Ephesians 3:17b-19 “And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power together with all the saints to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge–that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.”

Have you seen the Disney movie Inside Out? Riley is a little girl dealing with the stress of leaving the only home she has known and moving half way across the country. Inside hers and each person’s head there is a control panel, and the control room is occupied by basic emotions, like joy, sadness, anger, fear, and disgust. Each of them is vying to take a turn at the controls and run the person’s behavior.

What if Christ were always at the controls driving what we do? But how does that happen? How does Christ take over the heart when he moves in and get his hands on the controls? This starts, Paul says, with being rooted and established in love. It is certainly true that my own spirit of love needs to lay at the base and foundation of all Christian behavior. Without love our best works have no value. Without love, Paul reminds us in 1 Corinthians 13, all my words of witness are just a harsh, noisy gong or cymbal. All my knowledge, all my charity, all my sacrifice amount to nothing.

But there is another love, even more foundational. “This is love,” John writes in his first letter, “not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.” And again, “We love because he first loved us.” This is the anchor and foundation of our whole relationship with God, and any love to follow from us.

That love alone could consume an entire lifetime trying “to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ.” Close your eyes for a moment, and imagine your greatest personal enemy. Someone, somewhere in your life, rises to the top of the list of those who have hurt you. They have broken your heart. They have stolen your time, dignity, love, or friendship. They have persecuted you without provocation. They seem to desire only your misery. No opportunity to inflict pain in your life passes unnoticed and untried.

Now imagine giving up everything to rescue this person and make them part of your life forever–everything! You do not withhold your home, your fortune, your time, any personal comforts, your heart, your health, and finally your life. You literally embrace hell for their sake. Now multiply that person a million times, billions and billions of times, and you begin to get the faintest glimpse of the love of Christ for us. He reconciled us to God when we were still his enemies. He died for us when we were still sinners. How many directions it must run! How far beyond our puny mind’s ability to understand or conceive it must be!

A love like this surpasses knowledge, Paul says. The cross, the atonement, the sacrifice that forgives and redeems us, is just one facet on the face of this vast jewel of God’s love that stretches far beyond the limits of our vision, though it is the foundational one. In countless ways God has loved us, and each involves a height we cannot climb, and a depth we cannot fully fathom.

We can know it, but not like a subject we master at school. The time comes when we are tired of working the simple math problems, or we have read everything there is to read about the Spanish-American War, and we want to move on to something else. But we are getting to know God’s love like we know a dear friend. We know him personally. And every day for as long as we live we will get to know him more and know him better. All the while we will realize there is still far more about him I don’t know, but I am thankful to know him and have him in my life.

Know God’s love like this, and you will “be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.” Christ will live in you and so much more. And so Paul’s prayer for your power will never be fully answered. My prayer for you to grasp the full extent of his love will not be fully granted, at least not this side of heaven. We can never get to the end of his love and say, “There. Now I know it all.” But we can know Christ, and we can be the people on whom he pours out all this love forever and ever.

Such love remains a great mystery to explore, a great adventure that has no end. We wouldn’t want it any other way.

Ephesians 3:14-17 “For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom his whole family in heaven and on earth derives its name. I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.”

When I was a kid I was fascinated by things like fire, and knives, and guns. Fortunately, I had good parents who kept these things off limits until I was approaching my teens. Part of the fascination may have been the fact that these were all “forbidden fruit.” We want what we can’t have. Another factor in my young obsession, I believe, has to do with power. To wield fire, to wield a knife, to wield a gun, is to possess power. They empower you to do things far beyond the limits of your mere personal strength. They may be tools for good or for destruction. But they all offer the prize of power.

Historically, humans haven’t handled power very well. We all know the saying, “Power corrupts.” As exhibit A, we have the two-ring circus called Washington D.C. Like my first matches, knife, or gun, political power can be a tool for good or destruction. But we know the temptation to pervert and twist power to serve self at the expense of others is strong.

