Bible Words: Holiness

Over the next few weeks, we’ll be looking at Bible Words in our weekly newsletter. Since we are beginning a new sermon series on Leviticus, it seems appropriate to begin with the word ‘Holy’!

Throughout the Bible, God is described as ‘holy’. He is infinitely, eternally and unchangeably holy. Both the Hebrew and Greek words describe the concept of ‘separateness’. Not primarly moral separateness (ie God is separate from sin and morally pure – although that is true!) but rather God’s instrinsic unapproachableness, his majestic transcendence as God over all creation! So although God is a person, we are not to meet him as an ordinary friend or enemy, but as one who is radically different from us, before whom we bow in reverent awe and adoration.

In his book, ‘The Doctrine of God’, John Frame makes these very helpful observations about God’s holiness:

- In Exodus 3:5-6, God speaks to Moses from the burning bush and tells him ‘take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground’. There is nothing special or dangerous about that particular ground, except that Yahweh is there! So God’s messenger is to respect the holy God.
- In Exodus 19, the whole of Mt Sinai is called ‘holy ground’ and the people must draw back.
- The prophet Isaiah speaks regularly of God as ‘the holy one of Israel’ (1:4, 5:19, 10:20, 12:6, 17:7), and when he meets the Lord in his temple, the seraphs call out ‘Holy, holy, holy is the LORD Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory’ (Is 6:3) (NB Even seraphs, who are sinless creatures, feel the need to cover their faces in the presence of the holy God!).
- In the NT, Jesus is regularly called holy (e.g. Luke 1:35, 4:34; Acts 2:27, 3:14), as is the Holy Spirit!!

Frame says ‘Holiness is God’s capacity and right to arouse our reverent awe and wonder. It is his uniqueness (Ex 15:11, 1 Sam 2:2), his transcendence. It is his majesty for the holy God is like a great king, whom we dare not treat like other persons. Indeed God’s holiness impels us to worship in his presence’

A common theme throughout the Scriptures is our inability and fear to enter God’s holy presence. So a right understanding of our Creator’s holiness reminds us (his creatures) of our sinfulness and our need for forgiveness. So like Isaiah, we cry our ‘Woe is me!’ ‘I am a man of unclean lips’ (Is 6:5)! We recognize we can’t stand before him. We long for the ‘coal of the seraph’ (Is 6:6) to communicate God’s forgiveness! Yet, amazingly, the holy God draws his people to himself and makes them holy! So Israel become his ‘holy nation’ (Ex 19:6), called to ‘be holy because I, the LORD our God, am holy’ (Lev 19:1). The participate in a holy assembly, sacrifice at a holy place, through a holy priest wearing holy garments, anointed with holy oil. And we, as Christian believers (people who have trusted in the atoning death of THE holy one, Jesus Christ) are called ‘saints’, literally ‘holy ones’ (Rom 1:7, 1 Cor 1:2). We are commanded to be holy (1 Peter 1:16). That must involve both separation AND moral purity. We are to live in the world as though ‘aliens and strangers’ and we are to image God’s ethical perfection!

Again Frame describes it well. ‘God’s holiness, then, which initially seems so forbidding and judgemental, is the means of our salvation. God draws us to his presence, making us his friends [through Christ]’…‘Holiness, then is a very rich concept. It speaks of God’s transcendence and separation from finite and sinful creatures. But it also speaks of how God draws them to himself, making them holy. Holiness marks God’s transcendence, but also his immanence, his presence to redeem us. He is not only ‘the Holy One’, but ‘the Holy One among us’, ‘the Holy One of Israel’. And both as transcendence and immanence, judgement and salvation, law and gospel, God’s holiness drives us to worship him. Yahweh is the Lord who moves us to worship him in with reverence and awe (Heb 12:28).’

In His grace
Paul Dale (Senior Pastor)