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 bunch 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 galley. 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 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 is 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 less by 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

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