God Is Holy
In the seven preceding chapters we have seen that in the Bible, even in its earliest books, books written nearly thirty-four hundred years ago, we have set before us a conception of God that is more pro¬ found, more exalted, more awe-inspiring, more gladdening and heart thrilling and ennobling than is to be found in any or in all of the profoundest philosophies of the past or even of the present day, except in so far as the philosophies of the present day have borrowed their conception of God from this old, old Book, the Bible. And we have also seen that there is not to be found outside of the Bible in all the literature of all nations and of all ages, anything that even approaches the Bible statements in beauty, simplicity, grandeur, splendor and sublimity of expression. And we have seen that the only explanation that has even the slightest semblance of reasonableness of these two unquestionable facts is that the Bible, even in its earliest portions, is a direct and supernatural revelation from God, and that these earliest Bible writers wrote the very words found in the Holy Scriptures as the Holy Spirit moved them and impelled them and em¬ powered them to write, and that these earliest portions of the Holy Scriptures beyond the possibility of any intelligent and honest question were as Paul more than eighteen hundred and fifty years ago declared them to be, “God-breathed” (I Tim. 3: 16).
But it is only when we come to the consideration of the moral character of “the God of the Bible” that we see to the full extent the immeasurable superiority of that conception of God that the Bible presents to all representations of God found elsewhere. And to¬ day we begin the study of the moral character of the God of the Bible.
Our particular subject in this chapter is, The God of ‘the Bible; God is Holy. I have ten texts. You will find the first text in one of the earlier books of the Bible, the book of Joshua, nearly as old as the oldest books in the Bible, for Joshua was for a large part of his life a contemporary of Moses. The text is Josh. 24: 19:
“And Joshua said unto the people. Ye cannot serve Jehovah; for He is a holy God; He is a jealous God; He will not forgive your transgression nor your sins.”
You will find the second text in the book of Psalms, Ps. 22: 3:
‘’But Thou art holy,
O Thou that inhabitest the praises of Israel.”
The third text is again from the Book of Psalms, Ps. 99:5, 9:
“Exalt ye Jehovah our God,
And worship at His footstool:
Holy is He.
Exalt ye Jehovah our God,
And worship at His holy hill;
For Jehovah our God is HolyJ*
The fourth text is from the book of Isaiah, Isa. S:16:
‘‘But Jehovah of hosts is exalted in justice,
And God the Holy One is sanctified in righteousness.”
The fifth text is also from the book of Isaiah, Isa. 6: 1-3:
“In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and His train filled the temple. Above Him stood the seraphim: each one had six wings; with twain he covered his face; and with twain he covered his feet, and with twain he did fly. And one cried unto another, and said. Holy, holy holy, is Jehovah of hosts, the whole earth is full of His glory.”
The sixth text is from the same book, Isa. 57: 15:
“For thus saith the high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity, whose name is Holy: I dwell in the high and holy place, with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit, to re¬ vive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite.”
The seventh text is taken from our Lord’s own prayer the night before His crucifixion, Jno. 17:11:
“And I am no more in the world, and these are in the world, and I come to thee. Holy Father, keep them in Thy name which thou hast given me, that they may be one, even as we are one.”
The eighth text is I Pet. i: 15, 16:
“But like as He which called you is holy, be ye yourselves also holy in all manner of living; because it is written, Ye shall be holy; for I am holyf’
The ninth text is Heb. 12:28, 29:
^‘Wherefore, receiving a kingdom that can¬ not be shaken, let us have grace, whereby we may offer service well-pleasing to God with reverence and awe: for our God is a consuming fire.”
Our tenth and last text is I Jno. 1:5:
“And this is the message which we have heard from Him, and announce unto you, that God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all.”
In eight of these ten passages from the Bible the plain and direct declaration is made that God is Holy, and the ninth and tenth texts set forth this same great truth in remarkably significant and suggestive figures. The tenth text contains one of the most illuminating and awe-inspiring sentences ever written, “God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all.” These words set forth the truth that God is not only holy but that He is absolutely holy, “in Him is no darkness at all.”
Isa. 57:15 also deserves especial notice:
“For thus saith the high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity, whpse name is Holy”
Here we are told that God’s “name is Holy.” Now in Bible usage the name stands for the character as revealed. So the words ‘’His name is Holy” mean that Holiness is the essential moral nature of God.
