holiness — isn't that sort of like being a little bit pregnant?

No. You've got to see it in terms of the Old Testament, and the difference between Old Testament and New Testament. If holiness comes from God, the more fully and closely you are related to God, the more you share God's holiness. But that really belongs to Augustinian thinking. I don't know where it belongs in abstract terms, but that's the basic teaching in the Old Testament. And Augustine is much later than the Old Testament. Yeah, look, that's far too big for me to unpack, and there's lots of stuff there that lies behind this. And I'm going to dodge this one. Yes, Holly. Not because I want to dodge it, but because I want to get to the end of this.

[Question] Yes. He's been baptized —

You're spot on. In the creed, we confess the communion of saints. Now, "communion of saints" has a double sense. It means the communion of holy things, as well as holy people. What is it that constitutes the communion of saints? It's the holy things, and through participation in the holy things — and that's what I ought to touch on right now — we become a community of holy people. And it means quite simply, if you don't hear the word of God, if you're not baptized, if you don't receive the sacrament, you don't share in God's holiness. If you disconnect the light from the source of light, it ceases to shine. As simple as that. Well, it's also as complicated as that.

Let me go on, and we'll have room for some questions. Oh, I don't know, maybe not. Now, already the questions that have been asked and the remarks that have been made deal with the practical question: How does God then share His holiness with us in very, very practical terms? Now, God has, if you like, two or three most important means of holiness. By the way, we Lutherans speak about the means of grace, but do you realize that that's not used anywhere in our confessions? Classical Lutheran dogmatic theology didn't speak about the means of grace, but the means of salvation, or the means of the Spirit. That's a little bit of an aside. The means of grace are the means of sanctification — not just the means of justification, but the means of sanctification.

So how do we become holy? Number one — and all this goes back to the Old Testament — God's most holy name makes and keeps us holy. Hence, the first petition of the Lord's Prayer: "Our Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name." May Your name be used and received in a holy way. The name "Father" makes us holy. Or take, for example, what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 6, verse 11: "You were washed" — referring to baptism — "you were sanctified, made holy, you were justified," how? "By the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God." Notice the Trinitarian stuff there, by the way. "You were justified, you were sanctified, you were washed, by the name of the Lord Jesus." So the most holy name, the triune name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, makes us holy. And by means of that, God gives us access to His holiness. When we use that name, we receive the holiness of God.

Secondly, closely connected with this, and basically inseparable from this, God's word makes and keeps us holy. God's word doesn't just justify us and save us, but it makes us holy. Remember what Jesus prayed in His high priestly prayer. He says, "Holy Father, sanctify them," that's His disciples, "in the truth; Your word is truth." How many of you guys use that as a blessing before you preach? Okay, in my church it's used quite commonly before the pastor begins a service or the sermon: "Father, sanctify them in the truth; Your word is truth," and then he preaches the sermon. Very deep significance. God's word makes and keeps us holy.

Listen to what Luther says about the word of God in connection with the third commandment in his Large Catechism. God's word is the treasure that makes everything holy — notice, everything. And that's not just rhetoric; that's not just Luther's exaggerated, over-the-top rhetoric; it's careful definition. God's word is the treasure that makes everything holy. By it all the saints themselves have been made holy. At whatever time God's word is taught, preached, heard, read, or pondered, meditated on — now that's going to be significant for our discussion on meditation later this weekend — there the person, the day, the work is sanctified, not on account of the external work, but on account of the word that makes us saints. Luther says that the word of God is the most holy of all holy things that makes and keeps us holy, and he's merely summarizing what's taught in both Old Testament and New Testament.

Lastly — I'm going very quickly, because I assume that I'm in friendly territory here — the most holy things are the body and blood of Jesus. Hebrews says, "We," that's all Christians, "have been sanctified through the offering once and for all of the body of Jesus Christ." We have been sanctified. It's a perfect tense, which means ongoing activity. We have been sanctified, and we continue to be sanctified, through the body of Christ, which was offered to God as a sacrifice on the cross. Later on in Hebrews, he says, Christ suffered outside the city gate in order to sanctify the people with His blood. Okay? Do you want to be holy? Do you want to share God's holiness? Go to holy communion. Receive the most holy body of Jesus. Receive the most holy blood of Jesus. Or, going back further: do you want to be holy? Be baptized, where the most holy name of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, connected with baptism, makes you holy. Come to church. Hear the word of God as it is read and preached and taught and meditated on, praised and prayed, and you share God's holiness. Come to the holy sacrament, and you share the holiness of God.

