The Holiness of God
It’s fall where we live in the pines and wherever we walk, we walk on cones and needles, a take on the expression, walking on pins a needles—a metaphor for waiting for something bad to happen like having to rake up these pine cones and needles, put them in barrels and haul them to the landfill—a job I dislike doing. For many, worshipping God becomes an “hour’s job” in the midst of our busy lives.
The worship of God is a 24/7 encounter with the God of fire. Exodus 3:2 describes how the Angel of the Lord appeared to Moses in a flame of fire from a bush, which was miraculously burning but not being consumed. Moses is curious, turns aside from what he was doing and goes over to investigate. It is a significant event which Stephen refers to in his speech to the Sanhedrin. Stephen recounts the details of the burning bush where God commissioned Moses to lead the Israelites out of captivity.
Do you ever think of God as flames of fire where His presence sets ablaze and consumes? The Holiness of God, as one writer says, is the subject that pervades all of Scripture. It can make unleavened bread holy, wine holy. “Holy” in our minds is whatever is pure, clean, and untouched. But more than this, to be made Holy means to be “set apart” for other purposes.
Several writers tell us that holiness is not a comfortable subject because of our fear of being seen as a “holier than thou type”, too theological, too legalistic, stuffy–a buzzkill as one writer put it.
Throughout the Scriptures, flames of fire represent God’s power and holiness. When Adam and Eve disobeyed God, God became angry and threw them out of heaven by the order of a flaming sword. After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life. Genesis 3:24 God descends on Mt Sinai in a ball of fire. (Exodus 19:18)
Bradley Gray writes that “Holiness isn’t so much something He has as it is who He is. God is the “holy, holy, holy,” the one who is separate from all that is marred by sin and death, because he is entirely other. . . He is so holy that the only way we can get close to capturing how holy he is, is by saying it three times in succession. From the throne came flashes of lightning, rumblings and peals of thunder. In front of the throne, seven lamps were blazing. These are the seven spirits of God. Revelation 4:7 And they were calling to one another: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty;the whole earth is full of his glory.” Isaiah 6:3
“You shall fear and love God” Martin Luther’s Small Catechism tells us. This is to be a reverent fear and love for His glory. Give ear and come to me; listen, that you may live. I will make an everlasting covenant with you, my faithful love promised to David. Isaiah 55:3
Many fear, as Gray does that the holiness of God is not taken seriously. When we come together to worship as the body of Christ we are gathering to commune with the holy, holy, holy God. Most of us are not conscious of the fact that if those around us have been justified by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, the fiery Spirit dwells in them, not necessarily by the waving of arms and the type of songs we sing but being encountered by the holiness of God like “tongues of fire” resting on their heads at Pentecost described in Acts 2. This temporary symbolic phenomenon signified the good pleasures of God that He now had empowered individual believers with an everlasting Spirit to sustain them through Word and Sacrament in a world convulsing.
I write this not only as a pastor, but as a psychotherapist who dealt daily with the “wayward religious.” Because I was an ordained pastor practicing as a psychotherapist, many who came to me were knowledgeable of my credentials. Many were “religious” whose lives were being swayed by the “wayward” ways of the world around them—the ungodliness of sexuality being just one of the predators that affected their marriages, and their relationships and their own psyches. Just a word about “psyche.” Where the Holy presence of God meets the human being is in the psyche, the very soul/being of a person.
If I learned anything from those years, it was the importance of the wellness of the soul—one’s whole being, not just the wellness of the soul of the patient but the wellness of the soul of the doctor. The same is true for the Christian church on earth. It is the wellness of the soul of the parishioner as well the wellness of the soul of the pastor or priest.
Every time, as a parishioner, I confess my sins in the liturgical service and hear the pastor declare that my sins have been forgiven, I think of the soul of the one who tells me my sins have been forgiven as much as my own soul. This thought brings me to this thought in Ephesians. In loveHe chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. Ephesians 1:4
“Us in him” means He chose us as parishioners and pastors for Himself which speaks of eternal election of God which is inseparably connected with the Holiness of the Spirit. It is wholly of God’s own doing for God’s eternal purposes even before “the foundation of the world.” “Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, and to see my glory, the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world. John 17:24
All this was planned, foreordained. He was chosen before the creation of the world, but was revealed in these last times for your sake. 1 Peter 1:20
Thus, belonging to a church doesn’t guarantee anything. Church membership doesn’t mean that we have reached some kind of holy status, as Bradley Gray says. The Word of God tells our souls, hearts and minds that God chose us in Christ before the foundations of the world were laid to be holy and blameless before him. Salvation is not a human achievement. It-is-the-finished-ness of the cross. In no way do we merit the status of holiness in the eyes of God.
However, to the one who does not work but trusts God who justifies the ungodly, their faith is credited as righteousness. Romans 4:5 Thus, whether in the doctor’s office, whether at home with one’s family, at work, in times of pleasure, or in church, holiness is who God is and His holiness is what He offers us through the person of His Son, Jesus Christ. This is the mystery of sanctification.