Holy is what Jehovah, the God of the Bible is in His inmost, essential moral being. Jehovah, the God of the Bible, is called ‘’the Holy One’’ about thirty times in this one book of the Bible from which the verse is taken, Isaiah. He is also so called in both Jeremiah and Ezekiel, and elsewhere as well.
In the New Testament God the Son is spoken of as “the Holy One” and the Third Person of the Trinity is constantly spoken of as “The Holy Spirit.’’ The whole Bible, both the Old Testament and the New Testament, is dominated by one thought, the thought of the Infinite Holiness of God.
IL What Does “Holy” Mean?
This brings us to the important question, What does the Word “Holy” Mean in Bible Usage? This question is plainly answered in many places in the Bible. Let me give you two illustrative examples that any one can easily understand. The first is found in Lev. 1 1: 43-45:
“Ye shall not make yourselves abominable with any creeping thing that creepeth, neither shall ye make yourselves unclean with them, that ye should be defiled thereby. For I am Jehovah, your God: sanctify yourselves there¬ fore, and be ye holy; for I am holy: neither shall ye defile yourselves with any manner of creeping thing that moveth upon the earth. For I am Jehovah that brought you up out of the land of Egypt, to be your God: ye shall therefore be holy for I am holy.”
It is evident from these words that ‘“Holy” means free from all defilement, absolutely pure. The words “God is Holy” mean, God is absolutely pure. The same thought is set forth in a little different way in Deut. 23: 14:
“For Jehovah thy God walketh in the midst of thy camp, to deliver thee, and to give up thine enemies before thee; therefore shall thy camp be holy: that He may not see an unclean thing in thee, and turn away from thee.”
This same thought as to what Holiness means, and the truth that God is absolutely and infinitely Holy, is set forth in what is perhaps the highest expression of this great truth of the Infinite Holiness of God that is to be found in the Bible, a passage to which I have already referred, I Jno. 1:5:
“God is light, and in Him is no darkness
at all.”
The entire Mosaic system of washings; divisions of the tabernacle; division of the people into ordinary Israelites, Levites, ordinary Priests, and High-Priests who were permitted different degrees of approach to God under strictly defined conditions; the insistence upon sacrifice with the shedding of the blood and giving up of the life of the substitute sacrifice as the one always necessary medium of approach to God; God’s directions to Moses in Ex. 3: 3, 5 to “Draw not nigh hither: put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground,” and to Joshua in Josh. 5:15: “Put off thy shoe from off thy foot; for the place whereon thou standest is holy”; the punishment of Uzziah in II Chr. 26: 12-26; the strict orders to Israel in regard to approaching Sinai when Jehovah came down upon it; the doom of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram because of their presumption in approaching God in their own way, as recorded in Num. 16: 1-33; and the destruction of Nadab and Abihu because they dared to draw nigh to God in an¬ other way than He had prescribed (Lev. 10: 1*2); all these were intended to teach and emphasize and burn into the minds and hearts of God’s people, Israel, the fundamental truth, the great foundation truth, that God is Holy, unapproachably Holy. The truth that God is Holy is the one great foundation truth of the Bible, of the Old Testament and of the New Testament, of the Jewish religion and of the Christian religion, which two religions are essentially one.
111. How the Holiness of God is Manifested.
Now let us look at what the Bible teaches us, as to How the Holiness of God is Manifested.
I. First of all. The Holiness of God manifests itself in an intense hatred of sin. This is set forth in Hab. 1: 12, 13:
“Art not thou from everlasting O Jehovah my God, my Holy One? we shall not die. O Jehovah, Thou hast ordained him for judgment; and Thou, O Rock, hast established him for correction. Thou that art of purer eyes than to behold evil, and that canst not look on perverseness.^^
We see the same great truth set forth way back in the first book in the Bible, in Gen. 6:5, 6, 7:
*‘And Jehovah saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And it repented Jehovah that He had made man on the earth, and it grieved Him at His heart. And Jehovah said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the ground.”
It was the Infinite Holiness of God, His intense hatred of sin, that necessitated the flood when the human race had become incurably bad. And so the Adamic race as a whole was destroyed and a new beginning made.
The same truth is also set forth in Deut. 25: 16:
“For all that do such things, even all that do unrighteously, are an abomination unto Jehovah thy God.”
And in Prov. 15:9, 26, where Solomon declares that both “the way of the wicked” and the “thoughts of the wicked” are an abomination to Jehovah.
