The Trauma of Holiness (John 3:18-21)

“And this is the condemnation, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil” (John 3:19).

All of the prophets, including Moses in Midian and at Mount Sinai, experienced some kind of “trauma” when they came close to the manifestation of God. It was a frightening and overwhelming time for each of them. In his Institutes of the Christian Religion, John Calvin wrote, “Men are never duly touched and impressed with a conviction of their insignificance until they have contrasted themselves with the majesty of God.” This was what happened to Moses, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and others. They came face to face with the holiness of God, and in doing so they came face to face with themselves.

Most of us go through life living on a horizontal plane. We make the fatal mistake of judging ourselves in comparison to others. We indulge in self-flattery, considering ourselves only less than demigods until our gaze is turned toward heaven. And just as it is impossible for us to look unveiled into the brightness of the sun without our eyes being injured, it is a damaging experience to look at God’s holiness. It is devastating to consider God’s holiness and our own sinfulness. This is one reason that people don’t like to read the Scriptures. It’s one reason that they don’t like being around Christians. It’s why they don’t want to think about Christ and His pure and sinless life.

The cry for tolerance in our society is a cry against holiness. It is a plea for everyone to accept sinful behavior, and even to encourage it. People who love their sin, who live in the “darkness,” do not want to be judged. They don’t want a preacher, a friend, or a book to expose their sin for what it is. They want to continue their love affair with darkness, imagining themselves in marital bliss and surrounding themselves with false securities and comforts.

When we talk about the Gospel, it is imperative for us to talk about sin and holiness. If we only talk about acceptance, peace, and unconditional love, we fail to bring the whole truth to bear on a person’s conscience. It is difficult to tell someone the truth, to risk coming across as judgmental and intolerant, to watch someone go through the trauma of facing God’s holiness, but it is necessary if that person is ever going to be convicted of his sin. Until a person comes to this point, he is denying the real God. He is suppressing the truth about God’s holiness and about his own sinfulness.

Do you want to make unbelievers feel comfortable around you? Do you find that to do so you need to make compromises in what you say about God or even in how you live? It helps in such situations to remember that the world hates God. Only He can change that fact with His truth and the power of His Spirit.

Holiness and Justice (Isaiah 13:11-16)

“I will punish the world for its evil, and the wicked for their iniquity” (Isa. 13:11a).

A common question posed by unbelievers in their critique of Christianity is, “How can a good and loving God allow bad things to happen to good people?” Or they might state, “I can’t believe in a God that would send anyone to hell.” Such irrational musings stem from presuppositions that create a skewed concept of God. In the minds of unbelievers, God is all-loving and never condemning. He is motivated solely by our comfort, without any consideration of His own values and principles. Such a warped understanding of God misses a very important dimension: God’s holiness.

It is impossible to understand justice without having a right conception of God’s holiness. Herman Bavinck wrote, “God’s holiness is the principle of punishment and chastisement: when Israel breaks the covenant, desecrates God’s name, and transgresses His laws, it is God’s holiness which causes Him to mete out punishment. His holiness demands that Israel be holy.… The same holiness which is a principle of redemption and object of praise is for the transgressors a principle of destruction and object of fear.” If God were not a holy God, sinners would have nothing to fear because there would be no standard of perfection of which man would fall short. There would be no righteous requirements and no laws to break. If there is no standard, no law, then there can be no sin, and hence there can be no punishment.

Such a God, however, is a figment of man’s fallen imagination. God is holy. If He weren’t, He could not be God. Remember, holiness signifies everything about God that sets Him apart from creation. It encompasses every dimension of His transcendence, majesty, and moral perfection. Because this is who God is, He cannot tolerate sin, which is darkness where there should be light, and corruption in place of perfection. God is “light,” and in Him there is no darkness.

Justice is an expression of God’s holiness. To be just is to do the right thing in accordance with God’s holiness. If God did nothing about sin, then there would be no justice and His holiness would be meaningless. But because God is holy, because He is just, He deals with sin by condemning sinners. So when a person asks “How can a good God send people to hell?” our response is “because God is holy.”

Have you ever wondered how a good and loving God could send someone to hell? Do you struggle with accounts of destruction and punishment in the Bible? If so, spend some time reading through the passages below. Why is it right and necessary for a just and holy God to punish evildoers? 

Holy, Holy, Holy (Leviticus 11:44,45)

“For I am the LORD your God. You shall therefore consecrate yourselves, and you shall be holy; for I am holy” (Lev. 11:44a).

When holiness is ascribed to the Lord, it does not signify one single, definite attribute. The term actually bears a more general character, having to do with God’s divinity, with who He is and how He relates to His creation. A. W. Tozer wrote, “We cannot grasp the true meaning of the divine holiness by thinking of someone or something very pure and then raising the concept to the highest degree we are capable of. God’s holiness is not simply the best we know, infinitely better. We know nothing like the divine holiness. It stands apart, unique, unapproachable, incomprehensible and unattainable. Only the Spirit of the Holy One can impart to the human spirit the knowledge of the holy.”

When Isaiah received his call to be a prophet of God, he beheld a vision of seraphim before the throne of God, singing, “Holy, holy, holy.” This is the only three-fold repetition of an attribute of God in the entire Scripture. The repetition was given for emphasis, as if the word “holy” were underlined or followed by several exclamation points. God’s holiness is stressed because He alone is truly holy, for there is no one like Him in heaven or on earth. He stands alone, as Tozer said, unique and incomprehensible. Even in our glorified state, we will still stand in awe of God because He is so holy, set apart from His creation because of who He is.

