Soteriology #n: (Guest post) timely reminder during finals

Guest post written by a freshman sister but carries the weightiness of scriptural authority. I am thoroughly rebuked, enjoy:

God did not save us so we could be happy. He did not save us so we could have a community, or help the poor, or go on missions. Those are all good and necessary, but they are secondary. God saved us so we could be holy.

“For He chose us in Him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in His sight.” (Ephesians 1:4)

To be holy means we are separate from the world and set apart for God. It means that our desires, joys, and investments must be different from that of the world. The Bible says that true believers of Christ will live differently from the world. But if Jesus came to campus for a week, would he know that we were Christians? I'm not talking about going to church or listening to Hillsong. If Jesus saw the things that bring us joy, the way we entertain ourselves, the things and events that we invest time in, the way we talk, our attitude towards school, the way we treat one another...would he know that we loved and followed him? If we drink like the world, party like the world, complain like the world, flirt like the world, dress like the world...what makes us different from those who aren't saved? If we really are Christians, we don't force ourselves to be holy, but God gives us a desire to be holy because to love Jesus is to obey his commandments. To love Jesus is to find all of our joy in him, and to sell everything else we hold dear for the sake of getting more of Jesus. If our lives are no different from those of our non-Christian friends, we need to be asking ourselves whether we're Christians at all."

“So I tell you this, and insist on it in the Lord, that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their thinking. They are darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts. Having lost all sensitivity, they have given themselves over to sensuality so as to indulge in every kind of impurity, with a continual lust for more.

You, however, did not come to know Christ that way. Surely you heard of him and were taught in him in accordance with the truth that is in Jesus. You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.” (Ephesians 4:17-24)