If we could distill God’s will for his people into a simple prayer, we may do no better than an often-repeated plea from Robert Murray M’Cheyne: “Lord, make me as holy as a pardoned sinner can be made” (Memoir and Remains of Robert Murray M’Cheyne, 159).
How often does such a prayer find its place upon your lips? How deeply does such a desire shape your hopes and plans? If the longings of your heart could speak, would any of them cry out, “Make me as holy as I can be”?
God’s desire for our holiness burns through the Scriptures like a purifying fire. Paul emphasizes this: “This is the will of God, your sanctification” (1 Thessalonians 4:3). Peter reiterates: “As he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct” (1 Peter 1:15–16). Hebrews echoes: “Strive for peace with everyone, and for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord” (Hebrews 12:14).
And in a hundred other ways, God would have us think so. Our holiness delights him (Psalm 40:6–8), pleases him (1 Thessalonians 4:1), rises before him like a fragrant offering (Philippians 4:18), and elicits his approval and praise (Romans 2:29; 12:1). If you want to please a holy God, be as holy as you can be.
Holiness and Its Hoaxes
Before we consider why holiness makes God happy, we must understand what holiness means. Over time, if we’re not careful, we may come to associate the word with images or ideas at odds with the real thing.
Some, for example, may hear holiness and think bland or boring. Holiness might seem like something old-fashioned, belonging in a museum. However, true holiness knows nothing of blandness and cannot abide boredom. Scripture speaks of “the splendor of holiness,” of holiness as “glory and beauty” (1 Chronicles 16:29; Exodus 28:2). As Sinclair Ferguson writes, holy people shine with something of God’s own brilliance:
“To sanctify” means that God repossesses persons and things that have been devoted to other uses, and takes them into his own possession in order that they may reflect his own glory. (The Holy Spirit, 140)
True holiness is breathtakingly beautiful. It participates in God’s own glory — a glory bursting with life and majesty.
Others may hear holiness and think mainly of religious rituals: food laws, temple sacrifices, or a devotion to church routines. But such was the mistake of many Pharisees — those punctual, precise, “worshiping” bundles of corruption (Matthew 23:25–28). True holiness pierces to the deepest parts of a person; it touches and transforms “spirit and soul and body” (1 Thessalonians 5:23). Holiness is a hand that plucks the heart’s hidden strings, filling all of life with heavenly melody. It is not smoke arising from the altar, but faith and love arising from the soul (Psalm 40:6–8).
Finally, some may hear holiness and wonder what relevance it holds to daily life. Maybe holiness seems like a cloud: miles above the ground and impossible to grasp. But true holiness has everything to do with everyday life. When Jesus and his apostles call us to holiness, they address our thinking and speaking, our eating and drinking, our spending and saving, our working and resting. Even on the most ordinary day, there never comes a moment when “be holy” doesn’t mean something practical. Holiness embraces and dignifies our daily doings.
And such holiness — beautiful, deep, broad — makes God happy.
God’s Complex Pleasure
Depending on your personality and theological background, the thought of our holiness pleasing God may raise some questions. Some, especially lovers of the doctrine of justification, may wonder, Doesn’t God already delight in me? And others, especially the sensitive and scrupulous, may ask, How could God ever delight in me?
Doesn’t God already delight in me?
For some, the idea that our holiness delights God seems to undermine (or at least sit in tension with) justification by faith alone. Doesn’t God’s delight rest on Christ’s perfect holiness now reckoned to me through faith? Doesn’t he call me “holy and beloved” before I obey (Colossians 3:12) and even after I sin (1 Corinthians 6:11)?
These questions press us toward a helpful distinction. At one level, God has an unshakeable delight in his people because we are united to “his beloved Son” (Colossians 1:13), our holy Savior who remains the same yesterday, today, and forever (Hebrews 13:8). We are in Christ — wrapped in his righteousness, sanctified by his purity — and therefore fully approved in God’s sight. And yet, above this foundation of God’s unchanging favor, we really can please him more or less, depending on how we live. We can grieve the Spirit or gladden him (Ephesians 4:30); we can delight God Almighty or displease him (Ephesians 5:9–10).
