13 Therefore, preparing your minds for action, and being sober-minded, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. 14 As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance, 15 but as He who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, 16 since it is written, “You shall be holy, for I am holy.” 17 And if you call on Him as Father who judges impartially according to each one’s deeds, conduct yourselves with fear throughout the time of your exile, 18 knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, 19 but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot. 20 He was foreknown before the foundation of the world but was made manifest in the last times for the sake of you 21 who through Him are believers in God, who raised Him from the dead and gave Him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God.
22 Having purified your souls by your obedience to the truth for a sincere brotherly love, love one another earnestly from a pure heart, 23 since you have been born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God; 24 for “All flesh is like grass and all its glory like the flower of grass. The grass withers, and the flower falls, 25 but the word of the Lord remains forever.”
And this word is the good news that was preached to you.
As we saw last Sunday at the end of our series on the five Solas of the Reformation, central to the teachings in the early Reformed Church was a call to worship God as He ought to be worshipped, and in order to do so, it was so important to have a high view of the holiness of God.
We are familiar with the term the holiness of God. In fact, as one commentator has pointed out, holy is used more often as a prefix to God’s name than any other adjective. The problem though, is that generally speaking, the Church has lost the lofty view we should have of the holiness of God. We know He is holy, and the phrase rolls off the tongue very easily, but do we really know what we are saying when proclaim that God is holy? Sadly, the answer is no. The secular world has reduced the relevance of God to virtually zero, and unfortunately, this trend has crept into the Church as well.
RC Sproul, in his classic book The Holiness of God wrote, “I am convinced that the holiness of God is one of the most important ideas that a Christian can ever grapple with. It is basic to our whole understanding of God and of Christianity. The idea of holiness is so central to Biblical teaching that it is said of God, ‘Holy is His name’ (Luke 1:49). His name is holy because He is holy. He is not always treated with holy reverence. His name is trampled through the dirt of this world. It functions as a curse word, a platform for the obscene. That the world has little respect for God is vividly seen by the way the world regards His name. No honour. No reverence. No awe before Him.”
God forbid that the Church would follow the world in reducing the holiness of God to nothing more than a mere phrase or an empty platitude. This is why during the next few weeks we will be spending some time on the awesome holiness of God. In order to fully appreciate just what God has done for us by redeeming and saving us, we need to have at least some idea of the vast gulf between mortal sinners and a Holy God. When we begin to understand just something of the extraordinary lengths He has gone to in order to save us, then, and only then will we have some idea of just how holy He really is.
The Christian author David Wells wrote in his book No Place For Truth, “The loss of the traditional vision of God as holy is now manifested everywhere in the evangelical world (in other words, in the Church). It is the key to understanding why sin and grace have become such empty terms. What depth or meaning can these terms have except in relation to the holiness of God? Divorced from the holiness of God, sin is merely self-defeating behaviour or a breach in etiquette. Divorced from the holiness of God, grace is merely empty rhetoric, pious window dressing for the modern technique by which sinners work out their own salvation. Divorced from the holiness of God, our Gospel becomes indistinguishable from any of a host of alternative self-help doctrines. Divorced from the holiness of God, our worship becomes mere entertainment. The holiness of God is the foundation of reality. Sin is defiance of God’s holiness, the Cross is the outworking and victory of God’s holiness, and faith is the recognition of God’s holiness. Knowing that God is holy is therefore the key to knowing life as it truly is, knowing Christ as He truly is, knowing why He came, and knowing how life will end.”
In Exodus 15 we find the first psalm or song of praise to God in the Bible. The context was the Exodus. God had just miraculously rescued His people from the Egyptian army, and in response (as Exodus 15:1 says,) “Moses and the people of Israel sang this song to the Lord, saying, ‘I will sing to the Lord, for He has triumphed gloriously; the horse and his rider He has thrown into the sea.’”
Verse 11 perfectly sums up the gist of this hymn of praise. “Who is like you, O Lord, among the gods? Who is like you, majestic in holiness, awesome in glorious deeds, doing wonders?”
If we fast forward all the way to the book of Revelation, we find the apostle John, who was given by God a look into the future. John saw a moment in time when the final outpouring of the wrath of God was about to take place. John wrote, “Then I saw another sign in heaven, great and amazing, seven angels with seven plagues, which are the last, for with them the wrath of God is finished. And I saw what appeared to be a sea of glass mingled with fire - and also those who had conquered the beast and its image and the number of its name, standing beside the sea of glass with harps of God in their hands. And they sing the song of Moses, the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb, saying, ‘Great and amazing are your deeds, O Lord God the Almighty! Just and true are your ways, O King of the nations! Who will not fear, O Lord, and glorify your name? For you alone are holy. All nations will come and worship you, for your righteous acts have been revealed.’” (Revelation 15:1-4)
The holiness of God is central to the story of redemption. His holiness is highlighted and repeated throughout the pages of the Bible. John was one of two men in the Bible who were allowed a glimpse into the throne room of heaven. The other was the prophet Isaiah (we will look at him a little closer next Sunday). As these men were given a vision of heaven, they both reported hearing one continuous song of praise from the angels: “Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God Almighty.” (Isaiah 6:3 and Revelation 4:8) The holiness of God is the only attribute of God which is repeated three times. Again, this is something we’ll look at in more detail next week.
