The Holiness of God

After a woman gives birth to a baby, she sometimes goes into a period of emotional let-down. We call it post-partum depression. The process of giving birth has been such a shock to her system, and so stressful to her body, that she is both physically and emotionally exhausted. And that affects the way she relates to the world around her. She finds is difficult to process reality properly. She’s not thinking straight.

Men will never experience post-partum depression, but there is something of an equivalent in the male world. It is what happens to a soldier after he has been in combat too long. The fear, the shock, the stress that he experiences so drain his emotional resources that he comes back to civilian life impaired and unable to resume normal living.

In World War One, they called it shell-shock. In World War Two, they called it combat fatigue. In the Viet Nam War, they called it post-traumatic stress disorder. But whatever you call it, it all amounts to the same thing—an experience so wrenching, so terrifying, so disrupting that you are no longer able to think straight.

I want you to understand that that is exactly what has happened to every one of us in the spiritual realm. Our sin creates a breach between us and God—it separates us from our Creator. And that breach is so catastrophic, so devastating, so debillitating, that we find ourselves in a state of spiritual shell-shock.

We all suffer from spiritual post-traumatic stress disorder. And that condition affects our ability to understand and appreciate spiritual truth—especially when it comes to the subject I want to talk about today—the holiness of God.

Holiness is the one characteristic of God that is mentioned more frequently in the Bible than any other. From Genesis to Revelation, the Bible tells us that God is holy. Indeed, it’s even mentioned on the front cover. The Bible you are holding in your hand is called the Holy Bible because it is the word of a God who is holy.

And yet we understand so little about God’s holiness. We shy away from the subject like bugs that live under a rock shy away from the sunlight. We have become so accustomed to living in a state of unholiness that there’s a certain dread in our hearts when we think about God’s holiness.

But I want us to think about holiness today. And we are going to have to rely on the Holy Spirit to take away the blinders from the eyes of our hearts so that we will be able to understand and appreciate this truth.

There was a man in the Scriptures who came to understand the holiness of God. His name was Isaiah. Now Isaiah was a pretty good prophet. You’ll appreciate that if you read the first five chapters of his book. He was a good prophet because he gave out the Word of God. You can’t be a good prophet unless you’re faithfully communicating the Word of God.

And he was good prophet because he understood that all was not right with the world. He could see that there were severe problems in the society in which he lived—injustice, poverty, crime, violence. A good prophet will be aware of those things.

And Isaiah was a good prophet because he understood the root cause of those problems. He describes it in…

Isaiah 1:4 Ah, sinful nation, a people loaded with guilt, a brood of evildoers, children given to corruption! They have forsaken the Lord; they have spurned the Holy One of Israel and turned their backs on him.

Isaiah knew that the problem wasn’t because the people of Israel weren’t educated enough. It wasn’t because there weren’t enough social programs in place. Isaiah understood that the basic problem in his nation was a spiritual problem—the people had turned their backs on God.

And Isaiah was a good prophet because he was courageous enough to tackle this issue head on. He didn’t beat around the bush. He came right out and told people what the problem was, and what the consequences would be if they didn’t do something about it.

Isaiah 5:8 Woe to you who add house to house and join field to field till no space is left and you live alone in the land.—woe to those who build up their business and build up their career at the expense of other people.

Isaiah 5:11 Woe to those who rise early in the morning to run after their drinks, who stay up late at night till they are inflamed with wine.—woe to those who just live for pleasure.

Isaiah 5:20 Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.—woe to those who say that abortion isn’t murder, it’s just a woman’s right to choose; or that homosexuality isn’t a sin, it’s just an alternative lifestyle.

Isaiah 5:22 Woe to those who are heroes at drinking wine and champions at mixing drinks—woe to those who are chemically dependent, who are substance abusers.

And the whole of chapter five is a powerful sermon as Isaiah indicts his countrymen: “Woe to you, woe to you, woe to you.” Yes, Isaiah was a pretty good prophet.

But Isaiah didn’t become a great prophet until chapter six. Because that’s when Isaiah began to catch sight of the holiness of God. And when he caught sight of the holiness of God, he caught sight of his own deep sinfulness. And he stopped saying “Woe to you…” about other people’s sin and he started saying “Woe to me…” about his own.

In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seated on a throne, high and exalted, and the train of his robe filled the temple. Above him were seraphs, each with six wings: With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying. And they were calling to one another: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory.”

At the sound of their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke. “Woe to me!” I cried. “I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty.”

