THE GOD OF HOLINESS
One of the first biblical expressions of God’s holiness indicates that He is separate and above all the rest. “Who is like unto Thee, O Lord, among the gods? Who is like Thee, glorious in holiness, fearful in praises, doing wonders” (Ex. 15:11). In one of the last biblical expressions of God’s holiness His singular moral purity is emphasized. “Who shall not fear thee, O Lord, and glorify thy name? for thou only art holy; for all nations shall come and worship before Thee; for Thy judgments are made manifest” (Rev. 15:4). The last act in the great controversy drama between Christ and Satan will be a declaration from the lips of even the wicked that God is wholly just in His successful triumph over His accusers.
In Genesis God’s holiness is associated with the perfection of His works of creation. “And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified [made it holy] it; because that in it He had rested from all His work which God created and made” Gen. 2:3). The Sabbath stands separate from the other days of God’s created because His holiness attaches to the day. It is God’s presence that makes the seventh day holy. God’s resting place, or the place of His abiding presence is holy.
God’s holiness attaches to the house of God. The psalmist declares, “Holiness becometh thine house, O Lord, for ever” (Ps. 93:0. That which God marks as holy separates it from the common order of things and so becomes His possession. Both the Sabbath and His house are holy because of His presence. It is holy, because it is separated in devotion to God, and thus becoming peculiarly His possession, He rests or abides in it. Of the house it is written, “Let them make me a sanctuary; that I may dwell among them” (Ex. 25:8.)
God’s holiness expresses the perfection of moral excellence. He is the sole originator of holiness with no contributing outside source. His holiness is therefore the basis of reverence and adoration. It was because of this resplendent glory of moral purity that the psalmist exclaimed, “Holy and reverend is His name” (Ps. 111:9).
God’s holiness is the reason for His majesty. “His right hand, and His holy arm, hath gotten Him the victory” (Ps. 98:1). “Exalt the Lord our God, and worship at His holy hill; for the Lord our God is holy (Ps. 99:9).
God’s holiness is the standard of all moral goodness in the universe. Holiness is not only the inward character of God as perfect goodness, but holiness is the standard for consistency in all His activity. And further, holiness is a requirement for His morally responsible creatures. It is for this reason that we have the injunction, “Be ye holy, for I am holy” (1 Pet. 1:13). God’s holiness begets character that is wholly consistent with the character of God. God is perfectly free to do as He wills, but His freedom to choose and perform is always consistent with His moral purity. God’s holiness is not determined by something outside of Himself but within Him. He cannot contradict Himself and is therefore morally incapable of that which does not truly express His nature as holy. He cannot make evil good without ceasing to be God. God’s power to do anything is not limited by anything outside of Himself. But He is limited by His own divine nature or character. He cannot will anything contrary to His nature or in any way be untrue to Himself.
God’s holiness is the standard of goodness and is eternally opposed to sin. We read “Thou art of purer eyes than to behold evil, and canst not look upon iniquity” (Hab. 1:13). Again, “Who is able to stand before this holy Lord God?” (1 Sam. 6:20). Holiness is the standard of all good. Holiness is the repulsion of all evil.
God the Son is holy. He is God’s revelation of grace and truth. He has been given the redemption mission of Saviour of the world. It is by means of His mission that holiness in God can be known only by those who like Him are holy. He says, “Be ye holy, for I am holy” (1 Pet. 1:16). Holiness repels every approach of defilement. So the holiness of God may be known by sinful man only through the operation of God’s divine favor toward sinners which is grace.
The idea of sacrifice in the Scriptures carries with it the thought of uncleanness in the sinner who need purification. The sacrifice as a propitiatory act makes possible cleansing and holiness. The love of the Father finds its highest expression in the gift of His Son, but this gift is specifically declared to be a propitiatory offering for sin. By it man may be made holy and enter into fellowship with the Father. “Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (1 Jn. 4:10). God’s love made the offering or propitiation for sin which His holiness required. On account of our sin which is heart-alienation from God we needed the propitiation. God’s offering is a demonstration of His love for sinners.
The word “to be” is better omitted. Love sent the Son the propitiation for our sins, i.e., already a propitiation, the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.
The same thought underlies the familiar text, “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life (Jn. 3:16). The love of God rests upon His divine holiness as an unchangeable basis. God’s holiness was motivated by divine love to make this stupendous exhibition of the sacrifice. If love sent the Son, it was holy love that demanded the sacrifice—“our God is a consuming fire” (Heb. 12:29).
As a poet, Isaiah is greater than Shakespeare. His poetry depends not on rhyme or iambic feet but on the greater beauty of parallelism. It becomes lyrical poetry in whatever language it is translated. His figures of speech are legion. If you are an unbeliever, reading him is an intellectual delight; if you are a believer in the Lord, he is soul-thrilling to read.
