Our calling is to enjoy God as well as glorify Him. Real fulfillment relates to the purpose for which we were made, to be in reference to God, to be in personal relationship with Him, to be fulfilled by Him, and thus to have an affirmation of life. Christianity should never give any onlooker the right to conclude that Christianity believes in the negation of life. Christianity is able to make a real affirmation because we affirm that it is possible to be in personal relationship to the personal God who is there and who is the final environment of all He created. All else but God is dependent, but being in the image of God, man can be in personal relationship to that which is ultimate and has always been. We can be fulfilled in the highest level of our personality and in all the parts and portions of life... There is nothing Platonic in Christianity... The whole man is to be fulfilled; there is to be an affirmation of life that is filled with joy. Death in the City (Downers Grove, InterVarsity Press: 1969) 26

Yet, when we examine Christ's life we see him neither using nor advocating any spiritual techniques. His spirituality was expressed in his whole life, not in one little part.

The countries far north are cold and frozen, because they are distant from the sun. What makes such frozen, uncomfortable Christians, but their living so far from heaven? And what makes others so warm in comforts, but their living higher, and having nearer access to God?

Sadly enough, there is a kind of an anti-intellectualism among many Christians: spirituality is falsely pitted against intellectual comprehension as though they stood in a dichotomy. Such anti-intellectualism cuts away at the very heart of the Christian message. Of course, there is a false intellectualism which does destroy the work of the Holy Spirit. But it does not arise when men wrestle honestly with honest questions and then see that the Bible has the answers. This does not oppose true spirituality. Death in the City (Downers Grove, InterVarsity Press: 1969) 84-85

What you do in your house is worth as much as if you did it up in heaven for our Lord God. We should accustom ourselves to think of our position and work as sacred and well-pleasing to God, not on account of the position and work, but on account of the word and faith from which the obedience and the work flow.

Sound protestant and evangelical doctrine is useless if it is not accompanied by a holy life. It is worse than useless: it does positive harm. It is despised by keen sighted and shrewd men of the world, as an unreal and hollow thing, and brings religion into contempt.

The Lordship of Christ over the whole of life means that there are no Platonic areas in Christianity, no dichotomy or hierarchy between the body and the soul. God made the body as well as the soul, and redemption is for the whole man.

The best measure of a spiritual life is not its ecstasies, but its obedience.

Holiness consisteth not in a cowl or in a garment of gray. When God purifies the heart by faith, the market is sacred as well as the sanctuary; neither remaineth there any work or place which is profane.

...what God has done in Christ exhausts all that God has to do for us.

The goal of the Christian life is to be restored to God's likeness, to be holy as God is holy, to be like Christ in character. It is not primarily to have direct experiences of the spirit or to become a kind of spiritual athelete.

Monastic vows rest on the false assumption that there is a special calling, a vocation, to which superior Christians are invited to observe the counsels of perfection while ordinary Christians fulfil only the commands; but there simply is no special religious vocation since the call of God comes to each at the common tasks.

He loves Thee too little who loves anything together with Thee, which he loves not for Thy sake.