We must distinguish two things which might both possibly be called “nearness to God.” One is likeness to God. … But, secondly, there is what we may call nearness of approach. If this is what we mean, the states in which a man is “nearest” to God are those in which he is most surely and swiftly approaching his final union with God, vision of God and enjoyment of God. And as soon as we distinguish nearness-by-likeness and nearness-of-approach, we see that they do not necessarily coincide. They may or may not.
C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

C.S. Lewis in the above passage from The Four Loves draws a contrast between proximity to God and likeness to God. And when we say that nearness to God is the Good for all men, it is important to keep in mind in which sense we mean that.

The way of the LORD is a stronghold to the upright, but ruin to the workers of iniquity.
Proverbs 10:29

Is the spirit of the LORD impatient? Are these his doings? Do not my words do good to the one walking uprightly?
Micah 2:7

The way of the Lord is ruin to some? The words of God only do good to those walking uprightly?

The Way of the Lord in Proverbs can be understood as encompassing all of life, for the worker of iniquity is as surely on his way to the Lord in judgement as the upright (Hebrews 9:27); as can the Words of the Lord in Micah, for the prophecy (which up to that point had been of woe) spoke of events which would affect the lives of everyone. This is where the distinction between proximity and likeness to God become clear: both these verses describe a proximity to God; not a likeness. As the worker of iniquity draws proximately near to God, his woe is made manifest.

At this point it will be good to define the difference between the upright and the workers of iniquity – or more generally, between good and evil. As Augustine argued in Confessions, evil does not have a substance of its own, as if it were the substantial opposite of good. Lewis expounded on this point several millennia later in works such as The Great Divorce, arguing that evil is not the lack of good, but a malformed good – a good whose aim has been twisted from its proper ends. How many evils have been spawned in the name of love – love of self, overprotective jealousy, idolatry – just to name a few malformations of one good. Thus, the upright man is the man whose ends are oriented correctly towards God. He is the sanctified man whose selfish ends have been aligned towards God by the revelation of the supreme worth of God. The worker of iniquity, by contrast, is not any more or less human than the upright man; his ends are merely misaligned.

Yet this is not a “mere” misalignment: this is the very definition and full extent of culpable evil. Proximity to God is good in an absolute sense, in that all ends orient towards God as they approach him in proximity. Yet we know that the flesh can be incorrigibly rigid in its ends (Romans 8:7). Thus as this rigid evil approaches God, it faces a choice: bend – align yourself towards God as the supreme desire and ends of your heart – or be destroyed. Final judgement is thus the threat of utter destruction of the rigid fleshliness at the presence of God. They are cast away for their existence cannot bear the near presence of God (Matthew 7:23). Proximity to God, though good in an absolute sense, is destruction to that which is not like God in perfection.

For what the Law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did, sending his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin: He condemned sin in the flesh.
Romans 8:3

He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus.
Philippians 1:6

These verses, however, speak of likeness to God. Though we are of ourselves incorrigibly rigid, and though the law was powerless to overcome that rigidity, sanctification by the work of the Holy Spirit has been given to overcome just this problem. Rather than face obliteration at the day of judgement because our ends cannot orient themselves towards the Good, sanctification is the progressive reorientation of one’s desires and values to align with the Good.

In this way, our perfection by the work of the Holy Spirit, though not completed until the day of Christ Jesus, allows us to approach God in proximity because we have approached Jesus Christ in likeness. It makes us good by making our identity malleable, and so saves us from destruction when all things are made good. Thus though we are never fit to behold the glory of God firsthand in this life (even Moses could not behold God’s face without the threat of destruction; Exodus 33:20), sanctification is the down payment which assures us the ability to be joined to God in nearness – to our good, and not to our destruction (Jude 24). Election is the assurance that the final and absolute good coincides with our personal good, the gracious gift of God in overcoming our own rigidity for His own glory.