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The Hebrew
word for "holy" is "kadosh." The basic meaning
of holiness is separation. To be holy means to
be set apart for a special purpose. When holiness
is applied to God, it means that He is set apart
from the rest of His creation. God is infinitely
separate from all His creatures, even the mightiest.
Who is like You among the gods, O Lord? Majestic
in holiness, awesome in praises, working wonders
(Exodus 15:11) the Jewish people sang after crossing
the Red Sea. The answer to this question is no
one and nothing - no angel, no man, and no higher
power can be compared to Him.
Holiness
also implies separation from all that is evil.
God is completely separate from sin and impurity
of any kind. Your eyes are too pure to approve
evil, and You cannot look on wickedness, the
prophet Habakkuk informs us (Habakkuk 1:13). The
Holy One of Israel is the essence of moral excellence.
He is infinitely perfect in righteousness and
purity.
God's
holiness is not just the best we know infinitely
multiplied. Human beings cannot grasp the holiness
of God by thinking of someone or something very
pure, and then raising the idea to the highest
degree. We know of nothing like the divine holiness.
It stands apart - unique, unapproachable, incomprehensible
and unattainable. The Holy One is holy with an
incomprehensible fullness of purity. Before God's
holiness even the most glorious sinless angels
must veil their faces. If the heavens are not
pure in His sight, how much less one who is detestable
and corrupt, man, who drinks iniquity like water
(Job 15:15-16).
Because
God is holy, everything about the Holy One is
holy. All of His attributes are holy; no one else
can have them in the same way. Nothing can be
compared to His infinity, His eternality, His
wisdom, His mercy, His power, His goodness, His
omniscience, His kindness, His love, or His self-sufficiency.
He is unique in all these attributes. While some
Christian leaders are teaching that we are gods,
if they understood the holiness of God they would
know that there is an infinite difference between
the Holy One of Israel and redeemed humanity.
Ayn kadosh ka-Adonai: There is no one holy
like the Lord (1 Samuel 2:2). To whom then
will you liken Me that I should be His equal?
says the Holy One (Isaiah 40:25).
Some wise
men have said that because of the fundamental
importance of this attribute, the holiness of
God should be stressed more than any other. The
angels surrounding the throne of God call out:
kadosh kadosh kadosh - holy, holy, holy
(Isaiah 6:3) - not love, love, love or omniscience,
omniscience, omniscience, or almighty, almighty,
almighty! When His disciples asked Yeshua to teach
them how to pray, the first thing that Yeshua
mentioned was the holiness of God: Our Father
who art in Heaven, hallowed
be Your Name. We should always approach the
Lord our God with a holy reverence and awe (Hebrews
12:28). He is not our good buddy - He is our holy
Father.
MAN
ISN'T SO HOLY
The English
word "holy" comes from the Anglo-Saxon "halig"
or "hal," which means "hale," "well," or "whole."
Holiness is healthy! God has made holiness
the moral and spiritual conditions necessary to
the health of His universe. If holiness is
healthy, sin is unwholesome; think of evil as
a moral and spiritual sickness. The fall of man
has left all of us with a permanent sickness that
affects every part of our nature. This illness
is so bad, and has lingered so long, and has affected
so many that we have become oblivious to it! Since
we are immersed in unholiness we have come to
look upon it as natural and normal. Morally and
spiritually we are like a frog in a pot of water
with the heat slowly being turned up under the
pot. The frog will not jump out of the pot because
the change is gradual and incremental and the
frog doesn't recognize that he is being cooked.
Like the frog, the whole world is slowly cooking
in a pot of moral and spiritual iniquity, but
most of us don't realize it!
A correct
understanding of the holiness of God leads to
a proper view of self. It is not until we
catch a glimpse of the holiness of God that we
realize the full extent of our own unholiness.
When a person catches a glimpse of the holiness
of God, he will have a sense that God is worthy,
and that man is unworthy. Understanding God's
holiness should wake in us the knowledge that
there is an infinite chasm between the holy God
and unholy man.
Even if
we never sinned, we should be conscious that as
created beings we are infinitely separate from
the Uncreated. But we have sinned and lessened
our worth even further. All of us have become
like one who is unclean, and all our righteous
deeds are like a filthy garment (Isaiah 64:6).
No honest man who understands anything about God's
holiness can say, "I am holy." Quite the opposite
- humility, surrender, contrition and confession
flow from the knowledge of God's holiness. Simon
Peter, when he realized who Yeshua was, said,
"Depart from me, for I am a sinful man O Lord
(Luke 5:8)." It was not until Isaiah saw the Lord,
high and lifted up, with the holy seraphim covering
their face and crying: holy, holy, holy
that the prophet confessed, "Woe is me, for
I am ruined! Because I am a man of unclean lips,
and I live among a people of unclean lips; for
my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts"
(Isaiah 6:3-5).
The
holiness of God, the health of the universe, and
the judgement of God are inseparably related.
Since God is like a great physician, He is concerned
for the moral and spiritual health of His universe.
He hates evil with the same hatred that a mother
hates the illness that would take the life of
her child. To preserve His creation God must destroy
whatever would destroy it. The Holy God must cut
out the cancer of unholiness from His universe.
When the Great Physician removes any evil from
His creation, He is preserving the universe from
whatever degrades and destroys. Someone who did
not understand modern medicine or the deadly nature
of cancer might think that a surgeon was a sadistic
monster to cut out important parts of the body.