When the Lord called him, the king had to suffer a permanent humiliating rebuke from the Lord—his remaining days pent in leprosy-isolation. He had led the nation brilliantly in economic and military success. Had there been an election, he would have won by a landslide. But at the height of his worldly glory, he indulged a sinful desire to “be like the Most High,” to usurp to his royal prestige the office of high priest—the nation’s pastor. Rarely has the Lord taken action so de pronto (another case was when “Herod, arrayed in royal apparel, sat upon his throne” and played God; “immediately the angel of the Lord smote him,” Acts 12:21-23; prompt judgments like these cause youth to think seriously).
Imagine the solemnity that permeated the populace as Isaiah began his ministry. The Lord had prepared the people this time to listen.
The heart-preparation the Lord gave young Isaiah is what every young minister or teacher must have if he honors the Lord: a thorough understanding of his own sinful unworthiness—combined with a glimpse of the glory of agape as the character of the Lord. What Isaiah saw (ch. 6) was a vision of our Savior in the heavenly sanctuary, “high and lifted up.” Probably this one vision contributed to his prophetic insights throughout his lifelong career, until cruel King Manasseh cut it short. For us today, the “vision” is very special: now the Lord high and lifted up ministers in the Most Holy Apartment.
Millions of Christians worldwide have last week devoted special attention to Isaiah 6, where the young prophet has this vision in the Temple of seeing “the Lord . . . high and lifted up.” It seems obvious that his vision was not of materialistic “glory” like watching a video of Queen Elizabeth’s royal grandeur; it was a vision of the character of the Lord, a heart-humbling appreciation of His glorious self-sacrificing love. The cry of “holy, holy, holy” was a revelation of the cross. The young Isaiah was overwhelmed with a humbling sense of his own sinful selfishness in contrast. It became the foundation of his entire lifetime of service. We are reluctant to move too fast from Isaiah 6.
“Woe is me!” he cries. “I am undone.” A steamroller has flattened me in the dust. I had thought I could devote my life to the Lord’s ministry, he says; now I see that “I am a man of unclean lips.” I have wandered into the “temple” of the Lord and I see I don’t belong here; my heart is polluted in contrast with the righteousness of Christ. So prayed Isaiah.
There was another man once who had a similar experience. The apostle Peter had spent some three years in the Lord’s special theological seminary and had felt quite qualified for apostolic “ministry.” Then when he had publicly blurted out three times his abject denial of Christ, he felt so crushed, so self-humiliated, so polluted in soul, that he threw himself on the ground and wished he could die. Lord, I’m finished! I can never be an apostle; I’m totally unworthy to be one of the Twelve; do let me die! So prayed Peter.
Sometimes the dear Lord lets us have cause to say, “All the day long have I been plagued, and chastened every morning” (Ps. 73:14). Then when we feel done in, another word from the Lord comes to mind, “Whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom He receiveth” (Heb. 12:9).
Isaiah could never have written his 53rd chapter about the cross of Christ unless he had experienced that self-abasement early on, in chapter 6. Someone somewhere is hungry to hear what happened on the cross of Christ; you talk about winning souls; well, if you can tell the story of the cross you’ll win souls. But you’ll never be able to tell it unless you have had your Isaiah 6, and knelt down beside him there, and knelt down beside Peter, too.
The Lord gave Isaiah a cosmic view of the great controversy which included his intimate view of the cross in chapter 53. “Woe” to anyone who presumes to preach or teach who has not had that self-humbling experience. (If someone responds, “It’s not my fault! The Lord hasn’t given me that vision-experience!” very well, then; don’t presume to preach or teach.) It’s not that the Lord wants to squash one with an overwhelming sense of His material glory. (We may have thought that is what Isaiah 6 is about.) That “glory” and “holy, holy, holy” was not a numbing experience; it was an awakening to full consciousness to the kind of love that led the Lord of glory to give Himself to the hell that was the second death on His cross. Every cell of Isaiah’s soul thrilled to the holy solemnity of self crucified “with Him.” For him, it was humanity becoming a “partaker of the divine nature” of agape. For us, it is unique to the cleansing of the sanctuary.
Isaiah is called “the gospel prophet” because fear is not his dominant appeal; he often rises to the level of New Covenant ministry. He is the Old Testament revelation of “Christ and Him crucified” the “objective” Gospel glorified. If the civil leadership of Judah had cooperated with him, together they could have evangelized their ancient world. But, as our Lesson suggests, there was “a crisis of leadership.”
In these last days, the message to Laodicea is not addressed to the people, but to the leadership of the church (“unto the angel of the church of the Laodiceans, write . . .”). It’s a much needed warning to all who serve in any capacity of leadership in the Lord’s church—even those who teach the little children in Sabbath School. But with the warning comes the assurance of Heaven’s rich blessing if we cherish the vision as Isaiah did, if we simply love it, as he did.
