How Great Is Our God: 5 Days Toward a Worship-Led Life by Chris TomlinExemplo

Day 3: Holiness Unto the Lord

We fall down. We lay our crowns at the feet of Jesus. The greatness of mercy and love at the feet of Jesus. And we cry HOLY, HOLY, HOLY is the Lamb.

Holiness Unto the Lord.

It’s a curious phrase, isn’t it? It comes from Zechariah 14:20 (KJV).

That passage carries the notion that anything and everything touched by the Lord is set apart for Him and His service. From the bells on the horses to the common pots used for cooking—all of it is “holy unto the Lord.”

For most of my life, I would have interpreted that phrase, holiness unto the Lord, as an admonition to behave. I thought of holiness primarily as good behavior, something we were supposed to do or not do, as the case may be.

Yet that phrase said something different to me this time. It spoke not so much of behavior or something we were supposed to do or not do. Holiness unto the Lord said something about identity, about the very nature of who I am and who you are. Once touched by the Lord, we are holy unto the Lord. We belong to Him. We are set apart for Him.

Now we are getting down to the very crux of the worship-led life: belonging to Jesus. Holiness means belonging to Jesus. Because He is holy, we are holy. It’s why the Bible repeatedly says things like:

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.” 1 Peter 1:15–16

We can’t do holy unless we be holy. And we can’t be holy apart from the very holiness of Jesus. We are who we are because of whose we are. Because Jesus is holy unto the Lord and Jesus is in us, we are holy unto the Lord.

One day in the winter of 2023, my phone was blowing up with texts and calls. People were messaging me about a revival breaking out in Kentucky at—you guessed it—Asbury University.

At the end of a regular chapel service, a small group of students stuck around to pray at the altar, and days later the chapel service was still ongoing. People were coming from far and wide by the thousands to experience this work of God.

So why were they texting me? They wanted me to know that one of the songs they were singing on repeat was one of my oldest songs. Yes, you guessed it: “We Fall Down.”

We fall down. We lay our crowns at the feet of Jesus. The greatness of mercy and love at the feet of Jesus. And we cry HOLY, HOLY, HOLY, is the Lamb.

I scanned social media and there it was: image after image captured the front of that chapel, and flying like a banner over it all were those words etched into the eve of the house: Holiness Unto the Lord.

The holiness of God beckons us to what is perhaps the core calling of the worship-led life: consecration unto the Lord. You may remember how in the Old Testament, everything used in the temple, and everyone who ministered within, had to be consecrated as holy unto the Lord.

Consecration is about purity, and yet it’s not how we may tend to think. It is not a purity that comes from trying to cleanse or purify oneself. It is the purity that comes from ownership. To become holy unto the Lord only comes from belonging wholly to the Lord. It doesn’t begin with us but with God. At the cross of Jesus, God says, “All of me for all of you.” And at the cross of Jesus, we receive this gift and respond with our lives back to God, “All of me for all of you.”

This is the deepest essence of the worship-led life.

SING WITH ME

Let’s go old-school today—all the way back to the beginning with one of my oldest songs and maybe the best of all. Sometimes the simplest of songs can carry the deepest of messages. Queue up “We Fall Down” and let it lead you into a place of deep consecration today.

HOW GREAT?

Have you ever encountered this curious phrase—“Holiness unto the Lord”—before? What kind of thoughts and feelings does it evoke in you? What would it mean for your life to be consecrated as “Holiness unto the Lord”?