Power is a central concern of Paul’s prayer in this letter to the Ephesians, a prayer one commentator has called “the greatest of all Paul’s prayers.” Paul wants these people to have it. It is a unique power in that it is above the possibility of misuse. That is why I join Paul and every pastor in praying for your power.         Cultural forces made living as a Christian hard for the Christians in Ephesus. There are always challenges to maintaining our faith and living a life consistent with it. One of the challenges for the Ephesians came from the dominant religion of their city. Ephesus was the unofficial capitol for worship of the goddess Diana. You may remember that while the Apostle Paul was doing mission work in the city, the silversmiths, who made idols of the goddess, started a riot to protest this new religion. If you were a Christian in Ephesus, chances are your neighbors were Diana worshipers. They thought you were weird, maybe a little dangerous, for following this foreign God, Jesus.

Like most of the churches Paul started, this congregation was also a mix of former Jews and former Gentiles. Historically, these two groups had been separated by culture, race, and religion. They didn’t like each other very much. Now their shared faith in Jesus formed them into a single family. This wasn’t easy to make work. At the same time their former faiths and former ways of life pulled at them, tempting them to come back.

How do you deal with the forces pulling Christians away from Christ, tempting them to adopt the beliefs and values of the culture around them? That is no insignificant force! “Peer pressure” doesn’t end in high school. If it were just a matter of people having polite conversations about different ways of looking at things, it might not seem so serious. But the non-Christian world is not so kind to the Christian faith and life. We face ridicule for believing in creation. We are considered narrow-minded for believing Jesus is the only Savior. We are evil for limiting sex to a married man and woman. “Give it up,” they say. “Christianity needs to evolve. Let your outdated thinking go, and the insults and disrespect will all go away.”

Paul understood that his people needed strength, they needed power, to keep their little church in Ephesus going. He could have simply written them a list of instructions about how to live. In the coming chapters he was going to do just that. He painted a picture of what Christian faith and life look like.

But these people needed more than a task list to survive. Notice how his language is all about what is going on inside of them: “the Spirit…your inner being…your hearts…through faith.” Paul is saying, “I am praying for God to change you, to make you a different person. I am asking God to transform how you think, what you believe, the way you feel, and what you want, all with a certainty that won’t let it go.”

The secret to escaping the penalty our sins deserve starts outside of us with Jesus’ sacrifice at the cross. The secret to having and holding on to his forgiving work begins with his Spirit working inside of us. Then Christ can live in us by faith, and give us the power to resist the forces pulling us away from him.

Luke 11:17-20 “‘Any kingdom divided against itself will be ruined, and a house divided against itself will fall. If Satan is divided against himself, how can his kingdom stand? I say this because you claim that I drive out demons by Beelzebub. Now if I drive out demons by Beelzebub, by whom do your followers drive them out? So then, they will be your judges. But if I drive out demons by the finger of God, then the kingdom of God has come to you.”

A strategy used in everything from military campaigns to sporting events involves making a fake retreat in order to draw the enemy into a trap. You make it look like you are weak, you are losing ground, until the other side has spent themselves. Then you press the attack with greater strength than you had appeared to have at the beginning.

If Jesus was just an agent of the devil to make it look as though the demons were weak and losing before they turned around and pressed the attack, he sure didn’t understand the strategy well. He just kept beating up on his own team, one after the other. There was no turning point when the demons came out swinging. Instead, they were going down in flames.

You don’t win the war or win the game by actually beating up on your own side. That is Jesus’ point. Turn your guns on your own soldiers, and you will lose the battle every time. Jesus’ unbroken string of victories in his showdowns with the demons was steadily eroding the devil’s power. And it speaks volumes about Jesus.

“But if I drive out demons by the finger of God, then the kingdom of God has come to you.” If Jesus doesn’t work for the devil, then he works for God. And note his awesome power. Not a single demon could resist him. It is worth noting that Jesus calls the power by which he works the “finger of God,” not the “fist of God,” or the “arm of God,” but his finger. With the possible exception of some of the toes, the fingers are thinnest and weakest parts of the body. Literally, of course, God doesn’t use a human body in his spiritual battles. But at his weakest, with a single breath, with just a few words, he draws out the demons and sets people free to live as citizens of his kingdom. That’s the side that Jesus worked for, and still does. The demons’ inability to mount a serious challenge proves the source of Jesus’ power is the power of God himself.