Just what is it about the holiness of God that we don’t quite understand? As I mentioned last week, we have lost a proper perspective of what it means whenever we consider His holiness. No longer do we tremble at the thought of being in His holy presence, because we do not have the high view of God that we should have.
Job, a man who, according to the first verse of the book which bears his name, was “blameless and upright, one who feared God and turned away from evil.” Yet, in accordance with the sovereign will of God, Job faced tremendous suffering, and his faith was tested almost to its breaking point. Towards the end of the story of Job, God asks him, “Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?” (Job 38:2) Throughout the following 4 chapters, God asks Job a series of questions as He challenges the worldly wisdom of Job and his three friends. Essentially God was asking Job, “Just who do you think you are?” Maybe we should be asking that same question of ourselves the next time we think that God has somehow let us down, or not done for us what we want Him to do.
Job though, at the end of all of his struggles, could not help but confess. “Then Job answered the Lord and said: ‘I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted. “Who is this that hides counsel without knowledge?” Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know. “Hear, and I will speak; I will question you, and you make it known to me.” I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you; therefore I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes.’” (Job 42:1-6)
God is God, and we are not Him, and we would do well to remember that.
When Moses was faced with the holiness of God in Exodus 3, God warned him in verse 5, “Do not come near; take your sandals off your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.”
So just what does it mean for us to say that God is holy?
RC Sproul writes, “The primary meaning of holy is ‘separate.’ It comes from an ancient word that means ‘to cut,’ or ‘to separate.’ To translate this basic meaning into contemporary language would be to use the phrase ‘a cut apart.’ Perhaps even more accurate would be the phrase ‘a cut above something.’
When we find a garment or another piece of merchandise that is outstanding, that has a superior excellence, we use the expression that it is ‘a cut above the rest.’”
What’s important to see here is that when we say God is holy, we’re not just talking about one characteristic out of many about God. Instead, we are talking about the character of God Himself. Holiness, when applied to God, means that He is utterly unique, incomparable, matchless, without parallel and without peer. He is a cut above everything and everyone else. He says through the prophet Isaiah, “To whom then will you compare me, that I should be like him? says the Holy One.” (40:25)
The answer to that question is a resounding no-one.
God is not just a bigger or better version of ourselves. He is uniquely and infinitely separate from us, in a class by Himself. He is subject to nothing, and He answers to no-one. This is who our Holy God is.
The prophet Samuel’s mother Hannah was barren, and when God miraculously answered her desperate prayers for a child, she prayed, “There is none holy like the Lord: for there is none besides you; there is no rock like our God.”
King David prayed in Psalm 86, “There is none like you among the gods, O Lord, nor are there any works like yours. All the nations you have made shall come and worship before you, O Lord, and shall glorify your name. For you are great and do wondrous things; you alone are God.” (8-10)
The prophet Habakkuk, in the midst of a prayer of praise, when he considered the holiness of God wrote, “I hear, and my body trembles; my lips quiver at the sound; rottenness enters into my bones; my legs tremble beneath me.”
We have looked at numerous passages from the Bible on the holiness of God, and there are many more, but the point of all of them is this: When we consider just who God is, and what He is like, and we then compare Him to ourselves, we should be terrified at even the thought of seeing Him in all of His holiness and splendour.
Instead, what do we hear most of the time? God has been reduced to some kind of benevolent grandfather figure. He has become Father Christmas, but just in a white costume instead of a red one. He has a little twinkle in His eye as He smiles and wags His finger at our naughty little deeds. He is the man upstairs, and the big guy in the sky.
This is why we don’t tremble at the thought of being in His holy presence as Habakkuk did. We have systematically stripped God of His holiness, and we no longer revere and hold Him in awe as we should. But we dismiss God’s true nature at our peril. He is a God of truth, justice and wrath, and He is a jealous God, who will not share His glory with anyone, and He will not be mocked. He is infinite in His holiness.
But all we hear most of the time is preaching that no longer challenges us to see God for who He is and to see ourselves for who we are. There is a concerted effort in some circles to make us feel comfortable with God at almost any level. God has become a god of our own making - someone we can kind of hang out with, confide in, and call on when the going gets tough, regardless of what our relationship with Him is like, or what kind of lifestyle we are living. This is not the God of the Bible, but rather a false god who has been redefined in order to fit in with what we would prefer Him to be like. I heard one theologian say recently, “No longer is He God Almighty. He has become god all-matey.”
Contrast that with what He says of Himself in Psalm 50:21-22, “You thought that I was one like yourself. But now I rebuke you and lay the charge before you. Mark this, then, you who forget God, lest I tear you apart, and there be none to deliver!”
This Holy God is not one of our mates. As Hebrews 12:29 reminds us, He is a consuming fire, and we trivialise the holiness of God at our peril.
