The venerable C.S. Lewis once said, “How little people know who think that holiness is dull. When one meets the real thing, it is irresistible.” How true! True holiness is irresistible—plus it is available and attainable, by God’s grace. That is why, as intimidating as it may seem, we ought to make the pursuit of holiness the great business of our lives.
Making Life Work
Read: Psalm 96:1-13 // Focus: Psalm 96:9
Worship the LORD in the splendor of his holiness; tremble before him, all the earth.
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. When the Apostle John received his revelation, we are told that he “fell at his feet as though dead.” (Revelation 1:7) 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!
Leland Ryken noted that “for the Puritans, the God-centered life meant making the quest for spiritual and moral holiness the great business of life.” I wish that for you—and for me, too—that holiness would be the great business of our lives; 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.
How do we posture ourselves for an experience of the holiness of Almighty God? Andrew Murray wrote, “Nothing but the knowledge of God, as the Holy One, will make us holy. And how are we to obtain that knowledge of God, except in the inner chamber, our private place of prayer? It is a thing utterly impossible unless we take time and allow the holiness of God to shine on us.”
Beyond the positional holiness imputed to us at salvation and the empirical holiness of our obedience to Christ, may the Lord grant us a deeper, transformational revelation of Divine holiness so we can truly worship Almighty God in the splendor of his holiness.
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