Now, notice that God doesn't just give you one channel by which He communicates His holiness to you. He funnels it through to us, if you like, through many channels. Okay, any pause there? I assume that's fairly well understood in Lutheran circles. If I was talking generally, I'd have to spend a lot of time here, because this is one of the points on which Lutherans are different from almost every other denomination, at least Protestant denominations.

Next question: For what purpose does God sanctify us? Not for what reason does God sanctify us, but why, in the sense of for what purpose, does God make and keep you holy? There are two reasons, and we've touched on this already. Number one, He wants to make you physically holy. The Christian faith is the most physical of all religions. And in the incarnation of our Lord, Christ became a human being so that He could redeem and sanctify your bodies. Now, we have a bit of a funny society. On the one hand, we have the cult of the beautiful body and the healthy body. Just think of the whole culture of food: healthy food, healthy living, exercise, the importance of looking after your body. Just think of how many millions are made having to do with making yourself more attractive to other people physically. On the one hand, we indulge our bodies, and we lavish great care on our bodies. On the other hand, we live in a culture which basically despises the human body, and doesn't really respect the human body. It's got an ideal of the body that it likes, but in practice, none of us is very happy with the body that God's given us. Do you realize that? And that overzealous care, that obsession with the body, very quickly flips over to contempt for our physical bodies. And much of modern spirituality is anti-physical, anti-body.

Now, first and foremost, why does Christ sanctify us? He sanctifies us physically. He wants to make our bodies holy temples for the triune God. Just listen, this is just one passage, what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 3, verse 16. He says, "Don't you know" — as if this is self-evident — "don't you know that you yourselves are God's temple? And that God's Spirit lives in you? God's temple is sacred, and you are that temple." There are two ways in which God wants to make your bodies His temple. On the one hand, He brings you into the body of Christ, into a holy community, which is the temple of the living God here on earth, the place where God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit lives. But then the body of each one of you is brought into that temple and becomes a living shrine. Your bodies are living, walking, talking shrines of the triune God. Do you realize that wherever you go, whether you know it or not, you take the most holy living God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, with you? You take the living God with you when you go to school, when you're at home looking after the kids, wherever you go shopping, or whatever you do. Your bodies are living shrines. Temples are places where God dwells. Temples are also places in which God meets with His people and reveals Himself to people. So wherever you go, you carry God with you. You display God in physical form, in human form, to every single person you meet. And you bring God's blessing with you to every person you meet.

And that means that it's very important what you do with your body. If your bodies are holy, the most terrible thing you can do to your bodies is to desecrate the holiness of your bodies. You are to be holy people and to conduct yourselves in a way that doesn't desecrate — not your holiness, but God's holiness — your bodies as living, walking, talking shrines. This has great implications for everything we do, and particularly in the area of sexuality.

Secondly, God makes us holy so that we become a holy priesthood, His holy priests. Not just individually, but corporately. Now, a priest is a person who stands between God and other people. And there are two sides to the work of a priest, in the Old Testament and for your work as priests. On the one hand, you bring people to God. You have access to God. You have access to God through your faith in Jesus. You have access to God in the divine service by coming to holy communion. And that means that when you go to holy communion, you don't just bring yourself, but you bring others with you, and you represent them before God, you intercede for them. You stand in for them before God, all the people round about you. That's one dimension of your priestly work: representing other people, standing in for them before God. That's the God-ward movement. But then there's also the human-ward movement. As people who have access to God's grace, His blessing, the Holy Spirit, you carry God's blessings with you out into the world. You carry not just the presence of God, but the blessings of God, with you, wherever you go.

Just listen to the way Peter summarizes this. He says, "You yourselves, like living stones, are being built up into a spiritual house or temple, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God through Jesus Christ." You are priests because you have access to heaven here on earth. You have access to God's presence, and you can use that for yourself and for the benefit of others. You are called to do holy work as priests. Holy work is God's work. All of us have one holy calling, Luther emphasized, and he taught quite rightly, from the New Testament. So it's not just you pastors that have a holy calling, but every Christian has a holy calling to be a holy priest. And you exercise that holy priestly calling in the three holy orders: the holy order of government, civic society, and the holy order of the church. God gives you your station and vocation, and in that station and vocation you live and work as holy people. You bring others to God and their needs in prayer, and you bring God and His blessings to people in your station and vocation.

