Growing in Jesus Christ

The Holiness of God

"Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty; the whole earth is full of His glory." (Isaiah 6:3)

"Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was, and is, and is to come." (Revelation 4:8)

The perfection of God is such that He has all His attributes in perfect fullness, balance & proportion. Unlike you and me, who are fickle-minded and utterly sinful, God is not loving one day and more righteous the next. He is not more just one day and more merciful the next. No, no, no. God is all of His attributes all the time. He is endlessly patient with us every day, and He is also infinitely just & righteous every day. However in Scripture, you will find that of ALL of his attributes, God's holiness is the only one that is elevated to the third degree i.e. spoken three times in succession for emphasis.

The holiness of God is the 'first among equals', the attribute that God prizes first. Holiness is the state of absolute moral purity & perfection, the state of being totally & completely without a single ounce of sin. You will notice in the Bible that God often makes His promises by the holiness of His name.

Why I am telling you all this is that because I want you all to understand how inescapably & how immeasurably holy God is, and what that means for us. God's holiness is, as J.I.Packer describes, all that is distinctive and transcendent in the revealed nature and character of the Creator, all that brings home to us the infinite distance and difference that there is between Him and ourselves. God's infinitely holy character is intrinsic; no one gave it to Him; He has always been like that and will always be like that! 

This is unlike that of His angels; they are also holy, in that they are sinless and spiritually pure before God, but their holiness is a created holiness, and they have the potential to lose it. Don't believe me; just look at Satan. From God's favoured, anointed cherubim, he fell into sin, with pride & iniquity in his heart, and became the hateful, despicable, horrendous devil we all know today.

But that is not God's holiness. His holiness is of such incomprehensibly immeasurable transcendence that not only is He always free from sin, but that it sets Him apart from all other reality by infinitely many leaps and bounds. Case in point: the cherubim & seraphim, arguably the most powerful & majestic of all His angels, all actually covered their faces with their wings before God Himself, declaring loudly how holy, holy, holy He was. They themselves were holy, but even they did not dare to look at God in all of His resplendent holiness!

This is so important; the reason why many of us, myself included, continue to struggle with pride, and are unable to be meek & humble before God, is that we have a very poor understanding of God's holiness. We admire moral excellence when it is far removed from us; when it doesn't really affect us and speak to our hearts. But when we are confronted by God's transcendent holiness – the sheer incomprehensibly immeasurable moral excellence of His character – we then realize just how great God is, how great Jesus Christ is. He is too awesome. He is too majestic & beautiful. He makes such difficult demands of us to follow. And that shatters completely whatever security, whatever self-righteousness we have, whatever myths that we believe about ourselves that we are our own gods. We are totally terrified, broken and overwhelmed by the reality that we are mere lowly creatures who deserve nothing but the righteous judgement of our Creator whom we have failed miserably.

That's the biggest issue with us. We have been called to be holy, yet we have not only failed to be holy, we are ourselves unable to be holy. Not only have we sinned – despising, insulting and short-changing God, we are by nature sinful, endlessly depraved without God and as a result totally miserable and sorrowful.

Jeremiah 17:9 says '(our) heart is deceitful above all things and desperately sick; who (but God) can understand it?' Genesis 6:5-6 states that without Jesus Christ, everything we do is evil in the eyes of God, because they are all driven by our own corrupted, sinful, selfish desires; 'The Lord saw how great man's wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil at the time'. Romans 1: 18-31 describes how severe our depravity is when God no longer places moral restraints of our indwelling sin and leaves us to it; 'filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed, depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless.'

Therefore, mankind is only deserving of God's just and proper divine judgement. As creatures of God, we were meant to obey the commands of God, just like how a servant's duty is meant to clean the house and cook meals. Not only has mankind failed miserably to do so, but we are by nature unable to do our duty. Not only are we deserving of punishment, but we are always going to deserve punishment because We.Simply.Can't.Obey.God perfectly.

But that's why we need the gospel. God sent Jesus Christ to absorb the full infinite wrath of God meant to appease the justice of God executed on sinners, in order to show that He is love – to show how immeasurably loving, kind, gracious and merciful He is in Jesus Christ. The reason we are able to be right before God is not because of our own holiness and righteousness – which is not real holiness & righteousness at all – but because of the perfect righteousness & moral excellence of Christ Jesus imputed to us. It is Jesus who was perfectly holy & righteous, not us.

"This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by His grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus." (Romans 3: 22-24)

Through the gospel of Jesus Christ, God has not only made us holy & blameless before Him, but has made known to us how much He loves us & cares for us through a personal, intimate relationship with Him by means of baptizing us with His Holy Spirit. It is only be the illuminating & sanctifying power of the Holy Spirit of God that we are able to know more about God in His word, the Bible and through communion with Him in prayer. Not only that, He has promised us that our Lord Jesus Christ, our Almighty Omnipotent God, our King of Glory, will come back with his powerful angels in the infinitely powerful blazing fire of His omnipotent power & glory; that He will come and right every wrongdoing done in the world, that He will receive us into His kingdom where we can enjoy the immeasurable, eternal glory & majesty of His fellowship, where we have power & authority over the new heaven & earth, where we have full, never-ending joy & happiness & peace.

But we must always remember that we never, ever deserve this. God only does this because He is love, and He abounds immeasurably in steadfast love, grace & compassion. But as loving and as kind as He is, He is also inescapably & passionately holy beyond all His other attributes, and He is always righteous & just in meting out His terrifying, ineffably destructive & damning omnipotent wrath & fury on undeserving sinners. Therefore, therefore, always be meek & humble in heart before Him. 

Father, my Lord Jesus, I pray for myself & for all your children, all your holy ones reading this, O Lord. I pray, O God, that you would continually cultivate & expand & proliferate holy fruits of Christlike meekness & humility in our hearts O Lord. Please, Lord, as painful & as terrifying as it may be, stir up our sin within us and reveal it to us, O Lord. Show us, O God, how endlessly, unimaginably depraved, corrupt & heinously evil we are without you, God, and how truly miserable we are without your holiness, O God. Let the revelation of our sinfulness, or how much we've shown contempt & disdain for you, O Lord, let it transform our hearts & souls to earnestly, passionately hate & abhor sin as much as you do, and I pray that you would give us all the strength & immeasurable power we need to mortify & extirpate our indwelling sin completely. Show us, O God, how incomprehensibly majestic, holy, beautiful, wise & powerful you are O God, and make us aware O Lord, of how infinitely greater than us you are, and let that transform the inclinations of our hearts to be totally meek & humble before you, O Lord. In Jesus's name, I pray. Amen.