A Truth to Believe

What does it mean that God is holy?

Holiness is God’s unique excellence. For God to be holy means that he is utterly and exclusively excellent and without sin. To say God is holy reveals that God is in a category of his own. He has no rivals, is perfect, and is superior over all. Thus, holiness is what identifies God as uniquely God.

Holiness is the essence of God’s nature and character, not one of his attributes. It is a word that summarizes God’s transcendence, supremacy, perfection, purity, and superiority. It sums up everything about God that sets him apart from us and identifies him as the sole object of our dread and worship. For God to be holy means that he is completely, totally, and absolutely separate and set apart from all other aspects of the created world. God’s holiness, therefore, undergirds all of his attributes.  

At the center of God’s holiness is his purity. God is morally perfect and cannot tolerate sin. Because God is holy, he commands his people to be holy as well. If something or someone other than God is holy, it is holy only because God sets it apart and restricts it for God’s unique use. Jesus, the embodiment of God’s holiness, is both the “Holy One” and the one who makes God’s people holy by setting them apart from sin.

And the four living creatures, each of them with six wings, are full of eyes all around and within, and day and night they never cease to say, “Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come!” (Revelation 4:8)

Something about Living

Whoever works his land will have plenty of bread, but he who follows worthless pursuits will have plenty of poverty. A faithful man will abound with blessings, but whoever hastens to be rich will not go unpunished. (Proverbs 28:19–20)

Patient urgency is not the same as anxious inactivity or frenetic hastiness.

A Quote

“Defend the Bible? I’d sooner defend a lion. You don’t defend the Bible; you open its cage and let it roar.”

C. H. Spurgeon

A Resource

Marriage is one of the greatest blessings of this age. Here are the books on marriage that we have been most helped by over the years.