In His infinite holiness, God is separate and set apart from anything impure, and this is something we need to remember. The reason is that it is only God who can save us, which leads us to the greatest question of all: If God is holy and perfect, and we are sinful and imperfect, how can anyone be saved? Hebrews 12:14, after all, says “Without holiness, no one will see the Lord.”
It is only holy people who can see the holy God. Unholy people will never lay eyes on Him. As Isaiah 59:2 says, “Your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, and your sins have hidden His face from you so that He does not hear.”
Do you see our great dilemma? What possible hope do we have of salvation, because by nature and by choice, we are sinners and enemies of God. He is holy, while we most certainly, are not. “Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord? And who shall stand in His holy place? He who has clean hands and a pure heart, who does not lift up his soul to what is false and does not swear deceitfully. He will receive blessing from the Lord and righteousness from the God of his salvation.” (Psalm 24:3-5)
Our hands are not clean, and our hearts are not pure, so in and of ourselves we cannot ascend the hill of the Lord and stand in His holy place. Throughout the Bible we are told to be holy because God is holy, but our sin has created a chasm between us and God, and we are lost in our sins and trespasses.
We were created in the image of God. Imago Deo. This means we are to reflect the glory and holiness of God, but instead we are in complete rebellion against Him. Each one of us is a living contradiction to His holy nature, and we know it. And it gets worse, because God knows it too. “You have set our iniquities before you, our secret sins in the light of your presence. For all our days pass away under your wrath; we bring our years to an end like a sigh.” (Psalm 90:8-9) And Hebrews 4:13, “No creature is hidden from His sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of Him to whom we must give account.”
Our sin not only makes us totally incompatible with a holy God, but it makes us guilty of cosmic treason. We have broken His law, we have defied His commands, we have fallen short of His glory, and in so doing we have not reached the perfection required by a holy God in order to live with Him in eternity. Instead, we are destined to spend eternity suffering the righteous wrath we deserve. It is that serious. It is deadly serious.
So how can we be saved? 1 Peter 3:18 has the answer: “For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that He might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit.”
What God’s perfect holiness demanded of us, His grace provided for us in Jesus Christ.
John MacArthur has called 2 Corinthians 5:21 the greatest Gospel verse in the Bible. “For our sake He made Him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.”
What this means is that God made Jesus sin only in the sense that He treated Jesus as if He had committed every sin ever committed by every person who believes in Him, though in fact He committed none of them. Even while hanging on the cross, Jesus remained perfectly sinless and holy. He was the spotless lamb, and not for even one second did He become a sinner. God the Son is eternally and perfectly holy and sinless, but while He was on the cross, God the Father treated Him as if He lived my sinful life and your sinful life.
God punished Jesus for our sin. In what is known as the great exchange, Jesus’ righteousness is imputed to us, while at the same time our sin and unrighteousness is imputed to Him, and as a result of this, God now treats us as if we had lived Jesus’ perfect life, and while on the cross, He treats Jesus as if He’d lived our sinful lives.
That’s what 2 Corinthians 5:21 means when Paul writes, “For our sake He made Him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.”
This is the great doctrine of substitution which sits at the very heart of the Gospel. It is only through the cross of Christ that an infinitely holy God and condemned sinners like you and me can be reconciled.
What we receive by faith is complete and total forgiveness, because we are covered by the righteousness of Jesus Christ. It was on the cross of Christ, and the cross of Christ alone where God’s eternal and holy wrath and revulsion at sin is satisfied. There is no other way for sinners to be reconciled to a holy God. His perfect holiness demands that a price be paid, and Jesus paid it in full.
And this is the warning to each of us: If you do not repent and turn to God through faith in Jesus Christ, you remain under the holy wrath of God, and you will spend all of eternity paying for your decision to reject the gift of salvation that God so lovingly and freely offers you.
The glory of the Gospel message is that in Christ, we stand before God in a righteousness that is not our own, but which we receive by His grace, and because of what God has done for us in Christ, we are eternally forgiven, accepted and granted sonship with all its privileges. There is no other means for us to be reconciled to this perfectly holy God.
Homegroup Study Notes
Read Psalm 86:8-13
When you think of God as holy, what comes to your mind?
Why is it important for Christians to have a high view of God, especially when it comes to understanding His holiness?
How does a right understanding of the difference between the holiness of God and the depravity of lost sinners better help us to not only better appreciate the Gospel, but also make our sharing of the Gospel more effective?
Discuss this quote from R C Sproul in your group:
“I am convinced that the holiness of God is one of the most important ideas that a Christian can ever grapple with. It is basic to our whole understanding of God and of Christianity. The idea of holiness is so central to Biblical teaching that it is said of God, ‘Holy is His name’ (Luke 1:49). His name is holy because He is holy. He is not always treated with holy reverence. His name is trampled through the dirt of this world. It functions as a curse word, a platform for the obscene. That the world has little respect for God is vividly seen by the way the world regards His name. No honour. No reverence. No awe before Him.”
Most Bible-believing Christians would agree with Sproul, so what can we do (both as individuals and as the Church) to truly appreciate the holiness of God?