The Holiness of God

“Only once in sacred Scripture is an attribute of God elevated to the third degree. Only once is a characteristic of God mentioned three times in succession. The Bible says that God is holy, holy, holy.”

⎯R.C. Sproul

Our God is holy, holy, holy. It is a threefold emphasis. An emphasis we do well to consider. So what does it mean that God is holy, holy, holy? 

That is a question I have been mulling around in my head and trying to understand after I asked it of a good friend. It’s an easy question to pass by and say, “Well, scripture says He is…” But if you think about it and delve into scripture for answers, you may have your mind blown at the awesome thought of how He is holy and what that means to us, His creatures. 

In addition to showing what it means that God is holy, I also want to tie God’s innate holiness into the incarnation of the Son. Because, through His Son, we are able to approach the holy God and we are able to have union with the Holy.

Here is my feeble attempt at showing you what it means that God is holy. 

Holy, Holy, Holy

The passage that most people think of when thinking of God’s holiness is Isaiah 6. Here the glory of God’s holiness is displayed probably the most prominently than anywhere in Scripture.

Let’s read the first three verses. 

In the year of King Uzziah’s death I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, lofty and exalted, with the train of His robe filling the temple. Seraphim stood above Him, each having six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. And one called out to another and said, “Holy, Holy, Holy, is the LORD of hosts, The whole earth is full of His glory.”

—Isaiah 6:1-3 NASB

As we read, we see that the king of Judah is dead. The king who reigned for 52 years, an exceptionally long time, was dead and all the people were rightly lost and grief stricken. For the most part, until the very end of his reign, he was a righteous and just ruler of the people. God prospered Uzziah in all that he did (2 Chronicles 26:5).

So here we have Isaiah, the spokesman for God. He, along with the people of Judah, is grieving and likely wondering as to the future of Judah (and Israel as a whole) after the loss of their king of 52 years. But in his grief, he sees a vision. 

In the year of King Uzziah’s death I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, lofty and exalted, with the train of His robe filling the temple.

In the pain and grief that Isaiah is feeling, he is met by this vision of the one true King, lofty and exalted. While the kings of the earth continue to rise and fall, the King of all the earth is alive and enthroned above all. He is surrounded by His angels who cry out His praise eternally (Rev. 7:11-12). 

And this is what they cry out: 

And one called out to another and said, “Holy, Holy, Holy, is the LORD of hosts, The whole earth is full of His glory.”

—Isaiah 6:3

Here is that threefold declaration of “Holy, Holy, Holy”. As much as God is love, God is gracious, God is sovereign, God is wrath, or God is patient, His holiness stands out above all these. It could be said that it is His foremost attribute. Not that it is more than all these other attributes, but that it is what gives beauty and majesty to these others. 

A.W Pink in his work, The Attributes of God, says this of God’s holiness:

This perfection, as none other, is solemnly celebrated before the throne of heaven, the seraphim crying, "Holy, holy, holy, is the LORD of hosts" (Isa. 6:3). God Himself singles out this perfection, "Once have I sworn by my holiness" (Ps. 89:35). God swears by His holiness because that is a fuller expression of Himself than anything else.

Therefore we are exhorted, "Sing unto the LORD, O ye saints of his, and give thanks at the remembrance of his holiness" (Ps. 30:4). "This may be said to be a transcendental attribute, that, as it were, runs through the rest, and casts lustre upon them. It is an attribute of attributes" (J. Howe, 1670). Thus we read of "the beauty of the LORD" (Ps. 27:4), which is none other than "the beauty of holiness" (Ps. 110:3).

God’s holiness is the “attribute of attributes”. It encompasses everything about Himself and all of His attributes are held together in the eternal truth that He is holy. His holiness is the fullest expression of Himself. He is perfect (holy) in all His attributes and set apart (holy) in that perfection of each of those attributes. Where we may have love, we do not love perfectly, where we may have grace, we are not gracious perfectly. This is one attribute that we do not share in...His perfect holiness. 

What This Means for Us

God’s holiness is repeated in that threefold manner in both the Old and the New Testaments (in Isaiah 6:3 and Revelation 4:8), signifying that the God of the Old Testament is the same God of the New Testament. He will not and has never violated His holiness. We must “be holy as He is holy” in His sight (1 Peter 1:15). His law, His commandments are always the same, and we are commanded to keep them. 

We are commanded to love our God with all our heart, soul, and mind, with every part of our being. And we are to love others as ourselves. These are the two greatest commandments, a summary of all of God's commandments. 

And He [Jesus] said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the great and foremost commandment. The second is like it, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’"

— Matthew 22:37-39

Christians, believers, we are called saints. Throughout the New Testament we are called just that in many of Paul’s introductions to his letters to the churches (Romans 1:7, 1 Corinthians 1:2, Ephesians 1:1, Colossians 1:2).

Do you know what that word, saint, means? 

A saint is defined as “holy one”. We, believer, are holy ones. Believers are called saints in scripture “not because they were already pure but because they were people who were set apart and called to purity”. (The Holiness of God by R.C. Sproul, pg. 191)

God has called us His holy ones, like He did with His people Israel (Deuteronomy 7:6). We have been grafted into the true Israel (but that is another topic entirely). We have been chosen out of the world to be set apart to a life of living for our God. 

Our Problem

“Our problem is that we have been called to be holy, and we are not holy”

~

(Holiness by Sproul, pg. 195). 

