This chapter wants to correct a too-narrow focus on motivations for sanctification. DeYoung believes that preachers and counsellors are too limited in the tools available to encourage biblical holiness. He feels that commands, gratitude, and duties are unhelpful on their own. Believers are motivated in different ways. He illustrates from Colossians 3 that there is a wide array of motivations for holiness.

In the first part of Chapter 1, Piper defines sanctification. In the next part he gives it a place in the order of salvation. He explains that sanctification has to do with being and becoming holy and this is nothing less than a sharing in the holiness of God.

What is a biblical understanding of sanctification? The author explains that Scripture talks about sanctification in two different ways, definitive sanctification and progressive sanctification. He further warns against cheap slogans that communicate unhelpful and even misleading understandings of sanctification. He continues with a discussion of the centrality of union with Christ in believers’ sanctification.