The Holiness of God


My last post dealt with how God sees sin and that it’s not just a pet peeve of His that we sin. Humanity is separated from God because of sin; He cannot have sin in His presence. It’s after we accept the responsibility for our actions, acknowledging our sin and guilt, we receive God’s forgiveness, enter into the joy of His salvation, and become more completely human and healthy that we can be reconciled with God.

We have seen sin as rebellion against God. The essential background to the cross is not only the sin, responsibility, and guilt of man but the just reaction of God to these things-in other words, His holiness. The idea that God is holy is the foundation of the Bible. So is the knowledge that sin is incompatible with God’s holiness (Habakkuk 1:13 – “Your eyes are too pure to look on evil And You cannot look on wickedness with favor”).

Our sins separate us from God, so that His face is hidden from us and He refuses to hear our prayers. The biblical authors were aware that no human being could set their eyes on God and survive the experience. All those who were granted a glimpse of His glory were unable to endure the sight. Moses hid his face because he was afraid to look at God. When Isaiah had his vision of Yahweh enthroned and exalted, he was overwhelmed by the sense of his uncleanness. Job’s reaction when God revealed Himself to him was to despise himself and to repeat in dust and ashes. The list of people who saw just a glimpse of God, all reacted in similar ways. Even the angels around His thrown have a pair of wings to hide their eyes from Him and a pair to hide their feet since His presence is holy.

The biblical concept of the holiness of God is that He cannot coexist with sin. Sin cannot approach God, and God cannot tolerate sin. There are several metaphors used in the scriptures to illustrate this fact.

The first metaphor is Height (Psalm 97:9 - For You are the LORD Most High over all the earth; You are exalted far above all gods.). His lofty exaltation expresses both His sovereignty over the nations and His inaccessibility to sinners. The high exaltation of God is not literal and was never meant to be taken literally. The biblical writers used height as a symbol of transcendence.

The second metaphor is Distance. We dare not approach too close. When God appeared to Moses in the burning bush, God told Moses not to come any closer (Exodus 3:5- Then He [God] said, "Do not come near here; remove your sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.). When God gave instruction for the building of the tabernacle and later the temple, He promised to live among the people but they were not allowed to come into the Holy of Holies except the High Priest and that was only once a year and he had to have the blood of the sacrifice with him. Sinners cannot approach the all-holy God with impurity-Jesus’ blood allows Christians to approach God but that’s because He no longer sees our sins; we are covered by the blood of the Lamb.

The third and fourth metaphors go hand and hand; they are Light (1 john 1:5 – “. . . God is Light, and in Him there is no darkness at all.”) and Fire (Hebrews 12:29 – “for our God is a consuming fire.”). Both discourage too close approach to God by man; because of our sinful state.

All these metaphors illustrate the utter incompatibility of divine holiness and human sin. HEIGHT, DISTANCE, LIGHT, and FIRE all say that God cannot be in the presence of sin and that if it approaches Him too closely it will be consumed.