God calls His people to be holy. He does so because He wants His people to be like Him. He wants there to be a difference between us and the world, just as there is a difference between Him and the world. It is because of this holiness, this separateness, that Christians must strive to be different from the world. If we look at ourselves in the mirror and see that there isn’t a great deal of difference between us and our pagan neighbors, we’ve got a problem. If we are called His people, then we must reflect His holiness in our lives. That means that we can’t do the same things the world does. We can’t set our minds on earthly desires, on the things that are corrupt and which pass away. Our thoughts should be more transcendent because our God is high and lofty, because our God is holy. Even though we live in the world, our life should be rooted in God, not the world itself. We must be holy even as He is holy.

If you compared your activities, your thoughts, your priorities, and your values to those of an unbeliever, what would be the main differences? Are there more similarities than you might care to admit? Examine your life today and ask yourself, “How can I be holy even as God is holy?”

The Holy Place (Jeremiah 5:20-25)

“Do you not fear Me?” says the LORD. “Will you not tremble at My presence, who have placed the sand as the bound of the sea, by a perpetual decree, that it cannot pass beyond it?” (Jer. 5:22a).

Augustine wrote an interesting and insightful passage about coming into the presence of God. He said, “What is that which gleams through me and smites my heart without wounding it? I am both a-shudder and a-glow, a-shudder insofar as I am unlike it, a-glow insofar as I am like it.” As Augustine reflected on this question concerning the holiness of God, he seemed to have an ambivalence about it. He was both captivated by it, yet frightened by it. To come into the presence of the Most Holy God created a deep sense of fear and trembling in Augustine. This fear sprang from the realization that God is different from us, that He is above and beyond us, separate and holy, that He is pure while we are sinful. Yet, despite this difference, we find comfort in Him because He is our Creator and we are like Him.

The normal human response to the holiness of God is this kind of ambivalence. That which is sacred both attracts and repels us. This tension can send confusing signals to the person who wants to know God, but who is afraid to approach Him. We can only understand this ambivalence when we consider the vast difference between God and man. He is holy, we aren’t. He is transcendent, we are earthly.

When we think of the holiness of God, it is so beyond our comprehension that we find it difficult to handle emotionally and to grasp intellectually. God is so different from us that, while we are drawn to Him, we hesitate to come into His presence. When we read the Scriptures, we see this time and again with those who approached the Lord in worship. Awed and captivated by the purity and glory of God, they approached with a deep sense of need and devotion. Yet, at the same time, they approached with reverence, with fear, and with trembling. Moses understood what it meant to be standing on holy ground, to come into the presence of something so totally other that it was beyond his imagining. Isaiah understood what it meant to behold the holiness of God, and his response was one of self-deprecating humility.

We live in a culture that is longing to come into the presence of something that is alien, that is different from ourselves, that is above us. Sadly, our society is looking in all the wrong places when it should be looking in the most holy place of all, to God Himself.

Do you know what it means to experience the kind of tension that Augustine experienced in his relationship with God? Does the holiness of the Lord both attract and repel you? If so, this is not unusual. You should tremble before the Lord, yet this should not keep you from Him. Go to Him today, reverently but confidently.

The Lord Sanctifies (1 Corinthians 1:26-31)

“But of Him you are in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God—and righteousness and sanctification and redemption” (1 Cor. 1:30).

The word holy, as we have learned from our study of Exodus, refers to persons and objects that have been set apart from their common sphere and placed in a particular relation to God. The root of the Hebrew word for holiness means “to separate,” and therefore indicates apartness or separateness. In Exodus 3:5, the ground is called “holy” because it has been set apart for God’s service. Throughout Exodus, we read of holy assemblies, sabbaths, coats, fields, censers, bread, and various other items set apart from common use.

In each of these cases, the word “holy” does not signify an ethical attribute, but indicates that the objects and persons are consecrated unto the Lord and to His service. This relationship, of course, is not sustained by the objects and persons themselves, but is maintained by God. Because of sin, all of creation is separated from God, and so by nature we are opposed to Him. Therefore, all of creation is profane and unfit for His service and for communion with Him. Only by His sanctifying power can anything be made fit to serve Him. This is accomplished by the Holy Spirit, who is represented by the anointing oil in the tabernacle. Only when this oil was spread over all the objects were they considered “holy.”

Fallen human beings are unable to sanctify themselves. No matter how much they wash themselves, they cannot make themselves pure and undefiled. God made this point to Israel when He said that, though they wash themselves with soap, they will not be clean. Only the Lord Himself can wash us and make us fit to come into His presence. David recognized this when he prayed in Psalm 51 for the Lord to wash him and make him clean, then and only then would he know the joy of God’s salvation.

God sanctifies. It was He who sanctified the nation of Israel, the priests, the temple, and the altar. He was the one who chose the men who would serve Him, and He was the one who declared, “I am the LORD who sanctifies you” (Ex. 31:13). Those whom God sanctifies are chosen from among others, separated unto Him, and dedicated to His service by certain regulations. He separated the people of Israel by choosing them from all the nations of the earth, by making a covenant with them, and by giving them His laws to obey.

If you cannot sanctify yourself, how can you hope to be pure enough to please God? Do you rely on your good works, or on the righteousness of Christ to be approved by God? Though God sanctifies you, as one set apart for His service, you are to obey His laws. What then is the relation between personal obedience and holiness?