The image of fatherly discipline in Hebrews 12 brings these two kinds of pleasure together. All discipline implies some degree of displeasure or disapproval. At the same time, all good discipline springs from deep love. “The Lord disciplines the one he loves” (Hebrews 12:6). Beneath the displeasure of God’s discipline is his deep and unchanging fatherly affect
Because he loves us, he responds to our displeasing sins with discipline — and by discipline, he makes us more pleasing. He gives us the security of his everlasting approval in Christ — and amazingly, he also gives us the dignity of becoming the kind of people who will hear his “well done.”
How could God ever delight in me?
Others ask a different question about God’s delight. They understand why holiness pleases God, and they would love to know themselves pleasing before him. But they can’t seem to imagine their holiness — their small, stumbling holiness — ever being pure enough to please him. Maybe in heaven they’ll delight God, but how could they do so now?
I feel the force of the question. Our sins are still many, our present imperfections run deep, and mixed motives taint even our best deeds. This side of heaven, God can always disapprove of something inside us. So it can feel safer to simply take refuge in the righteousness of Christ and wait till we’re perfect to believe ourselves pleasing. But that would be a great mistake.
“God is happy with our holiness because the heart of true holiness is happiness in God.”
If we, though trusting in Jesus and seeking to follow him, doubt that God could delight in our holiness, we need to reckon with how often God uses the language of pleasure to describe his posture toward his partly sanctified people. He says brotherly love pleases him (Romans 14:18), sharing with others pleases him (Hebrews 13:16), praying for kings pleases him (1 Timothy 2:3–4), a child’s obedience pleases him (Colossians 3:20), even that we can be “fully pleasing” to him (Colossians 1:10). And in each of these examples (and many more), he is not lying. The holy, holy, holy God is astoundingly, wonderfully pleasable.
Roots of His Approval
If we ask why such imperfect holiness pleases God, we might give several answers. We might remember that our present holiness is nothing less than the emerging character of Christ in us (2 Corinthians 3:18), his image rescued and renewed (Romans 8:29) — and God loves the glory of his Son. We might also remember that our holiness is the fruit of the Holy Spirit (Galatians 5:22–23) — and just as in the beginning, God regards the creative work of his Spirit as “good,” indeed “very good” (Genesis 1:31).
Or we might remember, as Richard Sibbes writes, that God is able to take a long view of our holiness, seeing today’s small step as part of a much bigger and more beautiful picture:
Christ values us by what we shall be, and by what we are elected unto. We call a little plant a tree, because it is growing up to be so. “Who has despised the day of small things?” (Zechariah 4:10). Christ would not have us despise little things. (The Bruised Reed, 17)
Today’s edifying speech, purity of thought, self-denying service, prayerful yearning toward heaven — these are acorns becoming oaks, buds about to bloom, mustard seeds destined to outgrow and outlast the thorns and thistles of our sin. And so they please him.
Yet we can dig still deeper.
Happiness at the Heart
At its core, God's delight in our holiness stems from the fact that true holiness embodies a profound happiness in God. He created the world with the purpose that people would find their greatest joy in Him, thereby glorifying Him as the ultimate source of joy— the treasure in the field, the pearl of infinite value, the fairest among ten thousand, and infinitely more. When we delve into the essence of a genuinely holy life, we discover a heart that beats with immense pleasure in God.
Those who are growing in holiness have experienced, alongside Paul, the "surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord," a value so immense that it makes us more willing to suffer than to sin (Philippians 3:8–10). Like Jeremiah, we have turned away from sin’s broken cisterns, tasted the living water from the fountain of God, and now refuse to leave (Jeremiah 2:13–14). Following John’s example, we have embraced God's commandments with joy, proclaiming, “Not burdensome!” (1 John 5:3). And with David, we have tasted and seen that God is good (Psalm 34:8) — recognizing His presence as the pinnacle of joy, His right hand as the source of eternal pleasures (Psalm 16:11).
Such holiness is inherently beautiful, reflecting the love shared between the Father and the Son and the aroma of heaven’s atmosphere. It penetrates deep into our being, filling our innermost parts with streams of living water. It is comprehensive, extending its influence over all aspects of life just as the waters cover the sea. And this kind of holiness brings joy to God.
Therefore, if we seek to capture God's will for His people in a simple prayer, M’Cheyne’s profound plea serves as an excellent guide: “Lord, make me as holy as a pardoned sinner can be made.” As we pray this, we understand its true meaning deep down: “Lord, make me as happy in You as a pardoned sinner can be.”
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