The only greater demonstration of his power would come if he could take something far weaker, like his own death, and use that to break the devil’s hold on people, and set them free from the chains of death and hell. Imagine if Jesus’ death could rob the devil of the sins he needs to accuse us, and the guilt that would condemn us. Imagine if the simple preaching of such a thing would win our hearts to God’s side and fill them with faith and love. If Jesus’ death could do all that, there is nothing that the devil and all his angels could do to resist.

That’s why we live secure in the safety of his grace and love.

Luke 11:14-16 “Jesus was driving out a demon that was mute. When the demon left, the man who had been mute spoke, and the crowd was amazed. But some of them said, ‘By Beelzebub, the prince of demons, he is driving out demons.’ Others tested him by asking for a sign from heaven.”

When Jesus helps people, it produces some strange reactions. Some of those who saw him deliver a man from demon possession decided that Jesus wasn’t cute or entertaining. He wasn’t even good. He was evil. He posed a problem for society. This miracle, all his miracles, were only possible because he was in league with the devil. They had to stop him before he deceived the nation. You know that they didn’t stop until they had nailed him to the cross.

I leave it to the historians to debate whether the U.S.A. is or ever was a Christian nation. Historically, at least, Christianity had a major influence on this country, and Jesus was respected, if not embraced. In my lifetime approaching 60 years, many people have been critical of Christians, and critical of the church. The truth is, we have given them plenty of reason to be critical. Financial scandals and moral scandals have involved clergy of all kinds of Christian flavors. Christians are often known more for what they are against than how much they serve and love. At least Jesus himself has seemed to enjoy the respect of most. Rarely are people critical of him, whether or not they particularly choose to follow him.

Yet that is becoming less and less the case. One blogger says this about him: “Jesus a nice guy?  Not in my book.  Nor in any other person’s who is capable of compassion and rationality.” The Freedom from Religion Foundation does not consider Jesus one of the good guys of history. The big names in the so-called Sexual Revolution don’t generally like him. I could go on. This isn’t so much your problem and my problem, except to realize that a growing number of people we meet will not even agree that Jesus was good, much less the Savior of the world. They would rather see his movement die than let us make it grow.

The group criticizing Jesus’ exorcism were still skeptics, even after the miracle. “Others tested him by asking for a sign from heaven.” Do you find their request mind-boggling in its audacity? What kind of sign could Jesus give to prove himself? Let’s see. I don’t know, maybe throw a demon out of a man? If that wasn’t enough, what miracle would be?

That’s the problem with people who ask for that kind of “proof.” No proof will ever be enough. No miracle will be so clearly divine that the skeptic won’t try to explain it away. As Jesus said to the rich man who ignored poor Lazarus at his gate and wound up in hell, “If they (your brothers) do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.” The skeptic often fancies himself a man with an open mind. “Free thinkers” they call themselves. The truth is, no one’s mind is closed and sealed more tightly.

Christian apologist Frank Turek tried to answer a man who said he wanted proof. “If I could prove that Jesus rose from the dead…” Dr. Turek kept beginning. And though he always began with “if,” the man wouldn’t even give him that much. He kept cutting Dr. Turek off and saying that people don’t rise from the dead. So much for the open mind. No “proof” is great enough for those who don’t want to believe.

Jesus doesn’t let the opposition stop him. He knows that many, often the majority, don’t want what he is offering. He keeps on with his mission of setting people free from sin and Satan anyway. We who know his freedom may be few, but Jesus didn’t come to be the most popular. He came to save any he could. We are enough for him, no matter how much grief the haters and skeptics give him.

Luke 11:14 “Jesus was driving out a demon that was mute. When the demon left, the man who had been mute spoke, and the crowd was amazed.”

The crowd in front of Jesus was not able to ignore what he had done for the demon-possessed man. Luke tells us that they were “amazed.” This is not bad in itself. These people should have been amazed. No one else could give commands to spirits the way that Jesus did. No one else could do many of the things Jesus did: Give orders to the elements of nature, instantly heal diseases, make baked bread and dead fish grow. You know the stories. Who wouldn’t be filled with wonder?