That is our problem. We have been called to be holy as God is holy, yet we are utterly unholy. We cannot keep the two greatest commandments (Matt. 22:37-39) and we never could. Not a single person alive today (or anyone throughout history) has kept those commandments. If you say you have, you do not know who God is and are blaspheming His Holy name, making yourself out to be God. You, a creature, say that you are perfectly holy like God is holy? 

So how do we explain the command to be holy as He is holy since we cannot be sinless like God, you may ask? 

The key is in how we define the word “holy”. Again, to be holy is to be separate or distinct from the world. It is to be pure from the stain of sin. And again, we can’t do that. We are sinners. And even as believers we are still confined to our flesh. We are sinners. But God calls us saints. How is that even possible? How is God able to call us holy? 

Because he says it better, see R.C. Sproul’s answer to this question:

That saints are still sinners is obvious. How then can they be just? Saints are just because they have been justified. In and of themselves they are not just. They are made just in God’s sight by the righteousness of Christ. This is what justification by faith is about. When we put our personal trust for our salvation in Christ and in Him alone, then God transfers to our account all of the righteousness of Jesus. His justness becomes ours when we believe in Him. It is a legal transaction. The transfer of righteousness is like an accounting transaction where no real property is exchanged. That is, God puts Jesus’ righteousness in my account while I am still a sinner.

This is the Gospel. This is what makes us holy and beloved by God. Not of works that we have done but because of His mercy to us through Christ (Titus 3:5). Because of Christ’s work and His righteousness we are just and holy in the Father’s sight. 

The Holy Came to Live Amongst the Unholy

So now I come full circle. I think we’ve brushed the surface of what it means for God to be holy. And I’ve just now gotten to what that means for us, the unholy. 

As seen above, we as believers have had God’s holiness and righteousness transferred over to us through Christ. You see, outside of the Holy coming down to live with us, the unholy rebels that we are, we would not have been able to stand in the judgment day. The only way we can stand in the presence of God’s holiness is this. Through Christ. He lived (not just died) for us to make us holy. He took on Himself our unholiness, and transferred to us His holiness. 

He is the perfect holy One, God Himself. Jesus is the only one in all of history to have kept the commands of God perfectly without any stain of sin. 

In Christ, the stain of sin on us which we could not purify is cleansed. By His work we are made holy. By God’s grace, the Father sent to us His Son to live amongst us (rebellious sinners!), toiling with us in everyday life, yet doing so without one single tiny sin to stain His holiness.   

Looking to Isaiah again, after Isaiah saw the Lord in all of His glory, he was in utter ruin because he saw God for Who He was, and in seeing Who God was, he saw that he was completely unholy and unclean. Isaiah was undone, or "ruined", by the holiness of God. 

Let’s read that verse:

Then I said,

“Woe is me, for I am ruined!

Because I am a man of unclean lips,

And I live among a people of unclean lips;

For my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts.” 

— Isaiah 6:5

Isaiah, in and of himself, could not cleanse himself. He cried out, “I am ruined!” In light of the holiness of God, all his sin is revealed to himself. 

But God is merciful to him:

Then one of the seraphim flew to me with a burning coal in his hand, which he had taken from the altar with tongs. He touched my mouth with it and said, “Behold, this has touched your lips; and your iniquity is taken away and your sin is forgiven.”

—Isaiah 6:6-7

What cleansed Isaiah was the burning coal from the altar in the throne room of the Lord. We are cleansed by the blood of Christ, our sin is completely washed away by His sacrifice (1 John 1:7), just as the burning coal purged Isaiah of his sin. 

We cannot be holy in and of ourselves. Our natural tendency is to love sin, and hate God (Romans 3:11-12). We need a way to stand before our Holy God. Christ is the way. He is the only One to have loved God perfectly and hated sin perfectly (Hebrews 1:8-9). By God’s grace, the righteousness of Christ is now imparted to you, believer. Just as Isaiah was purged of his sins by that fiery coal, so are you by the sacrifice of Christ. Your sins no longer keep you from God. You are holy. In Christ, you are holy. 

Union With Christ

Finally, I want you to remember this. You are united with Christ. Through His life, death, and resurrection you are set free from sin. Before, you had no union with God. Your sin and complete unholiness kept you from Him. But now through the working of the Holy Spirit and your union with Christ, you are made right and are now acceptable in the Father’s eyes. 

Now, we are to live holy lives, separate from the world, all for the glory of our holy God. In so doing we bring the Gospel to a spiritually dead world. We are in the world, but not of it. We do not partake in the sinful lusts that are carrying so many people off into hell. We call out to them, striving to bring as many as we can to Christ. “Deliver those who are being taken away to death, And those who are staggering to slaughter, Oh hold them back” (Proverbs 24:11). 

So many people are living unholy lives, staggering toward their death. Let us, as God’s saints, not forget the Gospel. The Gospel of Jesus Christ, of how Jesus came to live, to die, and to rise again. Of how He came to save His people from their sins 

(Matthew 1:21). It is the power of God (Romans 1:16). The Gospel is what the Holy Spirit uses to bring more and more people into union with Christ, a people called the church, that are holy and set apart for His own eternal glory. 

Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection, knowing this, that our old self was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin; for he who has died is freed from sin. Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him, knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, is never to die again; death no longer is master over Him. For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God. Even so consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus.

— Romans 6:4-11