Holy, Holy, Holy

God is love. (1 John 4:16)
God is spirit. (John 4:24)
God is light. (1 John 1:5)
God is a consuming fire. (Heb 12:29)

Consider this:  the only thrice-repeated attribute of God in the whole of the Bible is that He is "holy, holy, holy" (Isaiah 6:3; Revelation 4:8).  And yet, this is an often ignored and neglected attribute.  Why is this?  I have three complementary reasons.

First, we have become ignorant to what "holy" means and how it affects us.  We don't usually speak of things being holy and so it's a foreign concept.  As we go here I hope to clarify the idea of holiness.

Second, people ignore and neglect God's holiness because we are naturally alienated by the idea of holiness and people do not enjoy being alienated.  "Holiness" by definition means "separate" and "set apart".  Revelation 15:4 says God alone is holy:

Who will not fear, O Lord,
    and glorify your name?
For you alone are holy.
    All nations will come
    and worship you,
for your righteous acts have been revealed.

So God is holy and we are not and because of that there is a natural separation between us.  God's holiness means there is no evil in Him.  There is no sin in Him.  Yet we are sinful and so we are separated from God.  The Bible says "for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23).  "Fall short" literally means "lack", so all have sinned and lack the glory of God.

The truth is we have become so comfortable and familiar with our sin that holiness rubs us the wrong way.  Yet this is not an indictment of holiness--it is an indictment of the condition of our hearts.  We are like short-sighted children with a cut on our knee and rather than feel the cleansing sting of alcohol we embrace the infection.  To the degree we love our sin we will hate God's holiness.  This is because God hates our sin and so long as we embrace and love our sin we are in conflict with God.  When we begin to hate our sin we join God's team.

The third reason why we neglect and ignore the holiness of God is because holiness requires respect.  We want others to respect us but we have a hard time respecting others.  I was pulled over for speeding one time and I became so angry I wanted to verbally abuse the police officer who caught me.  That was until I saw the gun on his hip.  I respect the gun, and I respect the one who wields it as an enforcer of the law.

God is the enforcer of His own holiness.  God's holy nature means He cannot let sin go unpunished.  In fact, if He could He would not only be unholy but he would be unloving to allow injustice to go on unfettered.  The sin in me recoils at the thought of punishment and so rather than embrace God's holiness I want to run from it.  My nature does not want to respect God, but rather wants God to respect me.  It's all about me, me, me.  I have the right to do what I want to do (or so I think).  I want God to respect my right to do what's right in my own eyes.

When a king sits on his throne his subjects bow in respect.  The truth is, everyone will respect God in the end.  As Romans 14:11 says,

It is written:

“‘As surely as I live,’ says the Lord,
‘every knee will bow before me;
    every tongue will acknowledge God.’”

The takeaway here is that God's holiness is good.  We should embrace it, not run from it.  If it rubs us the wrong way it's because our sin hates it, but we should not.  When we embrace the God described in the Bible, we must embrace ALL of Him.  God is not a buffet that we can pick and choose what we want and leave the rest.  God is not whoever we want Him to be.  His name is "I Am Who I Am", not "I Am Who You Want Me To Be" (Exodus 3:14).  Let's ask God to forgive us of our sinful hearts and help us to embrace Him in His entirety.