2. In the second place, The Holiness of God manifests itself in intense delight in righteousness and in holiness. We will take time for but one passage illustrative of this thought. It is the last half of the verse just referred to, Prov. 15:9:
“The way of the wicked is an abomination unto Jehovah: but He loveth him that followeth after righteousness.^^
While sin in all its forms moves the holy heart of Jehovah with intense loathing, righteousness on the other hand moves the holy heart of Jehovah with in¬ tense joy and delight.
In Lev. 20: 26, Jehovah tells Israel that He had severed them from all other people for the express purpose that they should be “holy unto Him (me),” and thus (i. e., by being holy) to “be” His very own (“be mine”).
3. In the third place, The Holiness of God manifests itself in His never doing wickedness or iniquity. This thought is set forth in the inspired message of Elihu as recorded in Job 34:10:
“Therefore hearken unto me, ye men of un¬
derstanding:
Far be it from God, that He should do
wickedness;
And from the Almighty that He should com¬
mit iniquity.”
4. In the fourth place. The Holiness of God is manifested in the separation of the sinner from Himself. This thought is set forth in a passage in Isaiah that is very familiar to us all, Isa. 59: i, 2:
“Behold, Jehovah’s hand is not shortened, that it cannot save; neither his ear heavy, that it cannot hear: but your iniquities have separated between you and your God, and your sins have hid His face from you, so that He will not hear.^^
It is because of this necessary manifestation of the Holiness of the true God (the God of the Bible), the separating the sinner from Himself because His Holiness requires it, that an atonement by the shedding of the blood of a sufficient substitute becomes necessary if there is to be any approach to God on the part of the sinner. This great fundamental truth is set forth in Eph. 2:13:
“But now in Christ Jesus ye that once were far off are made nigh in the blood of Christ/^ And in Heb. 10: 10:
“By which will (that is the will of God) we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ, once for all.”
Our Lord’s own words set forth the same fundamental truth, in Matt. 20:28:
“The Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give His life a ransom for many,”
And in Jno. 14:6:
“I am the way, the truth, and the life: no one cometh unto the Father, hut through me,” All approach to a holy God (such as the God of the Bible is) on the part of sinful men (such as we all are), must be on the ground of shed blood. The atonement which our Lord Jesus Christ made by His death on the cross has its first and deepest demand in the holiness of God. Any doctrine of the atonement that sees its need only in the necessity that men may be influenced by a mighty motive (the so-called “Moral Influence Theory of the Atonement”), or in the necessities of governmental expediency (the so-called “Governmental Theory of the Atonement”) does not go to the root of things. The first and fundamental reason why “apart from shedding of blood there is no remission,” is because God is Holy and sin must be covered before there can be fellowship between God and the sinner. Nothing can cover sin from the holy gaze and the intense disapprobation of God except the atoning blood of Jesus Christ,
5. In the fifth place, The Holiness of God manifests itself in the punishment of the sinner. The Bible declares this over and over again in direct and explicit statements and by illustrative examples. Look at three passages. First Ex. 34:6, 7:
‘‘And Jehovah passed by before him and proclaimed, Jehovah, Jehovah God, merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in lovingkindness and truth; keeping lovingkindness for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin; and that will by no means clear the guilty; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children’s children, upon the third and upon the fourth generation.”
Now look at Gen. 6: 5-7:
“And Jehovah saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And it repented Jehovah that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart. And Jehovah said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the ground; both man, and beast, and creeping thing, and birds of the heavens; for it repent eth me that I have made them.”
Now just one more passage as setting forth this manifestation of the Holiness of God, Ps. 5:4-6:
“Thou art not a God that hath pleasure in
wickedness:
Evil shall not sojourn with thee.
The arrogant shall not stand in thy sight:
Thou hatest all workers of iniquity.
Thou wilt destroy them that speak lies:
Jehovah abhors the bloodthirsty and deceit ftd man.”
According to the Bible (and according to reason and common sense also) God does not punish the sinner merely for the sinner’s own good. God punishes the sinner because God is a holy being and there¬ fore hates sin. God’s Holiness and hatred of sin, like every attribute of His, is real, it is a living thing, it is active, and not dormant, and it must manifest itself. God’s holy wrath at sin must strike. This truth is set forth in a remarkable way in Isa. 53:6. Let me give you a literal translation of the Hebrew:
“All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and Jehovah hath made to strike on him the iniquity of us all.”
