Holiness

Holy, holy, holy

And they were calling out to one another: “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of Hosts; all the earth is full of His glory.”

Isaiah 6:3

The seraphim whom Isaiah saw in the temple call God holy three times over. The Hebrew word, qadosh (קָדוֹשׁ), carries above all the sense of being set apart. God is exalted over every creature, beyond comparison: "There is no one holy like the LORD," Hannah sang (1 Samuel 2:2). Holiness is also moral purity. "Your eyes are too pure to look upon evil," Habakkuk prays (Habakkuk 1:13); nothing evil can mix with God.

So Isaiah, standing before the holy God, cries out, "Woe is me, for I am ruined" (Isaiah 6:5). Matthew Henry comments: "We are undone if there is not a Mediator between us and this holy God" Matthew Henry. Yet Isaiah's lips are cleansed with a coal from the altar, and he is sent. The holy God does not only dwell on high; he says, "I dwell in a high and holy place, and with the oppressed and humble in spirit" (Isaiah 57:15).

The God who makes holy

In Scripture, for a person or thing to be holy does not mean that it holds some mysterious power, but that it belongs to God and is set apart for him: the ground before the burning bush, the Sabbath, the tabernacle and the priests. God told his people, "Be holy because I, the LORD your God, am holy" (Leviticus 19:2), and Peter passes the same word on to the church (1 Peter 1:16).

The New Testament calls believers by the word for holy, hagios (ἅγιος): they are ‘holy ones’, or saints. "We have been sanctified through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all" (Hebrews 10:10). Believers are first set apart as God's own through Christ, and then grow in holiness of life by the Spirit; this is sanctification. Holiness also colours every other attribute of God: his love is holy love and his power holy power. That is why Jesus taught his disciples to begin their prayers, "Our Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name" (Matthew 6:9).

How holy can we become?

All the traditions confess the holy God and his work of making his people holy. They differ over how far a believer can grow in holiness in this life. Lutheran and Reformed churches teach that sanctification grows throughout life, but that believers struggle with sin to the end. John Wesley and the Methodist and holiness movements after him taught that Christian perfection, loving God and neighbour with the whole heart, can be given by grace in this life Wesley, A Plain Account of Christian Perfection. The Catholic Church teaches that all the faithful are called to holiness Lumen Gentium 40, and the Orthodox churches speak of growth in holiness above all as union with God. All hold to the word: "Pursue peace with everyone, as well as holiness, without which no one will see the Lord" (Hebrews 12:14). See the lesson What God is like.