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What is holiness? White hot love


Bible words have Bible meanings." So said Alec Motyer. Or maybe David Jackman. Probably both. What is holiness? You can go down the Hebrew etymology route and focus on separation and consecration. You can go down the systematic theology route and look at the Creator's transcendent otherness or his absolute purity (in him there is no darkness at all). But what about a biblical theology approach?

The garden-city-temple

The first reference to holiness is to the seventh day (Gen. 2:3) - not just a separate day but a blessed day, a day of God's rest, God's satisfaction in and enjoyment of his good creation, focused on the garden-temple where the LORD dwells with humanity amid beauty and abundance. The last reference in the Scriptures is to the Holy City (Rev. 21:2, 10; 22:19) - the bride, the bejeweled ephod, the holy of holies, the blessed garden city where access to the tree of life is restored.

As Richard Coekin has pointed out, in the same way that a beautiful garden is not simply the absence of weeds but the presence of flowers, so holiness is not simply the absence of evil but the presence of goodness, life, fruitfulness, beauty, fullness, God himself.

The fire of jealous love

In the Pentateuch the key manifestation of God’s holiness is fire. Moses is told to take off his shoes at the burning bush because this is "holy ground." Fire comes out of the presence of the LORD in Leviticus 10 and the LORD says he will be "proved holy" (v3).

And that fire is his jealous love. At the end of Song of Songs – "love is as strong as death, its jealousy as unyielding as the grave; it burns like a blazing fire, like the very flame of God; many waters cannot quench love." God is holy. God is love. God is a consuming fire. And those three identifications are very closely related. 

God's love is primarily the Father's jealous love for his Son - if you reject and dishonour his Son he burns against you and will consume you. But the wonderful news of the gospel is that you can be included in the love of the Father and Son - to be as loved as intensely as the Son. The Father loves the Son so much he wants him to be honoured by a multi-ethnic multitude - so he gives a people to be united to the Son by the Spirit, safe from his consuming fire by being hidden in the heart of the holy fire itself. 

Coming towards to cleanse and make holy

This aspect of the white hot, fierce, fiery, jealous love coming towards sinners – is seen several time in the Old Testament. Sometimes it comes as the consuming fire of judgment – as with Nadab and Abihu (which is itself actually love towards the people as a whole who are being cleansed of false leaders who will lead them astray with their innovations). But often the 'coming towards' is positive and personal. In the tabernacle system you find that although holy things are usually defiled by contact with unholy things, there are some super-holy things (sacrifice, altar) which actually make other things holy when they touch them (Ex. 29:37; Lev. 6:18, 27).

Isaiah hears the seraphim (literally the 'burning ones') thundering: "Holy, holy, holy" and then the very next action is that a burning one takes a live coal from the altar fire – from the super-holy place of super-holy sacrifices – to touch Isaiah. The prophet who was convicted of his dirtiness finds cleansing literally flying towards him and then he is sent out on mission. 

Later in Isaiah comes the great verse 57:15: "For this is what the high and exalted One says - he who lives forever, whose name is holy: “I live in a high and holy place, but also with the one who is contrite and lowly in spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly and to revive the heart of the contrite." That’s holiness. Not a distant thing but One who comes near to dwell with man to revive.

Mercy

In Numbers 20 where Moses strikes the rock instead of speaking to it the big problem is that he has obscured God’s holiness. "You did not trust in me enough to honour me as holy in the sight of the Israelites" (v12). God had prepared a display of his holiness in mercy to the people – giving gushing water to incredibly undeserving grumbling people – and Moses obscured that holy mercy (in a similar way to Gehazi obscuring God's free grace in 2 Kings 5). 

Hannah's song in 1 Sam. 2 (echoed centuries later by Mary) makes much of the holiness of the LORD. And how is his holiness expressed? In turning the tables. In bringing down the mighty and lifting up the lowly. In 'mercy' (Luke 1:49-50).

Hosea 11:9: "For I am God, and not a man - the Holy One among you." What is the apodosis (the statement immediately before)? "I will not carry out my fierce anger." In love and kindness and compassion (Hosea 11:1-8), even though they deserve devastation, and though any 'man' would destroy them, he will relent. That is his holiness. 

Jesus

Even the demons know that Jesus is "the holy one of God" (Mark 1:24). In him we see the incarnation of the white hot jealous flame of the LORD - burning sacrificial love, coming towards sinners in mercy, touching the leper and communicating to him cleanness and wholeness. And we see him tirelessly preaching the gospel – as again Richard Coekin has insistently pointed out – when holiness took flesh he was an evangelist - a key aspect of Jesus’ holiness was his evangelism - that was the chief way in which he communicated love, mercy, cleansing, fullness.

Being made holy

We could look at the great covenant dynamic (in both OT and NT): "Be holy because I am holy"- the great story (again in both OT and NT) of God taking a people for himself to be his people and be like him. We could see that this is something that primarily God does: "I am the LORD who makes you holy" (Ex. 31:13; 1 Thess. 5:23). We could trace (in OT and NT) the way holiness is both a Position/Status that has been given by God (you are a holy people) and an Action/Calling to live in obedience. When we do that we find that, interestingly, holiness is far more often Position/Status and whenever it is something for us to actively live out it is explicitly because of what we are (imperative flows from indicative).

But what is the actual content of that holiness that should mark God's people? Three big elements:

  1. Keeping from sexual immorality (Lev. 18; Eph. 5; Acts 15:20) -  why? Because it is a perversion of true love; it is a defacing of the great gospel picture that is marriage - the strong-as-death, unquenchable love of the bridegroom for the bride. 
  2. Loving your neighbour as yourself, particularly the foreigner, the enemy, those who are difficult to love or undeserving of love (Lev. 19; Col. 3; 1 Peter) - why? Because that is the very essence of holiness - coming towards sinners in mercy.
  3. Broadcasting the gospel - as Christ was a holy evangelist, as a holy nation declares the praises of him who saved us (1 Pet. 2:9) - why? Because this is what makes the white hot love of the LORD manifest and receivable. 

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