Thanks for stopping by! This is Day 25 of my 2015 “31 Days Reflecting on God” series. Find the rest over here.
Each one of the four living creatures had six wings and was full of eyes all around and inside. They never rest day or night, saying:
“Holy Holy Holy is the Lord God, the All-Powerful,
Who was and who is, and who is still to come!”
Revelation 4:8
Holy. A word we rarely use unless referring to God or church things. Or in the random euphemism like “Holy cow!” (Really? Where do we get these things?)
Holy seems so…holy. There is a church word people use to describe God sometimes: transcendent. It’s not in the Bible but it means “going beyond the ordinary limits” and with God those limits are the universe, time, etc. Basically, God is bigger than everything we know in time and space. He’s over and above everything. The Bible describes God that way. He’s a big God.
So what does holy mean? If you walk into a sacred church building you might feel a holy “aura” around the objects there. You might feel like you’re in a place where nothing should be touched but only observed. Is this what God is like?
Multiple times in the Bible we read that gorgeous, powerful angels hover around God ‘s throne singing “Holy, holy, holy!” over and over again, without stopping.
The word “holy” at its roots means something set apart in a certain way for a specific purpose. It definitely carries an idea of God being unlike anything else and above everything else. We certainly can use this reminder in our daily lives.
Even as I’ve been writing these devotional reflections, I find it hard not to bring God to my level, to compare him to what I know, or to label him in a certain way to wrap my mind around him. I am created in God’s image, however, not the other way around! I could paint a picture of myself and it would have my likeness, but it wouldn’t be me. God made us to reflect who he is, but we are not him. He stands far above us in so many ways.
Yet does that keep him far away? He hates sin. He is separate from sin in every way. James writes that he can’t even be tempted by sin. So when we deliberately walk in sin, we cannot draw close to him.
God wouldn’t allow sin to keep us away from knowing him personally, though. He stepped down into our world as a human, as Jesus, and sin touched him, deeply and personally at the cross. When Jesus hung, dying, the world grew dark and God laid the blame for our ugly sin on his son’s holy shoulders and turned away. Jesus screamed out, “My God, why have you forsaken me?” It caused Jesus so much pain to draw us close to God’s holiness.
So when we lay down our sin at the cross and trust Jesus, he cleanses us from all our unrighteousness and opens the door for us to approach God’s holy throne.
He is set apart. Holy and pure. And he is above and beyond everything we know. Yet he has personally drawn near so we can know and love him. How rich we are to know such a good and gracious God.