Any view of the punishment of sin that leaves out the thought of its being an expression of God’s holy hatred of sin, is not only unbiblical but shallow and dishonoring to God. God is Holy, infinitely Holy, therefore He infinitely hates sin. We ourselves in our own feelings get a glimpse at times of what God’s holy hatred of sin must be in our own burning indignation at some enormous iniquity. But we must remember that God is infinitely Holy, and therefore God’s wrath at the smallest sin is infinitely greater than ours at the greatest moral enormity. It is true, as we shall see later, that God is love; but God’s love is not of the sickly, sentimental sort, the morally putrid sort, that sends costly bouquets and tender missives to moral monsters, as some of our Universalist theologians and New Theology exponents would have us think. No, thank God! “Our God is a consuming fire.’^ God’s love toward sinners will never be under¬ stood and appreciated until it is seen in the white light of His blazing wrath at sin.
6. We come now to the most amazing and most decisive manifestation of the Holiness of God. The Holiness of God manifested itself in His making an infinite sacrifice to save others from sin which He hates unto holiness which He loves. Let me give you just two passages from the Word of God that set forth this greatest thought of all regarding the way in which God’s Holiness is manifested, a thought which we owe entirely to the Bible, and of which there is not the slightest suggestion in all the philosophers, poets, thinkers and mystics of all nations and all ages, except as they have borrowed it from the Bible. The first passage is one of the most familiar verses in the Bible, Jno. 3:16:
“For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever belie veth on Him should not perish, but have eternal life.”
The second passage is I Pet. 3:18:
“Because Christ also suffered for sins once, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God.^^
The death of Jesus Christ on the cross of Calvary was not merely a manifestation of the amazing and infinite love of God; it was also a manifestation of the amazing and infinite Holiness of God. That fact comes out in that little word “so” in Jno. 3:16: “God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on Him should not perish but have eternal life.” That word “so” sets forth not merely the greatness of God’s love, in that it did not draw back even from the sacrifice of His very best, His only begotten Son, to save us: it sets forth also the quality of His love, the fact that it was a holy love, a love that would not and could not pardon sin, which was infinitely hateful to God, until sin had been atoned for and covered from His holy gaze by atoning blood, even the blood of the Son of His eternal love. I would that we had time to stop here and ponder and wonder and adore, but we must pass on. I leave this amazing truth to each one of you to ponder it alone.
IV. Practical Inferences from the Truth that God Is Holy.
Before we close let me call your attention to some inferences of immense practical importance from this great fundamental truth about God, that God is Holy, that “God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all.”
I. The first great practical inference from the fact that God is infinitely Holy is that. We must draw nigh to God zvith awe. This thought is set forth time and time again in the Bible. For example, we read in Heb. 12: 28, 29:
“Wherefore, receiving a kingdom that can¬ not be shaken, let us have grace, whereby we may offer service well-pleasing to God with reverence and awe: for our God is a consuming fire/^
We see it also way back in Ex. 3:4, 5:
“And when Jehovah saw that he (that is, Moses) turned aside to see, God called unto him out of the midst of the bush, and said, Moses, Moses. And he said, Here am 1. And He said (that is, God said). Draw not nigh hither: put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground.^^
Perhaps the most remarkable passage that sets forth this truth that Jehovah, the God of the Bible, is of such a character that we must draw nigh to Him with awe is Isa. 6: 1-3:
“In the year that king Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple. Above him stood the seraphim: each one had six wings; with twain he covered his face; and with twain he covered his feet, and with twain he did fly. And one cried unto another, and said, Holy, holy, holy, is Jehovah of hosts, the whole earth is full of His glory.”
Here we see that even the holy “seraphim” (“seraphim” is a Hebrew word and means “burning ones,” that is, burning in their own intense holiness) covered their faces and their feet in Jehovah’s presence. They had four wings for worship but only two for service. Of course, we who are in Christ Jesus have a place above the seraphim; for when Jesus Christ died on the Cross He took our place, the place of rejection before God, and the moment we accept Jesus Christ that moment we step into His place of perfect acceptance before God, and so we have a right to come into God’s presence with uncovered faces and to look up into His face with perfect childlike confidence and call Him ‘‘Father.” But nevertheless we should never lose sight of the fact that, while God is our Father, He is our ‘’Holy Father,” and so along with our fear¬ less childlike trust there should also be a profound sense of awe in the presence of this infinitely Holy Being whom we call “God” and “Father.” The light and frivolous way, the careless and familiar way, with which many, both ministers and people, draw nigh to God to-day in what they call prayer and praise and worship, is shocking to any one who has any real and complete Bible conception of Who and what God is. I dislike jazz music; I abhor jazz worship. God is holy, never forget that when you draw nigh to Him.
