Don’t Forget—God Is Holy

I don’t know that we really “get” the holiness of God. And that’s too bad. We throw that term around a lot—holiness—and we have a sense that his holiness is not to be trifled with, but I don’t think we know how to wrap our minds around the concept of a holy God.

We know God as a loving Father—guiding, providing and protecting. That one’s easier to absorb, at least in theory. We know God as revealed through his Son, Jesus—compassionate, servant-hearted, gentle and caring. We know God through the infilling of the Holy Spirit—empowering, energizing and enabling us to do his bidding. But the holiness of God—do we really know him that way?

The saints of old did. When God passed by Moses in the cleft of the rock, Moses tasted the holiness of God. When Elijah called down fire from heaven on the false prophets, the people saw the holiness of God. When Ananias and Saphira were struck dead for lying to the Holy Spirit, the church knew the holiness of God. The pure in heart were somehow able to partake in the holiness of God without being consumed by it; the impure weren’t so fortunate!

I wish that for you—and for me, too—that we could partake in God’s holiness without being consumed by it. Frankly, though, I’m not sure how we can come into that kind of experience—and perhaps I don’t really know what I am asking for. Yet there is something deep within my spirit that cries out to know God in his holiness. I’m guessing that longing is in your heart, too.

May the Lord grant us beyond the positional holiness imputed to us at salvation and the empirical holiness of our obedience to Christ a deeper, transformational revelation of Divine holiness so we can truly worship Almighty God in the splendor of his holiness.

“How little people know who think that holiness is dull. When one meets the real thing, it is irresistible.”
~C. S. Lewis