YAHWEH OUR SANCTIFIER

“Consecrate yourselves therefore, and be holy, for I am the LORD your God. And you shall keep My statutes, and perform them: I am the LORD who sanctifies you.” (Leviticus‬ ‭20:7-8‬)

God is holy and we are commanded to be holy.  Yet, an outward standard alone is insufficient to accomplish this.  Paul acknowledged that frustration in Romans 7.

“For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am carnal, sold under sin. For what I am doing, I do not understand. For what I will to do, that I do not practice; but what I hate, that I do. ... For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh) nothing good dwells; for to will is present with me, but how to perform what is good I do not find. ... But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?” (Romans‬ ‭7:14-15, 18, 23-24‬)

How many of us can testify to this wretched state—having a desire to keep God’s demand, and yet losing battle after battle to temptation.  It makes you want to give up.

Which is exactly where God wants us—as Luther sang,

Did we in our own strength confide,
our striving would be losing,
were not the right Man on our side,
the Man of God's own choosing.
You ask who that may be?
Christ Jesus, it is he;
Lord Sabaoth his name,
from age to age the same;
and he must win the battle.

You have to give up to go up!  God never demands something from us without equipping us to do it.  He is our Sanctifier, Yahweh M’Kaddesh. The answer to Paul’s, “Who will deliver me?” is given in the next verse, “I thank God—through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (Rom.7:25) and the Apostle will go on to explain this spiritual power in chapter eight.

We have no excuse “as His divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who called us by glory and virtue, by which have been given to us exceedingly great and precious promises, that through these you may be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.” (2 Peter‬ ‭1:3-4‬)