What is “holiness’’? Contrary to what you may hear today in some sermons and popular Christian songs, the emphasis in the Bible is on the holiness of God and not on the love of God. The idea of love is central in God, but holiness is central in love. God’s love is a holy love. The Bible states that “God is light’’ (1 John 1:5) as well as well as, “God is love’’ (4:8, 16) but love without holiness would be a horrific thing that would destroy God’s law, while holiness without love would leave zero hope for the lost sinner. Both are divinely balanced works of God emanating directly from His person or being. God’s holiness isn’t simply the absence of defilement; a negative thing like it is for Mankind who is made righteous by Christ. The holiness of God is positive and active. It’s the core essence of God’s nature and holiness can only come from God. It is a state or condition whose only source is God.
The Hebrew word for “holy’’ that Moses used in Leviticus means “that which is set apart and marked off, that which is different.’’ The Sabbath was holy because God set it apart for His people (Exodus 16:23). The priests were holy because they were set apart to minister to the Lord (Leviticus 21:7–8). Their garments were holy and could not be duplicated for common use (Exodus 28:2). Anything that God said was holy had to be treated differently from the common things of life in the Hebrew camp. In fact, the camp of Israel was holy, because the Lord dwelt there with His people (Deuteronomy 23:14). The ground where Moses stood at the Burning Bush was holy, therefore Moses needed to remove His sandals.
Then he said, “Do not come near; take your sandals off your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.” Exodus 3:5 (Acts 7:33)
Our English word “holy’’ comes from the Old English word halig which means “to be whole, to be healthy.’’ That word in turn came from the original Greek word hagios/ἅγιος which meant "likeness of nature with the Lord” or something set apart. A related word “sanctify’’ comes from the Latin sanctus hagiazo/ἁγιάζω in Greek which means “consecrated, sacred, blameless.’’ We use the word “sanctification’’ to describe the process of growing to become more like Christ and “holy’’ would describe the result of that process.
The religion of the nations in Canaan was notoriously immoral and involved worshipping idols and consorting with temple prostitutes, both male and female. The mythological deities of Greece and Rome weren’t much better. Jump forward up to today and we see the religion of ‘no God’ and the cults of Science and postmodernism and we quickly realize mankind is just as heathen and pagan as they have always been. Because of this reason, God commanded His people to stay away from their altars and shrines and to refuse to learn their ways (Ex. 23:20–33; Deut. 7:1–11). Just as Christian believers should avoid emulating the secular mores and commercial cultic behavior of consumerism or even democracy.
The entire Levitical sacrificial system declared to Israel that “the wages of sin is death’’ (Romans 6:23) and “the soul who sins shall die’’ (Ezekiel 18:4). God hates sin, but because He loves sinners and wants to forgive them, He provides a substitute to die in the sinner’s place in the form of Christ’s death and Resurrection. God created a holy priesthood in Leviticus 8 through the ordination of Aaron’s sons and in every believer after Christ’s Resurrection (1 Peter 2:9). He made Israel a holy people if they were obedient and repentant of their sins. He gave them a Promised/Holy land. He even gave them a Holy Savior to atone for their failure in sin.
As God’s holy people in a holy land, they were to be a nation or kingdom of priests (Exodus 19:6). Everything in the life of the Old Testament Jew was either holy and set apart for God’s use or common. The common things were either ‘clean’ so the holy people could use them or ‘unclean’ and it was forbidden for holy people to use them. The Jews had to be careful to avoid what was unclean; otherwise, they would find themselves “cut off from the people’’ until they had gone through the proper ceremony to be made clean and separated holy again.
A Christian is no longer in need of keeping these laws as the Israelites were but the idea of a Christian being separated from the sin of the world still holds. The popular understanding of non-believers it is thought that Christians (and Jews) keep themselves aloof because they think they’re better. This is usually not true. We stand at a distance because we know that we are often only one bad decision away from slipping back into entrench sins that we battled greatly in our previous non-believing lives. We know how flawed we are and don’t wish to repeat the same mistakes we made that drove our lives off a cliff. We barely survived the first time, the second time around would likely be deadly for us physically and/or spiritually.
Christians are supposed to be “a holy nation’’ and to “…declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light’’ (1 Peter 2:9). The Greek word translated ‘declare’ means “to tell out or to advertise.’’ The holy nation of Israel in Canaan, Just like Christians within every nation today with its holy priesthood, are to reveal to the nations around them the glory and excellencies of the living God. When Christians start to live like the non-believer and become synced to them, they robbed God of His glory and strip themselves of the holiness the Spirit imparts into them. They crowd out the Spirit in their lives. When the believer is no longer distinguishable from the unbeliever they are no longer visibly or behaviorally separated for God’s use being holy. That is why the old saying rings so true: Be in the world…not of it. Engage to declare the Gospel but do not be the world. Not better, different. Truthfully, we're out of phase to the world. We're on a different wave in the same ocean. Same seas but different source of stones. Same water different storms. Above it all, God's guiding light.
God redeemed
Israel in the Exodus and adopted them as a people that would be
different throughout history (Exod.
19:6). God wanted Israel to be a beacon to the nations (Isaiah 42:6). He did
not tell all the Israelites to take this light to those in darkness, but to
live before others in the Promised Land. He would attract others to them and to
Himself (1 Kings 10) and Naaman (2 Kings 5). However, Israel failed. They
preferred to be a nation like all the other nations (1 Samuel 8:5). They became
the world. God has now made the Christian the bearer of His light. God has not
told us to do just the opposite…to be proactive holy emissaries going to the
ends of the earth with the gospel (Matthew 28:19-20).