In a similar way, every judgement in the history
of the world should be understood as a holy act
of preservation, not as an arbitrary act of a
cruel overlord.
Though
He is infinitely holy and separate from sin, God
is nevertheless able to maintain a relationship
to His fallen creatures while this current age
lasts. For thus says the high and exalted
One who lives forever, whose Name is holy; I dwell
on a high and holy place, and also with the contrite
and lowly of spirit in order to revive the heart
of the contrite (Isaiah 57:15). If the high
and exalted One can redeem something rather than
destroy it, He will make every effort to do so.
If something continues to resist, it must eventually
be destroyed, for holiness can't exist eternally
with unholiness.
LEARNING
HOLINESS
From the
beginning of Israel's history the Lord began teaching
His Chosen People that since He was holy, we had
to be separate from the impurities of the world.
He wanted us to pursue holiness because without
it no one will see the Lord. God taught His people
holiness in a variety of ways: Israel learned
about the holiness of God when bounds were set
around Mount Sinai and God's presence came down
upon it. Anyone who violated the boundary was
put to death (Exodus 19:12-25). Looking into the
Ark, where the presence of God was manifested
on earth, or even touching it like Uzzah did,
resulted in death (2 Samuel 6:7). Seeing God face
to face resulted in death, for no one could see
His face and live (Exodus 33:20). Violating a
holy day, like the Sabbath or the Day of Atonement,
earned the death penalty. The various offerings
that had to be brought if an Israeli wanted to
approach God taught the people principles of holiness
(Leviticus 1-7). The priesthood that mediated
between God and the people taught the people that
they could not approach a holy God directly (Leviticus
8-10). When two of the sons of Aaron despised
the holiness of God by offering a strange fire,
they immediately died as a result (Leviticus 10:1-2).
The laws about impurity and ritual cleanliness
taught the people principles of holiness (Lev.
11-15).
Everything
about Israel was to be separate from the ways
of the surrounding world. The Jewish people were
to be an "Am Kadosh," a holy people. We were to
have a holy diet; we were to wear special clothing;
we were to observe holy days; we were to live
in a holy land, within which there is a holy city,
in the center of which was a holy place, within
which was a most holy place, in which the Holy
One of Israel manifested His dwelling presence
on earth.
WE
MUST BECOME HOLY
Because
God is holy, He will always be morally perfect.
He will eternally be separate from sin and evil.
He will forever abhor sin, and He will always
demand holiness and purity in His creatures. He
will always have holy standards that we must conform
to, and it is impossible that He will change.
We dare not ignore the words of the apostle to
the Messianic Jews: Pursue peace with all men,
and the holiness without which no one will see
the Lord (Hebrews 12:14). Every created
thing must either become holy or cease to be.
God is
holy with an absolute holiness that knows no degrees,
and He can't impart this holiness to His creatures.
There is an infinite chasm between the holy God
and unholy man, and no one can acquire the sinlessness
that meets God's holy standards. However there
is a relative holiness that the Lord shares with
the good angels in heaven and with redeemed men
on earth. This holiness God can and does impart
to His children, otherwise He would not command
us to be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy
(Lev. 19:2). God is HaKadosh, the Holy One, but
He is also Adonai M'Kadesh - The Lord Who Makes
Holy (Ezekiel 37:28).
Since
sinful man can't approach a holy God directly,
the Lord Who Makes Holy has made it possible for
us to approach Him through another - the Messiah.
Yeshua, the Son of Man who lived a perfectly sinless
life, made such access to the holy God possible.
The highest degree of the holiness of God comes
to us through Messiah Yeshua. By His doing
you are in Messiah Yeshua, who became to us wisdom
from God, and righteousness and sanctification
(holiness) and redemption (1 Corinthians
1:30).
Messiah
Yeshua reflected in His life the perfect holiness
of God. He was always separated to His Father
and His purposes. He never sinned. He was always
perfectly pure. He is the Holy and Righteous
One (Acts 3:14). Not only that, but by His
death on the cross He took on the sin and unholiness
of every human being who will ever live. The penalty
for our unholiness fell upon Him. We must take
refuge from God in the Son of God! We must hide
our unholiness in the wounds of Messiah, just
as Moses hid himself in the cleft of the rock.
He then sends His Holy Spirit to start the process
of making us holier from within. Then God sees
us as part of His beloved holy Son, even while
He disciplines and purifies us so that we will
be partakers of His holiness.
Becoming
holy is not primarily a negative; an abstaining
from - not wearing certain clothes, not eating
or drinking this or that, not engaging in sinful
behavior. Holiness is a positive; holiness comes
by drawing near to the Holy One of Israel and
having some of His holiness rub off on us. After
we come to Messiah Yeshua, and receive His Holy
Spirit, we abide in the Holy Scriptures where
we learn to grow in holiness. Sanctify them
in the truth. Your word is truth (John 17:17)
Messiah Yeshua prayed for us. By faith in the
Holy One of Israel, by obedience to His holy Word,
by meditation on the holiness of God, by loving
righteousness and hating iniquity, by a growing
intimacy with the Spirit of holiness, we can acclimate
ourselves to the fellowship with the saints (holy
ones) on earth, and prepare ourselves for the
eternal companionship of the holy God in the New
Jerusalem.
I am indebted
to The Knowledge of the Holy by A.W. Tozer
for this article.
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