I love the picture that the great church father Ignatius has in his letter to the Ephesians. He has in mind the picture of a pagan procession. Now, I saw this happening when I was visiting Malaysia and I got caught up in a Hindu festival. The priests brought out a statue of Shiva from the temple, and there was a procession through part of Kuala Lumpur, and people followed the procession, and then the statue of Shiva was brought back into the holy of holies of the temple. Now, this is the picture that Ignatius has in mind when he has this to say. He says, "You are fellow travelers, God-bearers, and shrine-bearers, bearers of Christ, bearers of the holy things." As I said, the picture here is of a pagan procession, with the idol of a god, from the shrine, through the streets, to bring the blessings of the god out among the people in the community, and then back again. So we, in our whole life here on earth, are holy people who are on procession through the world to our heavenly destination. And in this way, we bring God to the people in the world, and we bring the blessings of God out into the world.

Okay, now we come to the nub, the real practical matter: our daily participation in God's holiness. What does this mean quite practically for you every day of your lives? Now, one of the most important passages that deals with the New Testament teaching on holiness is what St. Paul has to say in 1 Timothy 4. I've got verses 3 to 5 as the larger context; it's actually verses 4 to 5. He has this to say: "For everything created by God is good" — we heard about that before — "and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, for it is made holy by the word of God and prayer." Everything that God's created is good. It's not to be rejected. Everything that God created can be sanctified. And how do you sanctify it? Through the word of God and prayer.

Now, Paul here is reacting to people who say that in order to live holy lives, you have to give up sexual intercourse, and you're not allowed to eat meat. Very common pagan spirituality: become vegetarian and become celibate. And he says, no, that's not the way you become holy. God's plan is to sanctify everything that He's created. Everything. Nothing that God's created is bad; it's all good. Whether it's good or bad is a matter of the way it's used or abused. God wants to sanctify everything. And we sanctify everything by means of the use of His word and prayer.

Let's just make it quite practical. How do you sanctify each day that you live and each meal that you celebrate? You pray, and it's not terribly difficult. You say grace before and after meals. You have your morning and evening prayers, your family prayers, your personal prayers. You're married. What makes marriage, which in itself is not holy, what makes your marriage a holy marriage, holy matrimony? It's the word of God and prayer. It's the fact that you listen to the word of God, meditate on the word of God together as husband and wife, and that you pray together. That's what makes your marriage holy. That's what makes your family holy. That's what makes your house, your home, a holy place. Grace before and after meals, morning and evening prayers. We're sanctified by prayer in the name of Jesus. We're sanctified by God's word, God's word which we read in our devotions, God's word which we meditate on in our devotions.

Now, the place for daily sanctification is not the church, but the home. Luther emphasized, probably more than any other theologian that I know, the importance not just of the church altar, but the family altar. The importance of the family altar. And here we have a great problem in the church. Because I don't know if you have the same difficulty that we do in Australia. The sad fact is that most of our people no longer have devotions in their homes. In fact, it's worse than that: most pastors don't even have devotions in their homes. How do you sanctify your marriage, your family, your home, your daily work? It's the word of God and prayer.

And what times, classically, are the times for sanctification? Well, Old Testament, it's the same; New Testament, the whole history of the church, the same story. You do it the first thing in the morning. So you begin the day in the name of the triune God, with the word of God, with prayer, so that you can do holy work for the rest of the day. Not just human work, but you do God's work, holy work. Everything you do then is holy, is sanctified by the word of God and prayer. And secondly, you have your prayers, your devotions, at the end of the day, in the evening. Why? So that you can sanctify your sleep. Because God is at work in you and through you as much in your sleep as in your work. So that your sleep doesn't become just ordinary sleep, but holy sleep.

One of the greatest modern maladies is sleep disorders, and I can speak on this because I have a problem with sleep apnea, and I've got a sleep machine, but it's not just sleep apnea, it's the difficulty that people have with sleep. We work flat out trying to make something of ourselves, not just during the day, but also during the night. God's aim is to sanctify both our work and our sleep, our rest. So the whole day then becomes the Lord's day.

