Jehovah M’kaddesh: The Lord Who Sanctifies

Jehovah M’kaddesh: The Lord Who Sanctifies

It helps you to remember that I am the LORD, who makes you holy. –Exodus 31:13

“God would never want me to spend the rest of my life this miserable. God wants me to be happy.” This is a rationalization I’ve heard many times from people who want to justify walking away from a marriage or toward a questionable endeavor. Maybe you have heard it too. Or maybe you have said it. God does want you to be happy, but he knows that your greatest happiness is found as you pursue holiness. He wants to be your happiness, and he wants you to be holy. In fact, holiness is so much a part of who he is and what he wants, it is one of the names he has given himself—Jehovah M’Kaddesh: the Lord who sanctifies.

This name for God not only describes who he is, but what he does. It reflects his purpose and priorities. What does it mean to be sanctified or holy? It is more than just being morally pure. To be holy is to be set apart for God. “Be holy, for I am holy,” God said (Leviticus 11:45, NKJV). But truthfully, I can become completely defeated and discouraged with God’s expectations for my holiness. I know myself too well. If holiness is the standard, I will never measure up.

Fortunately, God enables us to become what he commands us to be and do what he commands us to do. “May the God of peace make you holy in every way, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless until that day when our Lord Jesus Christ comes again. God, who calls you, is faithful; he will do this” (1 Thessalonians 5:23-24). Jehovah M’Kaddesh is not only a revelation of his divine nature, but also an assurance of his divine help.

As we turn away from sin toward our Jehovah M’Kaddesh in worship and love, he will take every part of our lives we offer to him and he will set us apart for himself. He will work in us so that we become closer and closer in reality to what we have already been declared to be through Christ: holy. And in his holiness we will be much more than happy; we will be filled with the overflowing joy of pleasing God.

My Jehovah M’Kaddesh, how I need you to sanctify my spirit to more God-awareness, my soul to less self-dependence, and my body to increasing service to others. May my greatest joy be your holiness growing in me.

DIGGING DEEPER