Where does holiness fit in?

This was originally posted in my Yahoo! 360 blog, Nov 8th, 2006:

I've been slowly but surely directing my blog to the attributes of God, something that I personally feel that most Christians simply don't know enough about. In so doing, I've been using Islam as a contrast to Christian teachings. I'm sure that some would accuse me of being unfair to Islamic beliefs, but the fact of the matter is, Islam is constantly in the news, and the overwhelming majority of that news is not very complimentary to that faith. So, why not use their 'faith' to contrast what the Bible says about who God is, right?

In my last blog entry I wrote about God's mercy, which can be summarized as 'not getting what we deserve'. God withholds the punishment we deserve for the sins we continually commit. Unlike Islam, the Christian faith teaches us that we are to be merciful because God is merciful to us. So this time I'd like talk about justice, but before I can get there, I must talk about God's holiness first. Why, you ask? Good question. To understand God's justice, we must first understand that God is a holy God.

When I say that God is holy, I mean that God is completely free from all impurity and imperfection. The word holy means set apart or separated, so when applied to God, it means that He is entirely set apart and separated from sin and sinners.

The consequences of God being holy is that He hates sin. Ps 45:7 says,

You love righteousness and hate wickedness; therefore God, your God, has set you above your companions by anointing you with the oil of joy.

He cannot permit sin in His presence, and that creates a very BIG problem for mankind, because if there is anything we do really good, its sin. We constantly go out of our way to invent new ways to sin! But God demands holiness because He is holy. Lev 11:44 says,

I am the LORD your God; consecrate yourselves and be holy, because I am holy.

So, if God is holy, and He demands holiness, it means that He is setting the standard of conduct for all of mankind. This becomes our second gigantic problem because its a standard that we cannot live up to. Rom 3:23 says,

for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,

That doesn't mean that some of us do that; it means that each and every single one of does that. We all sin, all the time. Adam and Eve were only told to not eat the fruit of one tree, and instead of obeying God, they disobeyed, and in doing so passed that nature of sin down to all of the rest of us. Gen 6:5 says,

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 all the time.

That's us, in a nutshell. We cannot do good no matter how hard we try because its not in our nature. Modern psychology says that mankind is basically good, and we bite into that apple every chance we get because no one wants to believe that their nature is evil, right? We're all basically nice people, its just some of us are bad. If the bad people had had our opportunities they would be good like us. And the hook is set in our mouths. But the word of God says something completely opposite. It states that we're sinners, all of us, and that we cannot do good no matter how hard we try. And you know what, down deep inside, we all know its true, which is what leads us to our third problem.

And that is: its God's holiness that produces a sense of our sin in us. My Dad always said “to thine own self be true”, and what he meant by that was be honest with yourself because you cannot lie to yourself. You always know the truth that you hide from every one else. When you lie to others, you know the truth.

Isa 6:1-7 is a very interesting passage.

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." With it He touched my mouth and said, "See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for."

In verses 1 through 5 Isaiah sees the holiness of God, and then in verse 6 we see what it produced in Isaiah, a recognition of his sin. We know when we sin; we always know. That is what makes His mercy so great. Even though we are sinners who spit on the holiness of God, He still loves us, and reached out to us before we even knew Him. He is there to give to us that which we do not deserve.

As obedient children, do not conform to the evil desires you had when you lived in ignorance. 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." Since you call on a Father who judges each man’s work impartially, live your lives as strangers here in reverent fear. (1 Pet 14-17)