Continually restate to yourself the purpose of your life: God’s destiny for humanity isn’t happiness or wealth; it’s holiness. His one aim, for all men and women, is to turn us into his sons and daughters. God isn’t an eternal blessing machine, and he didn’t come to save humanity out of pity. He came to save humanity because he created us to be holy. The atonement means that through the death of Jesus Christ, God can put each of us back into perfect union with himself, without a shadow in between.

Do I believe I need to be holy? Do I believe God can come into me and make me holy? If a preacher, by preaching the gospel, convinces me that I am unholy, I will resent it. The preaching of the gospel always awakens intense resentment, because it reveals that I am unholy. Yet it also awakens an intense craving: the craving to realize the destiny God has for me.

Today, far too many things are calling to us. Some of these things aren’t inherently bad; they’re good and noble and morally justifiable things. But if they are distracting us from our relationship with God, he will take them away until we get right with him. What matters is that we accept the God who will make us holy. At all costs, we must be rightly related to him.

Never adopt any practice that isn’t in keeping with a holy God. Guard against any sympathy for yourself or for others that causes you to tolerate unholy thoughts or deeds. Holiness means keeping every detail of your life under God’s scrutiny. It means unsullied thinking with the mind, unsullied talking with the tongue, and unsullied walking with the feet. Holiness is not only what God gives; it’s manifesting what God gives: “Be holy, because I am holy.”