There are three things that we need to appreciate about the holiness of God:

1. His perfection

2. His purity

3. His purpose for us

1. Holiness speaks of God’s unique perfection

The word holy in Hebrew is the word “qadosh” and it means “to be separated, or set apart”. When the Bible speaks of God being holy, it mean that he is separated, or set apart. He is not the same as everyone else; He is not common—He is utterly unique. He is one of a kind.

God is like no one we’ve ever encountered before. He doesn’t fit into any of our categories. There’s nobody we can compare him with. He is like nothing else in all creation, like nothing else in the universe, like nothing else that exists. He is utterly different from us, and utterly perfect in himself.

So when we come into contact with him, it completely blows us out of the water. The Bible talks about an encounter with God being so awesome and so majestic that it invokes fear and dread and terror in us. That is why we shy away from his holiness.

About the best analogy I can come up with—and it is pitifully inadequate—is when I first laid eyes on the Grand Canyon. I was struck dumb with amazement. The Grand Canyon was like nothing I had ever encountered before. It didn’t fit into my brain. All I could do was to stand there with my mouth open and my eyes gaping, as I struggled to come to terms with what I was seeing. And that—multiplied infinitely—is our reaction when we encounter God.

Moses and the Israelites sang a song to the Lord after he brought them through the Red Sea. And in that song, they struggle to come to grips with what they’ve just experienced. They’ve just had an encounter with God, and they’re struggling to describe him.

Exodus 15:11 “Who among the gods is like you, O Lord? Who is like you— majestic in holiness, awesome in glory, working wonders?

Holiness speaks of God’s unique perfection. But there’s another aspect of his holiness.

2. Holiness speaks of God’s moral purity

The word “holy” in English comes from an Anglo-Saxon word “halig”, which means healthy, or well, or whole. To be holy is to be healthy. To be evil, on the other hand, is to be sick—sick unto death.

God’s holiness means that he is utterly pure morally. There is no evil or wickedness in him.

Job 34:10 Far be it from God to do evil, from the Almighty to do wrong.

Evil is utterly incompatible with God’s makeup. It is inconsistent with who He is. God cannot and will not tolerate the existence of evil, because it is alien to him. This posture toward sin is what the Bible calls the wrath of God.

But you say, “Wait a minute. If God cannot tolerate the existence of sin, how come our world is such an evil place? What’s he doing about sin here on planet earth?”

Imagine that you are a master carpenter and you build a house with your own hands. You design it yourself, and you put the best quality workmanship and materials into its construction. But somewhere along the line, your house becomes infested with termites. What would you do?

Would you say “Well, I guess I can tolerate a few termites? After all, they’re only little bugs. I’ll just overlook them and pretend they’re not there.” Of course not! You will go into that house and fumigate it. You will exterminate every last one of those little critters, because if you were to allow them to exist they would ruin the house that you built.

That is exactly what God in his holiness is doing about the existence of evil in the universe. He is in the process of wiping it out completely. Because he knows that evil is destructive, and if allowed to exist, it will lead to the death of his creation. So God’s holy wrath against sin is for the ultimate good of the universe.

We need to understand that there is no conflict between the love of God and the wrath of God. Both of them flow from his holiness and there is no tension between those two aspects of his being.

Some people think that God is a schizophrenic. On the one hand, he can be warm and loving and merciful and approachable. But you’d better watch out because sometimes he’ll turn on you. His bad side will take over and he’ll become angry at sin and wrathful and judgmental.

(As a matter of fact, back in the second century AD, a group of Christians began to believe this—that God was a schizophrenic. They believed that the God of the NT was a God of love, but the God of the OT was a God of anger and judgment. So they basically threw out the OT Scriptures. The leader of this group was a man named Marcion, and his followers came to be known as Marcionites. I have a feeling that there are still a lot of Marcionite Christians walking around today.)

But this is not a biblical view. God is not a schizophrenic. God does not have multiple personalities. There is no tension among his attributes. There is no competition between the love of God and the wrath of God. God’s love flows from his holiness. God is loving, not in spite of the fact that he is holy, but precisely because he is holy.

You see, God’s holiness always leads him to do that which is the most loving, most positive, most constructive thing possible. And when it comes to sin, that means that he condemns it and roots it out wherever he finds it. Just like a cancer surgeon wants to root out and destroy the tumor that is killing you—not because he hates you but because he cares about you and wants to help you.

And that leads us to our third point…

3. Holiness is God’s purpose for me

God’s purpose for us is not that we be happy, or healthy, but that we be holy. Because if we are not holy, we will ultimately be neither happy nor healthy.