David Copperfield made the Statue of Liberty disappear on TV. Criss Angel appeared to levitate between buildings. David Blaine turned a cup of coffee into a cup of money. Their work is amazing. We are entertained. But you know that it is all done with camera angles, distraction, wires. They’re called magic “tricks” for a reason. These guys might perform for patients in a hospital. You don’t find them attempting to cure them.

Amazement was an appropriate reaction to Jesus’ power over the demon. But it was also an inadequate one. When Jesus turned water into wine, that story concludes with the words, “He thus revealed his glory, and his disciples put their faith in him.” Faith is the missing element in this account. The crowd is pleased, awed, impressed. But they aren’t really changed.

That’s still a problem, isn’t it? Relief from demons is not the thing people come to Jesus for so much today. Relief from family problems, relief from financial problems, some time to escape from the grind and feel uplifted and be “spiritual” at worship—this is the help people seek today. These are all fine so far as it goes. Again, the crowd is pleased, even entertained. But are they changed? Do they go away with faith, with a stronger trust and attachment to Jesus? Are they ready to follow him wherever he leads? Are we?

Jesus didn’t come to solve our dilemmas, end our boredom, or fill our leisure time in a wholesome way. He came to win our loyalty, make us his family, transform our hearts and lives. He came to forgive our sins, relieve our guilt, and secure us for eternity. Anything less than full faith in him is an inadequate reaction on our part.

Luke 11:14 “Jesus was driving out a demon that was mute. When the demon left, the man who had been mute spoke, and the crowd was amazed.”

Christian author C.S. Lewis wrote his book The Screwtape Letters to give his readers insight into the subtle nature of temptation. A senior demon by the name of Screwtape has climbed up the ranks of demons through experience and success in getting humans to fall from grace. He now writes a series of letters to his “nephew” Wormwood to coach him in the finer details of the art of temptation.

In the forward to the book, Lewis makes the observation that there are two kinds of people that please the demons very much: the materialist and the magician. By the materialist he means the kind of people who are too modern and scientific to believe in the existence of spirits like angels or demons. This allows the demons to do their work more or less undetected and unopposed. Then they are like spies free to work their espionage in a country that does not believe in the existence of spies.

By the magician Lewis doesn’t really mean entertainers who use sleight of hand to create illusions for an audience. He means the kind of people who have an unhealthy interest in the occult. They want to tap into the black powers of the spirit world. They imagine that if they do, they will be able to control them for their own purposes. Many victims have been driven to insanity and worse when they discover you can’t control a force more powerful than you. Inevitably, that force is going to control you.

In so many episodes in the gospels, Jesus demonstrates that he, for one, does have power over the dark spirits. Not everyone appreciates, or cares what this means. It is more than a statement about his power. It is also a statement about the source of his power. It confirms Jesus’ divinity. It is the kind of power that properly belongs to the very Son of God.

The gospels mention more than a half dozen encounters between Jesus and demons. He never lost one of those battles. Compared to the kind of exorcisms portrayed in the movies, it wasn’t even a long or complicated process. Jesus gave the command and the demons left. This case from Luke 11 seems to be no exception.

There is good news for us in the apparently effortless way in which Jesus drove the demons away, even in our day. Whether or not we ever encounter someone possessed in person, we have no question about Jesus’ defeat of the devil’s dark forces. The one who delivered people from the grip of demons so many years ago still has power to release us from their temptations, as his grace has released us from the consequences of the sins they work so hard to convince us to try. He is the Lord we still trust to deliver us, body and soul.

I Thessalonians 4:3-7 “It is God’s will that you should be sanctified: …that each of you should learn to acquire a wife in a way that is holy and honorable, not in passionate lust like the heathen, who do not know God, and that in this matter no one should wrong his brother or take advantage of him. The Lord will punish men for all such sins, as we have already told you and warned you. For God did not call us to be impure, but to live a holy life.”

            You may notice the words above are different than the ones printed in your own Bible. They are the words of the footnote in the NIV text. Without boring you with all the details of the Greek, there is an idiom here that can be interpreted a couple of ways. Literally Paul’s words say, “Each of you should learn to possess a vessel.” When not used literally, the term vessel can be used in Greek as a word to refer to your body, or it can be used as a term to refer to a wife. The context seems to point in the direction of marriage.

