Holier Than Thou: A 5-Day Plan on God's HolinessSýnishorn

DAY 3: God’s Holiness Revealed 

In the redemption of souls, God is holy. Out of His righteousness, God gave a law. At first, it was to not eat. If obeyed by faith in the purity and worth of the lawgiver, the two garden misfits would’ve continued in His love. 

Refusing this, their nature was eventually inherited by every generation. One that loves the dark more than the Son. Born like them too, Israel was provided with a written law. A set of commands, good ones in fact, that imaged God in its insistence to do right by Him and others. 

None of them saw such behavior as a good thing of course. Who wants to love God above all things when there are so many deficient alternatives for which to place our affections? The gods they collected were an incomplete thing. Like cisterns broken all up, wasting water all over the place. These lesser gods were unable to make anyone that trusts in them whole, neither could they transcend their created nature if ever they were asked to deliver. But, they loved their idols still, and so do we.

As is expected of God, then, judgment must come down on the heads of those with a hesitant “yes, Lord.” His righteousness will not allow the guilty to go unpunished. Scary, to fall into the hands of the living God, until we believe in the One who did so in our place. The cross reveals God’s holiness in how the sinless Son was judged on behalf of sinful people so that when God justifies the guilty, He does so without compromising His righteousness. 

The Holy Spirit is then sent to fill and sanctify us as a means of restoring our divine resemblance, helping us to wear the right clothes and two good shoes, wherein we “put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.” 

From the beginning with creation, in our redemption and eventual glorification, God’s holiness is revealed.