In Leviticus 11:22, at the very core of the OT, God said “I am the Lord your God; consecrate yourselves and be holy, because I am holy.”

In 1 Peter 1:15, in the very center of NT teaching on how to live the Christian life, Peter said “But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do; for it is written: “Be holy, because I am holy.”

It is God’s intention to make us holy so that we will be like him in our attitude toward sin. And the process starts with me realizing how unholy I really am in the sight of God.

The prophet Isaiah realized this. He said “Woe is me—I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips…” He realized his own sinfulness before a holy God. As he stood there in the presence of God, Isaiah lost every shred of his self-esteem.

We live in a day when many people are trying to find self-esteem. They pay big bucks to counselors, and psychologists who try to make them feel good about themselves. And yet here is Isaiah telling us that the only way to happiness and wholeness is to have your self-esteem smashed to smithereens by coming face to face with the holiness of God.

Jesus said the same thing in the Sermon on the Mount: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.” How popular is that nowadays?

It is only when we catch sight of ourselves as we really are—sinners standing before a holy God—that we can begin to come to our senses, that we can begin to understand our spiritual situation.

There is an awful chasm separating a sinner from God. And it seems all the more hopeless when we realize that our sinfulness not only estranges us from God; it estranges God from us.

But God, in his holiness, devised a solution. He sent his Son Jesus Christ—the Holy and Righteous One as he is called in Acts 3—to take our sin upon himself and die as a sacrifice in our place and on our behalf. Paul tells us that God did that in order that he might be both “just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.”

You see, the work of Christ brings these two things together—the love of God and the wrath of God. We see the love of God in that he provided a way for us to have our sins taken away without us being destroyed in the process. And we see the holiness of God satisfied by the fact that sin’s penalty was paid for—it wasn’t just overlooked—Jesus paid for it fully and finally.

God’s holiness is what made the Atonement necessary. But God’s holiness is also what made the Atonement possible.

Now if we accept what God did by believing in Jesus Christ and receiving his work on the cross, then there are two things that are true when it comes to God’s purpose to make us holy.

1. There is a sense in which we have already been made holy. We are holy because God declares us to be so. We become identified with Christ—we have signed up for the cure, if we can think of it that way—and that means that we are now a part of God’s family. And anything that belongs to God, and is identified with God, is holy, because He is holy.

So I am a saint—a holy one—because I belong to Jesus. I may not always act like a saint. But that’s what I am because that’s what God says I am. I belong to Him now, and I am standing under the shadow of Jesus Christ. I bear the mark of Jesus on my life and that makes me holy—unique, special, set apart for God’s use.

2. But there is also a sense in which God is now going to go to work in my life to make holiness a practical reality. In other words, he’s going to help me become what he has already declared me to be.

God intends to build his own character into us. And that means that he is going to start changing our attitudes towards sin. He is going to make us holy, just as he is holy.

Now I can co-operate in this process or I can fight him tooth and nail. I can push him away. The choice is up to me. I know one thing: once he goes to work on you, he makes a thorough job of it.

C.S. Lewis tells how, as a child, he often had a toothache. But he would hesitate to tell his mother about it until the pain became unbearable. Then he would tell her, and she would give him an aspirin for the pain, and he would feel some relief.

But she would do more than just give him an aspirin, and that is why he hesitated to go to her in the first place. He knew that his mother would call and make an appointment with the dentist. All that Lewis wanted was a little relief from the pain, but what his mother wanted was for him to have a mouthful of healthy teeth.

And when he got to the dentist, the dentist would not only take care of the tooth that ached. He would start poking and probing and drilling at some of the other teeth that hadn’t even begun to ache yet. If you give a dentist an inch, he’ll take a yard.

And that’s the way God is with our sinfulness. If you give him an inch, he’ll take a yard. You may go to God to ask him to cure you of some specific sin—something that is plaguing you, or that you are ashamed of, or that is spoiling your daily life. And he’ll cure it all right. But he won’t stop there.

Once you call him in, he’ll give you the full treatment. He’ll start poking around in areas of your life that you would just as soon leave undisturbed. He’ll uncover secret sins that you were barely aware of. He’ll bring you face to face with just how extensive and deep-rooted your sinfulness is.

But that’s good. Because unless he does that, we’ll never be like him. So let him do his work. Because, as it says in Heb. 12:14 “without holiness, no one will see the Lord.”

I don’t know about you, but I want to see the Lord. And that’s going to mean that the work of holiness is going to have to take place in my life.