The perfect model for this, and the most simple model for this, is Luther's morning and evening prayers, which we have in the Small Catechism. Now, the more I look at this and consider this, the more I realize how brilliant and how scriptural and how profound Luther's teaching on morning and evening prayer is. It's very, very short. It's very, very doable. It lasts no longer than two minutes. What's the basic pattern? He says, when you get up in the morning, what's the first thing you do? You bless yourself and you put the cross on: you say, "In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen." You consecrate yourself by putting the most holy name upon yourself, the name that was placed on you, given to you in baptism, you place on your body, and that name then covers you for the rest of the day. You bless yourself, Luther says, with the name. You consecrate yourself by using the Trinitarian name. And then he says, say the Lord's Prayer. Now, the Lord's Prayer is remarkable because it is not just a prayer, but it's also the word of God. It's the prayer that Jesus didn't just teach us, but it's the prayer that He Himself prays for us and with us. So the Lord's Prayer is both word of God and prayer. So how do you sanctify yourself? By saying the Lord's Prayer, morning, evening, and any time during the day.

And then thirdly, you have Luther's morning and evening prayer, which has everything to do with sanctification. Just take his morning prayer — I'll use the translation that I'm familiar with. "I thank You, heavenly Father, through Your dear Son, Jesus Christ, that You have protected me this night from all harm and danger." So you have the prayer of thanksgiving for protection from all the evil powers, Satan and the powers of darkness. And you say, "And I ask You to keep me this day too from all evil, so that in all I do I may please You" — doing God-pleasing work — "into Your hands I commend my body," notice, the body, "and soul, and all that I have. Let Your holy angel be with me, so that the evil one may have no power over me." Three things there: thanksgiving for protection from Satan and all the desanctifying, desecrating powers; a petition for protection by God, for God-pleasing words, thoughts, and deeds throughout the whole day; and then there's the self-dedication, the self-offering: "into Your hands I commend my body and soul, and all that I have." You offer yourself to God. And then you ask for the presence of the holy angel, your guardian angel, because you don't just live an earthly life in an earthly community, you live in the heavenly realm together with the angels. And as part of your protection as a holy person from the unholy one, you need the holy angels.

Let me conclude with three illustrations from Luther. I rushed this last part a bit because I wanted to cover it, and there might be time for just one or two questions. Luther uses three pictures about our daily sanctification.

First of all, you know that in the Middle Ages, people were obsessed with relics, holy things. Now, why were they so obsessed with relics? What lay behind this was a very, very good impulse. They wanted to become physically holy. And you became holy by means of contact with most holy things. So what is more holy than the bones of a martyr, or some other holy person? So through the relics from a holy person, you yourself could receive holiness and blessing from God. Luther says, yeah, we have no need of relics, because we have the most holy of all holy relics, which is the word of God. And that makes us holy in a way that no relic can make us holy. So we can have daily contact with the relic of all relics, the most holy word of God.

Secondly, reacting against medieval Catholic practice: you remember that people used incense to drive away demons and the unholy spirit and to sanctify themselves. And to the present day, you go into a Catholic church, people pick up holy water, and they put holy water on themselves to sanctify themselves. Well, what's our holy incense? What's our holy water? Luther says, it's the word of God, which we use in meditation and prayer. So the incense that drives the devil away and keeps us holy, keeps us sweet in God's eyes, the holy water that makes us holy and keeps us safe from the devil, is the word of God.

Lastly, to use another Catholic picture: you probably know that one of the great Catholic festivals is the Feast of Corpus Christi, in which the host is carried in a monstrance in procession around the church or around the streets of a town. And that was very common in the ancient world, so the body of Christ was carried in a monstrance — "monstrance" means something that shows it — in procession. Luther says, we have no need for a monstrance to carry the body of Christ out into the world. Why? Because we are monstrances of the body of Christ. So your body shows the body of Christ out there into the world and brings the blessing of Christ out into the world.

It's a very happy coincidence, indeed, that we should be having this reunion in a Benedictine monastery. Do you realize what the motto of the Benedictines was? It's in Latin, "ora et labora," pray and work. Pray so that your work is holy work. Work in order to pray. The connection between doing holy work and the holy life of prayer. I think it's the great sociologist Weber who made a very profound observation. He said that, contrary to popular judgment, Luther didn't turn monks into lay people, but he turned lay people into monks. That is very profound. And that was Luther's project, and that's the project of the New Testament, of the church. The task that Christ sets Himself to do is to turn lay people into monks — monks in the sense of people who live holy lives, lives that are characterized by dedication to the word of God and prayer.