            Paul is not condemning physical attraction or sexual desire between husband and wife. This isn’t some Victorian ethic he is promoting. But like our sexuality itself, marriage isn’t something we should approach with an attitude mostly concerned with, “What’s in it for me?” especially if what’s in it for me is mostly a matter of satisfying passionate lust. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that that is not a good foundation on which to build a marriage that will last. You may even know some marriages that seemed to be the result of little more than physical attraction and desire in the beginning, and they didn’t make it too far down the road before everything came apart. I know that I do.

            So what is holy and honorable in pursuing a potential mate? Are we exploring our compatibility? Two people don’t have to be carbon copies of each other. In fact, that may be counterproductive. But do we share enough in values and interests to work together for a lifetime? Do our differences fill in for each other? Can we tolerate each other’s weaknesses and appreciate our different strengths? Do we both come to the relationship with a willingness to work, an understanding that I am here to serve another person with my life? Do we understand that marriage is a responsibility, because beyond ourselves it serves our family, our community, our church? Does the person I am considering marrying agree that the best way we can know we are meant for each other is by saying “I do” in front of God’s altar?

Would our marriage fit this description from a wise old Christian: “Two people who up until this point have been walking the path through life to heaven alone have now joined hands to walk that path together?” We sometimes refer to it as “Holy Matrimony.” Putting the relationship together with these kinds of questions and concerns in mind would be one way to approach it honorably, as God’s holy people.

            Paul urges us to do this in a way that accommodates and respects our larger family of faith. “…and that in this matter no one should wrong his brother or take advantage of him. The Lord will punish men for all such sins, as we have already told you and warned you. For God did not call us to be impure, but to live a holy life.”

            Dating and marriage are not a competitive sport, like you see on a TV show such as The Bachelor. As Christians we are part of a community. We don’t interfere in the relationships of other people, before or after they are married. And in our own dating and courting, we behave ourselves in a way that does not give offense to others. As God’s holy people, everything we do is giving a witness, whether good or bad.

            The thing to remember is that we are God’s holy people. He cleansed us of our sins and rescued us from death first. He held us dear and wanted us as his very own for time without end. He did so that we might not be like the rest of the world. We fulfill a higher calling. We live a noticeably new and nobler life. In Jesus God has proclaimed us holy. Now he wants us to go and form holy marriages from holy relationships. It’s a spiritual goal worth pursuing.

1 Thessalonians 4:3 “It is God’s will that you should be sanctified: that you should avoid sexual immorality.”

Paul lists a number of things involved in sexual holiness, but he starts with avoiding sexual immorality. It is no secret to you that the world in which we live doesn’t have very high standards or expectations on this topic. Don’t get pregnant if you are not ready to be a parent. Don’t get a disease or share a disease. Don’t force yourself on someone else. Otherwise it is pretty wide open. It may not be bad advice, so far as it goes. But to say that this falls short of holiness would be a gross understatement.

            The problem is that the world doesn’t share God’s understanding of the purpose for our sexuality. Some view it as little more than a way to feel good and have fun. It is an urge to satisfy. Many see it as a way to express affection for another human. That’s better, but still lacking. At the core of the world’s problem is the view that it is primarily something I use and control for my pleasure.

At the Women’s March a number of participants held up signs referring to their private areas and expressing sole ownership and decision-making power about their use. Setting aside some of the crude language, if the point is that no man should be able to force his wishes on them, we can agree. If such declarations of independence discount any plans and purposes the Lord may have for their bodies, we are obligated to disagree. But the problem doesn’t start there.

            For thousands of years, worldly men have stalked and used women for their own pleasure. Their intentions have been entirely self-centered. They treat women more like a thing than a person made in God’s image and a coheir of the gracious gift of life. The brag about their conquests. They fail to acknowledge that God has a divine purpose and plan for human sexuality, and that this falls within narrow boundaries.

            God has clearly tied new human life to our sexuality. It may not be his only purpose. It may not always result in offspring. But any attempt to pretend the connection doesn’t exist is missing something that even basic biology ought to make clear.