2. The second important inference from the fact that God is infinitely Holy is that. The pure light of God’s Holiness reveals the blackness of our own sinfidness. This we see in the two verses that immediately follow those just quoted from Isaiah, Isa. 6:5, 6:
“Then I said. Woe is me! for I am undone: because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for mine eyes have seen the King, Jehovah of Hosts.”
Isaiah, who uttered these words, was perhaps the holiest man of his day; but when he came to the place where he actually met God, the undimmed, dazzling white light of the infinite Holiness of God revealed to him the depths of his own vileness and led him to cry, as just quoted:
*‘Woe is me! for I am undone: because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips,”
We see the same thing in Job 42: 5, 6. Job has been stoutly maintaining his own perfect and unblemished integrity against all the accusations and insinuations of his friends but now he comes face to face with God Himself, the Infinitely Holy One, and he cries:
‘T have heard of Thee by the hearing of the ear:
But now mine eye seeth Thee.
Wherefore I abhor myself j
And repent in dust and ashes.”
If any man thinks well of himself he has never met God. Nothing will demolish self-righteousness like one real sight of God.
If there could burst upon us one glimpse of God as He really is in His infinite Holiness, as He is as the seraphim behold Him in Heaven right now, every one of us would fall on his face before God and cry, “Woe is me! for I am undone: because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips. God be merciful to me, the sinner.”
3. The third great and necessary inference from the fact that God is infinitely Holy is, There is no forgiveness without atonement. This all important truth is declared over and over again in many different ways in the Old Testament and also in the New Testament. One illustration of this fact is enough, Heb. 9:22:
” Apart from shedding of blood there is no remission,”
Sin must be covered from the holy gaze of God, and nothing will cover it but the blood of Christ Jesus. Let me put to each one of you the question, Is your sin covered?
This great truth that there is no forgiveness with¬ out atonement runs all through the Bible and determines very much of both its history and its explicit teaching. Way back in the garden of Eden when sin first entered, Adam and Eve tried to cover their sin and their shame with self-made garments of leaves, but God covered them with the skins taken from the animals whose blood had been shed, types of the atonement of Jesus Christ. Soon after that Cain and Abel came to God with their sacrifices. Cain came, bearing the fair and fragrant fruits of the ground, but was not suffered to approach God! Abel came with the shed blood of the firstlings of his dock, and “J^^ovah had respect unto Abel and to his offering: but unto Cain and his offering he had not respect” (Gen.
4:3-5)-
What mean those stern judgments upon sin set forth in the Old Testament; the blotting out of the whole old world by the flood; the blotting out of the Canaanites, men, women, and children; God’s stern judgments upon Israel; and all the appalling judgments of the Bible? They mean that God is Holy and hates sin.
What means that constant, ever-flowing river of blood that runs through the whole Old Testament, beginning in the garden of Eden when sin first entered and ever widening, the blood of thousands, yes, millions of innocent lambs and other sacrificial animals? It means that God is Holy and that man is a sinner and that “Apart from shedding of blood there is no remission.’’
What means that supreme tragedy of all history, the tragedy of Calvary, where the only perfectly holy and righteous man who ever walked this earth, hung upon a cross dying, with a robber on a cross at each side, and the mob mocking Him, not the robbers, and not only deserted by man hut deserted by God, and crying with breaking heart, “My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?” What does it mean, this profoundest of all the mysteries of all the ages? It means that God is Holy, and that man is a sinner, and that “without the shedding of blood (and the making thus of a perfect atonement) there is no forgiveness.”
4. The fourth inference from the fact of the in¬ finite Holiness of God is. The W onderfidness of God’s Love. It would be no wonder if an unholy God could love unholy men. But that the God ‘’whose name is Holy,” the God who is absolutely Holy, the God who has Holiness for His essential moral nature, the in¬ finitely Holy God, could love beings so utterly sinful as we are, that is the wonder of the eternities. There are many deep mysteries in the Bible but none other so profound as this.