The Beautiful, Amazing Holiness of God

God is holy. His holiness is His utter, infinite, and immeasurable perfection and purity. God is perfect in all of His ways – thought, word, and deed. God is The Creator. All that God creates is perfect without flaw, reflecting His perfection. Every part of His creation functions as designed and all the parts from the smallest to the largest make up a beautiful, integrated whole.

(OK. Full stop. I want to clarify what I mean by ‘perfect creation’. God created the heavens and the earth – and all of His creation was good, perfect, pure, and harmonious at the time of creation. In this part of the post I am, for the most part, referring to this original creation. This original creation still exists in heaven, according, for example, to Revelation 21 and 22 and is breaking out in our world in the Kingdom of God. But the same perfect creation on earth was corrupted by evil and sin. We can still see much of the grandeur, perfection, and beauty of God’s original creation on earth and in the universe, but it is no longer completely perfect. Corruption, death, frustration, pain, and futility, which were not part of God’s original creation, are now everyday realities for the universe and for all humanity — with that caveat, onward).

The totality of God’s holiness is beyond our comprehension. Isaiah writes:

“For My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts (Isaiah 55: 8, 9 NIV).

David echoes Isaiah and describes our only possible posture toward our holy God:

“I will exalt you, my God the King, I will praise your name for ever and ever. Every day I will praise you and extol your Name for ever and ever. Great is the Lord and most worthy of praise; His greatness no one can fathom” (Psalm 145: 1 – 3 NIV).

John describes God’s throne in heaven surrounded by four creatures.

“Day and night they never stop saying ‘Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was, and is, and is to come” (Revelation 4: 8 NV).

God’s glory is related to His holiness. Isaiah writes about the Lord’s holiness and glory:

“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty; the whole earth is full of His glory” (Isaiah 6: 3 NIV).

John Piper describes God’s holiness this way:

“When we say God is holy we mean that, along with the immeasurableness of His greatness, His character is unimpeachable. He cannot be charged with wrong. He has an infinite love for what is infinitely valuable and an infinite hate (His wrath – my words) for what opposes the infinitely valuable. His delight in praiseworthy things is unbounded, and his abhorrence of what is blameworthy is perfect”.

God, in the totality of His perfection, is the person of greatest value in the universe – the only thing in the universe worthy of our worship. He is the only true, real source of our ultimate value as human beings. Nothing can value us as God values us. We were created in His image and He intended us to be His image bearers in the world –literally rulers and priests: “You have made them (mankind) to be a Kingdom and priests to serve our God, and they will reign on the earth” (Revelation 5: 10 NIV).

While we get a glimpse of God’s holiness, for example in Scripture, God’s holiness is largely beyond our comprehension. We know He is absolutely and infinitely holy, which, among other things means absolutely and infinitely perfect. He is perfect in every aspect of His being – the place where he lives, and all that He says, thinks and does down to the smallest detail. His love is the manifestation of this perfection – perfect love casts out fear. If we could love with God’s perfect love, we would be holy also. “God is love” is the same as saying “God is holy”.

Perfect means that every aspect of God the Creator has no fault, flaw, or defect. As designed and originally created every aspect of His creation, from the scale of every molecule up to His greatest creations like galaxies; every principle and law, every word and thought all fit together in total harmony with no wasted energy or redundancy — no entropy (how does that work?). God’s creation is ordered and organized. Order is a big deal to God. Each component of His creation has value – creation would be imperfect if any part was left out or broke down. And each component of His creation reflects God’s glory back to Him and upon Him.

Every thing designed and created by God perfectly fulfilled its ultimate purpose and function. This is what God meant when He said “it is good”. The inner workings of His creation are unimaginably complex, harmonious, and beautiful. When we see, and better yet understand His creation (within the limits of our humanness), for example through scientific discovery or an artist’s picture of the world around them (which is close to the scientists’ sense of wonder), we are seeing God’s glory and glimpsing His holiness. Our natural response should be humility, awe, wonder, and the fear of the Lord, as we perceive, even dimly, the vast scope of His majesty and His power. Our natural response, for which we were created, is to praise Him and extol His name – worship. A short, powerful prayer is: “God, I ask for wonder“.

Here is another quote from John Piper that sums up the holiness and glory of God:

“The ultimate value in the universe is God – the whole panorama of all His perfections. Another name for this is God’s holiness – viewed as the intrinsic and infinite worth of His perfect beauty; or God’s glory – viewed as the outstreaming manifestation of that beauty. Therefore, ‘right’ must be ultimately defined in relation to this ultimate value, the holiness or the glory of God – this is the highest standard for ‘right’ in the Universe” (The Future of Justification – A Response to N. T. Wright, pg. 64).

His perfection is expressed in His goodness, mercy, love, beauty, and even His wrath. His laws are perfect, designed to bless His creation. His holiness revealed in His perfection is the standard by which everything else is measured and defined – good, beautiful, righteous, and valuable are defined by who God is and what He has created.

Lets come back to that caveat at the beginning of the post: You might say: “Wait a minute. Creation is far from perfect. In fact, it is a real mess”. Yes, it is a fallen world. As I wrote above, God’s original, perfect creation was corrupted and subjected to decomposition and futility by evil and human sin. But as it was originally created it was perfect. In our world and the universe we can still see glimpses, and at times more than glimpses, into God’s perfect creation. For one thing, we can look at Jesus. John Stott writes:

“It (creation) still works, for the mechanisms of nature are fine-tuned and delicately balanced. And much of it is breathtakingly beautiful, revealing the Creator’s hand. But it is also in bondage to disintegration and frustration” (‘Romans: God’s Good News for the World, pg 239).

Paul tells us:

“For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God. We know that the whole of creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies” (Romans 8: 20 – 23 NIV).

Human sin caused God (the ‘one’ to whom Paul refers) to judge, condemn, and punish His creation – to subject creation to frustration (see Genesis 3: 17, 18; “Cursed is the ground ”); that is, His wrath. How much did that break God’s heart? The Greek word for frustration means emptiness, futility, and meaninglessness. God’s wrath is not reserved for His created beings like angels and humans – it extends to His entire creation. He judged His masterpiece and, in His wrath, condemned it to ‘frustration’ and pain (but not annihilation!). Why did God do that? – because of His holiness.

But there is good news – the Kingdom of God is here, inaugurated by Jesus – heaven has broken into the kingdom of the world, although not yet perfectly, according to God’s plan. The Kingdom and the Kingdom gift – the indwelling Holy Spirit – are here now, but are also the guarantees and promises of what is to come. God’s light is overtaking darkness because good defeated evil at the cross – Jesus was victorious – and the restoration of creation is underway. The resurrection is not only part of our guarantee but points to what this restored life will look like – victory over death. Hallelujah!

In the next post I want to look more closely at creation, because there is an ‘elephant in the room’. Evil, and evil’s weapon sin, are obviously part of creation. Where did they come from? Where there is no sin, there is no wrath, so it seems to me that an understanding of the origin of evil and sin is critical to a deeper understanding of the wrath of God.

Grace and peace Brothers and Sisters,

John