Holy, Holy, Holy: How the Gospel Reveals God’s Character
Editor’s Note: As we think through the practical decisions and challenges we face as moms, the Creation-Fall-Redemption-Consummation framework can help us understand and apply the gospel. In this excerpt from her new book, Holier Than Thou, Jackie Hill Perry uses that same gospel-framework to explore one of God’s many attributes: holiness. We encourage you to think through this personally or discuss it with a friend or your kids. To help, we have included a few questions at the end. Let’s dig deeper and consider the amazing truth of God’s holiness!
There are times when our conversations around the holiness of God make it seem as if holiness is a part or piece of God. That God moves in between attributes when deciding how to be. That one day, He chooses to be loving. Another day, He chooses to be vengeful. That if God were a sweet potato pie, holiness is one slice of it that’s set aside from the others. On one plate is holiness; on another plate is love. However, holiness is not an aspect of God; holy is who He is through and through. His attributes are never at odds with one another, nor do they switch places depending on God’s mood; they are Him. When God loves, it is a holy love. When God reveals Himself as judge, pouring out His cup on the deserving, He has not ceased to be loving, or holy either. In all that He is and all that He does, He is always Himself.
Since holiness is essential to God, shining through all that He is and whatever He does, it means that there has never been or will ever be a time when God is not God. To say it another way, there will never come a day when God ceases to be holy; if that were possible, it would be the day He ceased to be God. Knowing that as an absolute and unmovable truth colors everything we understand about God’s ways and works.
Holiness Revealed in Creation
In creation, He was holy. Man was made to image His righteousness, and all the other things like the sky, the ground underneath it, and the animals on it were judged as good by God. When He applies the word to anything, He is telling the truth, for if anybody knows how to use it the right way it would be Him. The rich young ruler put “good” in his address to Jesus, to which Jesus asked him why. Why call Him good if only God is? This wasn’t a denial of He whose divinity was veiled. It was to say that the attribution of good as it related to Jesus was to tell the truth about who He really was. If good, then God. If God, then good. A good
God makes good things. Good? All of the time.
Holiness Revealed in the Fall
After the two goodie-two-shoes took them off to place their feet on unholy ground, the bad things came. With sin came judgment. As judge, God is holy still. Some finite folk can’t seem to reconcile this, that judgment is a good (holy) thing. I’m not omniscient in any way. I’m completely blind to the motives that move them to make up things about what should or shouldn’t be true about the Holy One, but if I had to guess, I’d say their lack of applause for God’s justice comes out of their desire for Him to be like them: unrighteous. If they had it their way, the guilty could go about life unpunished, freed from judgment as underneath the stayed gavel of God. The problem with that is this: to want God to withhold justice is to want God to make Himself an abomination. “He who justifies the wicked and he who condemns the righteous are both alike an abomination to the Lord” (Prov. 17:15). This would be for Him to become a loathsome, detestable being, more like Satan than Himself. It’s an impossible ask and borderline blasphemous, so as God is, He will remain. Holy and therefore just. “But the Lord of hosts is exalted in justice, and the Holy God shows himself holy in righteousness” (Isa. 5:16).
Holiness Revealed in Redemption & Consummation
In the redemption of souls, God is holy. Out of His righteousness, God gave a law. At first, it was to not eat. If obeyed by faith in the purity and worth of the lawgiver, the two garden misfits would’ve continued in His love. Refusing this, their nature was eventually inherited by every generation. One that loves the dark more than the Son. Born like them too, Israel was provided with a written law. A set of commands, good ones in fact, that imaged God in its insistence to do right by Him and others. None of them saw such behavior as a good thing, of course. Who wants to love God above all things when there are so many deficient alternatives for which to place our affections? The gods they collected were an incomplete thing. Like cisterns broken all up, wasting water all over the place. These lesser gods were unable to make anyone who trusts in them whole; neither could they transcend their created nature if ever they were asked to deliver. But, Israel loved their idols still, and so do we.
As is expected of God, then, judgment must come down on the heads of those with a hesitant “yes, Lord.” His righteousness will not allow the guilty to go unpunished. Scary, to fall into the hands of the living God, until we believe in the One who did so in our place. The cross reveals God’s holiness in how the sinless Son was judged on behalf of sinful people so that when God justifies the guilty, He does so without compromising His righteousness. The Holy Spirit is then sent to fill and sanctify us as a means of restoring our divine resemblance, helping us to wear the right clothes and two good shoes, wherein we “put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness” (Eph. 4:24). From the beginning with creation, in our redemption and eventual glorification, God’s holiness is revealed.
R|M Apply Questions for Reflection & Application:
God declared mankind “very good” in Genesis 1, and Ephesians 2:10 says we were “created in Christ Jesus for good works.” When we do good works each day in motherhood and beyond, how are we imaging God? What good works does this truth motivate you to practice today?
How does God’s judgment of sin demonstrate his holiness? What might it look like to explain this part of the gospel to your kids, and the beauty of grace, especially when they struggle with sin and disobedience?
Jackie uses the image of “broken cisterns” to describe idols and temporary pleasures that leave us empty inside? What “broken cisterns” are you turning to in everyday life and what steps could you take to turn away from them and back to God?
If you trust in Christ’s sacrifice already, how does the Holy Spirit help you put on “the new self” and obey God? What is one area of life that you will pray for the Spirit’s help to obey God today?