The Lord’s messenger applies Isaiah 6 especially to Seventh-day Adventists today: “The vision given to Isaiah [ch. 6] represents the condition of God’s people in the last days. They are privileged to see by faith the work that is going forward in the heavenly sanctuary” (Review and Herald, Dec. 22, 1896, written in the 1888 message era). What Isaiah’s vision meant to his ministry, our insight into the ministry of Christ in His closing work in the Most Holy Apartment means to our work for the world today. Christ has opened the door into the Most Holy Apartment. We are called to follow Him there, by faith; that’s what distinguishes us as Seventh-day Adventists from being Seventh Day Baptists.
As we pray for the Holy Spirit to be our Teacher, let us remember that He will minister to us “present truth”--the issue before us is His final work as our High Priest--a preparation for translation at the coming of Christ. What Isaiah’s ministry was to the ancient kingdom of Judah, the 1888 message which the Lord sent us “in His great mercy” is to this generation. This is because that “most precious message” was above all a call to follow Christ in that special final work of atonement—an understanding unique to Seventh-day Adventists. Remembering this will supply a missing glow that will make all these new lessons on Isaiah especially meaningful to you.
Sanctification is not by God repeatedly overdoing expressions of love, but by the sprinkling of blood. “Wherefore Jesus also, that He mighty sanctify the people with His own blood, suffered without the gate. Let us go forth therefore unto him without the camp, bearing His reproach” (Heb. 13:12, 13). Holiness and love in the nature of God assume the form of straightening us out by His favor toward sinners. It is by the uplifting and honoring of His sacrifice that we are sanctified.
This is the work of the Holy Spirit. In so doing He imparts holiness making it accessible to men. The term “Holy Spirit” affirms not only the nature of the Spirit as in Himself holy, but declares also that it is His office and work to make men holy. Holiness and love are closely joined together and identified in the Holy Spirit. “The love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us” (Rom. 5:5). He is at once the Spirit of holiness and the Spirit of love.
God’s holiness and love are closely identified in our Lord’s high priestly prayer: “I have declared unto them thy name [holiness], and will declare it; that the love wherewith Thou hast love me may be in them, and I in them” (John 17:26). Here is a revelation of both the holiness and love of God which is to be imparted or communicated through the Spirit. God’s holy name or nature must be declared with the revelation of God’s love. The Spirit by His hallowing, sanctifying act must uplift the sacrifice of Christ so that man identifies with the sanctifying blood of Christ, the propitiatory offering, before there can be any free inflow of divine love. There must be a partaking of His holiness before there can be the fullness of His love.
To be partakers of the divine nature is to share in both His holiness and His love. Jesus prayed, “I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one; and that the world may know that thou hast sent Me, and hast loved them, as Thou hast loved Me” (John 17:23).
Peter approaches this truth differently from Paul or John. “Elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ” (1 Peter 1:2). Again, “Seeing ye have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit unto unfeigned love of the brethren, see that ye love one another with a pure heart fervently” (1 Peter 1:22).
We may say then that our partaking of the divine holiness is by the sanctification of the Spirit; while our partaking of the divine love is explained to be because he hath given us of His Spirit.
More than 120 years ago the Lord in His great mercy sent a most precious message to the leadership of my church. It became known as “the message of Christ’s righteousness.”
Note: it was not the “message of Christ’s holiness.” There is a vast different between “righteousness” and “holiness.”
The Lord Jesus Christ was “holy” at His birth (cf. Luke 1:35); but He was “righteous” at His death (cf. Rom. 5:18). The glorious “plan of salvation” stretches between the “holiness” of Jesus at His birth and the “righteousness” of Jesus at His death on His cross.
For example, we read of the “holy angels,” but we never read of the “righteous” good angels who did not fall with Lucifer; they are always “the holy angels.”
The difference is spelled out clearly in Romans 8:3, 4, describing what happened in between Christ’s holy birth and His righteousness at His death on the cross: “God, sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh: that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.”
From His holiness at His birth, the Lord Jesus “took” upon His sinless nature (which He had brought from heaven) our fallen, sinful nature and “condemned sin” in that fallen, sinful nature; that's how “holiness” was transformed into “righteousness.”
No angel ever performed that feat, because no angel ever took “sinful flesh” to contend with, as we must do and as Christ “took” upon Himself. The vaults of heaven rang with the praise of Jesus Christ who accomplished that mighty deed; He proved that One can take our fallen, sinful nature or flesh, live in it, and yet “overcome” sin, defeat it, condemn it, in that same fallen, sinful nature (cf. Rev. 3:21). Satan, the great Enemy of God’s universe, has been defeated forever!
