G-d is Holy

In these days leading up to Christmas, I've been thinking a lot about the holiness of God and how in our desire to make God into our best bud, Christians often forget that above all, God is holy. Instead we say God is love or Jesus loves you or that God loves you. It seems to me that subconsciously, modern Christians are avoiding the use of the word holy. It's too big for us. Love brings God down to our size, since we have, however flawed, an idea of what love is about since we all have someone whom we love and who loves us.

Holiness implies a mystery that we can never understand, a majesty we can never approach or negotiate with, a challenge to our thoughts and our behaviours. It isn't that God isn't love and it isn't that God doesn't love us but His love is as far above our understanding of the meaning of the word as to be something entirely different altogether. In searching the Internet, I came across a reprinted sermon here on the very same topic.

People put bumper stickers on their vehicles, with the ubiquitous John 3:16 verse on it. They put similar signs on their business and on their barn roofs. Whatever happened to holiness? Whatever happened to the Name that is so holy that religious Jews will neither say it nor spell it? I found this interesting article on the question of how Christians define God as opposed to Jews.

Why do we have such a need to make God into a buddy - sort of like Oprah - non-threatening - someone we can sit and gossip with and call Jeez. Pat Him familiarly on the back when He makes a particularly astute comment and tell other people what nice guy God/Jeez actually is as long as we 'accept Him as our personal Saviour' and confess our sins and then we can do what we want because He understands. Like Oprah. He loves us. Love is negotiable and comforting. Holiness is not. Holiness has no compromise.

It is another thing altogether. It implies something separate from the creation, a mystery, a hidden thing. Awe is missing from much of the modern Christian's mindset. We make God into our image - better than us but still in our image with our understanding. Fundamentalists believe in the creation of the heavens and the earth in a literal six days and have no problem saying so - but do they tremble when they say it? Do they have even the smallest idea of what that implies, what they believe, what it means to have such a power to create all that is or to create even the smallest part of it, like a butterfly? If they understood, how could they fail to tremble?

Exodus 15:11: Who is like unto thee, O Lord, among the gods? who is like thee, glorious in holiness, fearful in praises, doing wonders?

I think that some of this attitude we have to Jesus being our buddy is attributable to something I have formerly brought up - cheap grace. It seems to me that many churches who emphasis a formal accept, believe, and confess salvation with the emphasis on grace have promoted a dumbed down, unholy version of Christianity, a Christianity devoid of self-discipline and discipleship in which the motto might as well be do-what-you-will because you are forgiven anyway.

Such a faith doesn't require anything of you since it teaches that you can never be in danger of losing your salvation. Oh sure, you might be a few stars short in your crown but never in danger of Hell, which is, so many teach, reserved for atheists and non-Christians, who may in fact every day of their lives humbly feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit prisoners and the sick, but who are not Christians in the sense that they recognise Jesus as God come in the flesh.

Jesus covers our many sins of ignorance. He stands between us and the Accuser before God. He is the only begotten Son of God without whom we have no hope. But He is also holy and doesn't suffer fools gladly. Following Christ requires holiness and self-discipline. As Paul says to the Hebrews 10:

For if we sin wilfully after that we have received the knowledge of the truth, there remaineth no more sacrifice for sins, but a certain fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation, which shall devour the adversaries. He that despised Moses' law died without mercy under two or three witnesses: Of how much sorer punishment, suppose ye, shall he be thought worthy, who hath trodden under foot the Son of God, and hath counted the blood of the covenant, wherewith he was sanctified, an unholy thing, and hath done despite unto the Spirit of grace?

It is the offended holiness of the Lord that set the cherubim east of the Garden of Eden with a fiery sword. It is the holiness of the Lord before which Moses is instructed to take off his shoes, and upon questioning who it was who addressed him, is told, I Am that I Am. God does not have any obligation to explain himself to humanity. God is not explainable. His thoughts are not our thoughts and his ways not our ways.

Later, on the mountain of revelation, all Israel must be cleaned and have fasted, and still stand off, neither man or beast touching the outskirts of the mountain.

Exodus 19:10 And the LORD said unto Moses, Go unto the people, and sanctify them to day and to morrow, and let them wash their clothes, and be ready against the third day: for the third day the LORD will come down in the sight of all the people upon mount Sinai. And thou shalt set bounds unto the people round about, saying, Take heed to yourselves, that ye go not up into the mount, or touch the border of it: whosoever toucheth the mount shall be surely put to death:

There shall not an hand touch it, but he shall surely be stoned, or shot through; whether it be beast or man, it shall not live: when the trumpet soundeth long, they shall come up to the mount. And Moses went down from the mount unto the people, and sanctified the people; and they washed their clothes. And he said unto the people, Be ready against the third day: come not at your wives.

In the emphasis on God's love, we seem to have taken away most of the majesty, most of what makes God, God. We take it away in our casual use of God's name, our quickness to attribute our understandings and our ways to God, in our glibness at grasping onto the notion of our salvation and then plastering it across every imaginable human construct.

Any person, confronted with the fact of the living God, with the majesty and fearsome nature of Him before whom the angels cover their faces, (I saw also the LORD sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple. Above it stood the seraphims: 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 the LORD of hosts: the whole earth is full of his glory, Isaiah 6) would say, like Isaiah,

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, the LORD of hosts.

Layla