From the onset God's plan for reaching the world has been to create a people distinct from the world who would then minister to and reach the world. This was God's global plan for his chosen people as first told to Abraham: "And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you … and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed" (Genesis 12:2,3; 18:18)

The key, the secret, behind Israel's worldwide ministry was to be their holiness (or set-apartness) as a holy nation. "For you are a people holy to the LORD your God. The LORD your God has chosen you out of all the peoples on the face of the earth to be his people, his treasured possession." (Deuteronomy 7:6) Holiness is essential to God's nature; it is not so much an attribute of God as it is the very foundation of his being. Holiness denotes the separateness or otherness of God from all his creation. God is set apart from all that is unclean or evil.

The holiness of God was to be the example and motivation for God's people to be set apart as holy, that they might reach the world. The sum of their call was that they be separated to God and consecrated to serve him in holiness. This is where their power lay. Israel's distinctiveness was to leverage them for ministry to a sinful world. National Israel, set apart as holy, was in its time to be a beacon to the dark Gentile world.

But Israel never reached its potential. Aaron's golden calf shows how miserably Israel could fail in becoming a nation holy to the Lord (Exodus chapters 32-34).

When Jesus came, he succeeded where Israel had failed. As the ultimate seed of Abraham, Jesus is true Israel (Galatians 3:16). He was called out of Egypt, as was the nation of Israel (Matthew 2:15). As true Israel, he succeeded in resisting Satan's wilderness temptations, whereas corporate Israel had failed (Matthew 4:1-11; Luke 4:1-13). Jesus was at once set apart as holy to God the Father, a great high priest and a light to the Gentiles.

Today the threefold responsibility that was corporate Israel's - and that of Jesus, the true Israel - falls to the church. The apostle Peter, in chapter 2 of his first letter, refers to Exodus 19:6 (where Israel had been first called to be a kingdom of priests) by telling believers that they themselves are now a holy priesthood (1 Peter 2:4-5,9).

As to our holiness, the Scriptures declare that we are both "sanctified in Christ Jesus, [&] called to be saints [holy]" (1 Corinthians 1:2). We are sanctified (set apart as holy) because Jesus is "our righteousness and sanctification and redemption" (1 Corinthians 1:30).

And here lies our great advantage as believers. The call to be holy is not a call to a bootstrap moralistic improvement. Rather, it is a call to live out the practical implications of our holiness in Christ by pursuing holiness as a lifestyle. Our renewal and change flow from the sanctification that God has already accomplished in our lives. As "holy and beloved" by God, we are to abandon the values and attitudes and practices that belong to the old self and be clothed with the new self (Colossians 3:9-10,12). We are to live with a confidence in what God has already done for us and to trust in him to continue his transforming work until we see him face to face.

Still, while holy living is not a matter of moralistic self-improvement, and while it is allowing what already has taken place to renew our lives, it remains a daunting task. It requires saying no to our sinful desires. It requires discipline. It requires prayer and vigilance.

The stakes are so high. Righteous Lot loved Sodom. While scandalized by it, he hung on to it for dear life. And he and his family paid dearly. So listen carefully. Setting ourselves apart from the world so that we might reach the world is not so much a series of "no"s as much as it is an immense yes to Christ and all that he gives. A great yes to the riches of Christ supplies the perspective to say no when and, as we ought. When we say yes to Christ, we say yes to eternal salvation. We say yes to a love that is a shoreless, bottomless sea. We say yes to the endless Niagara Falls of grace so that no matter how much we have received, there always is more grace (John 1:16; James 4:6). We say yes to the indwelling of Christ (2 Corinthians 5:17). We say yes to becoming a temple of him who is the eternal temple (1 Corinthians 3:16; 6:19). We say yes to God's care that is ministered in the full orbs of his omnipresence, omnipotence, and omniscience (Psalm 139). We say yes to citizenship in heaven, and we are now seated in Christ in the heavenly places because Christ is in heaven and we are in him (Ephesians 2:6). We say yes to heaven and the new Jerusalem coming down from heaven like a bride beautifully dressed for her husband (Revelation 21:1-2). And we say yes to his Lordship over all of life (Romans 12:1-2). His sovereignty commands every area of life. This yes is the sweetest of all - and the key to the no he calls us to declare.

The stakes are indeed high. Lot's folly could be ours. We are more than capable of being tormented in our righteous souls by the deeds of lawless men, all the while hanging on to the same world with all we have, so that Sodom is reborn in the lives of our nearest and dearest. God help us.

Excerpts from Set Apart: Calling a Worldly Church to a Godly Life by R. Kent Hughes, pages 17-22.