A Barna survey finding opens the message: most Christians who attend church and read the Bible do not personally desire to be holy, and so pursue little to grow in it. Against that, the sermon defines holiness as being “dedicated” and “set apart” for God, tracing the believer’s estate of holiness through positional, progressive, and future consummate sanctification, and grounding it in Ephesians 1 – God chose and predestined His people in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before Him.
Part 2 of the series applies this calling to marriage. Paul’s picture of Christ’s sacrificial, cleansing love for the church in Ephesians 5 becomes the pattern for husbands and wives, alongside Paul’s charge in 2 Corinthians 11 to present the church as a pure virgin to Christ. Marriage itself is to be held in honor by all, and the marriage bed kept undefiled, because God will judge the sexually immoral and the adulterer.