            God created this kind of contact to cement and solidify a life-long relationship between a man and a woman. It is, by far, not the only thing that strengthens the relationship, but it is an important piece of the puzzle. That relationship would make for a stable home in which to raise children. That relationship would make for a stable society. That relationship should be a classroom in which both men and women learn things like patience, sacrifice, loyalty, and service. God has a purpose, a vested interest here. His holy people, and that means every believer, avoid sexual behavior that is predatory, self-serving, destabilizing to marriage and family, or reinforces shallow rather than life-long relationships. To say it plainly, God’s holy people avoid sexual sin by limiting sexual relations to the person of the opposite sex to whom they are married.

            This, as you know, is difficult, even for Christians. If it were easy, Paul wouldn’t have to put it in writing. Such self-control doesn’t some naturally to us. An old professor of mine once remarked, “Nobody I know has a spiritual track record free of sexual stumbling.” It makes me wince to say it, but he is right. Even if we have controlled our outward behavior, have we always shared God’s holy purpose?

            For our guilt we need to remember that God not only wants us to be holy. He has made us holy in his Son. Paul says it beautifully to the Ephesians, “Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless.” Jesus is the gentleman who respects and cares for his bride, the church. He gave himself up for our sin. He washes us and cleanses us in his baptism. His grace makes us holy, and it invites us to apply ourselves to holiness in the way we use his gift of sexuality.

1 Thessalonians 4:1-3a “Finally, brothers, we instructed you how to live in order to please God, as in fact you are living. Now we ask you to do this more and more. For you know what instructions we gave you by the authority of the Lord Jesus. It is God’s will that you should be sanctified…”

            If I were to ask you about your goals for life, my guess is that your answers would revolve around several general topics: education, family or relationships, career, finances, lifestyle, volunteerism, and retirement. Which ones you emphasize depend to a large degree on your age and place in life.

            If I were to ask you about your spiritual goals, my guess is that you would have to think about your answer a little longer. Many Christians don’t think about their life of faith as something they proactively plan and manage. You go to church. You try to behave yourself–sort of. Maybe you get involved in some program or class. Maybe you don’t. You believe God is important. You just aren’t sure what to do about it.

            Let’s approach your life of faith from a different direction. What do you suppose God wants? What are his goals for you? Here, perhaps, the answers are a little easier. God wants me to have faith. That’s where everything starts. Maintaining that faith means time in his word and prayer. I suppose he wants me to go to church, and probably get involved in some kind of Bible study, too.

            God wants me to serve. “Love,” we know, is the one-word summary of everything God wants in his commandments. This is not romantic love, though it may have many family applications. It is love like Jesus had. It offers assistance, it forgives, it treats others with dignity, it sacrifices.

            In this letter to the Christians who lived in Thessalonica, Paul brings up another desire God has for your life. It is a central part of Christian life. Almost two hundred years ago, an entire movement in American Christianity was built around it. But it doesn’t get so much attention anymore. The plan is holiness. God wants you and me to be holy.

            That is something more than living life free from sin. Holiness goes to the root of how we understand our identity as Christians and our whole relationship with God. When God makes something holy, he sees it as completely consecrated and dedicated to himself. It now exists for his special purpose. It is not like everyone and everything else. He wants us to be different.

            This isn’t limited to people who have chosen full time church work. This applies to every Christian, and to all we do in every area of life. In another letter, his letter to the Corinthians, Paul reminds them, “You are not your own. You were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body.” Later in that same letter he says, “Whether you eat, or drink, or whatever you do, do it all to the glory of God.” Nothing we do is too small, or too personal, to be holy to God. Our entire existence becomes a tool for him to use to carry out his plans and purposes.

            God made us holy when he called us to faith and made us members of his family. He paid a purchase price for us when Jesus died as our substitute on the cross. This paid for the guilt of all our sins and took them all away. In one sense, this set us free. It made us free from punishment, free from trying to pay for sin ourselves, free from spending eternity in hell. It set us free from the power and control of the devil, and free from our own corrupt will and desires that live inside of us.

            At the same time, it made us holy. It made us belong to God, but not in the sense that we are prisoners who have been captured and forced into slave labor. We have been miraculously transformed, lovingly elevated, changed into new and better creatures fit to work with God as his partners.

            “It is God’s will that you should be sanctified.” In other words, he made you and redeemed you to be holy to him, set aside for his purpose. That’s a goal we can embrace.