Cornerstone #3 - Nature of God: Holy

Having proposed my first two "cornerstones" and elaborated on them -- whether or not to your satisfaction I'll allow you to determine -- allow me now to establish my third. It has to do with the nature of God himself. That's a daunting area of exploration, given that almost by definition he is unknowable to us, there being such a wide gulf between his nature and ours. But that's why my second cornerstone, the Bible as God's special revelation, is so critical. Because if we are to hold to cornerstone #2 as true, then we can discern some things about God's nature.

That nature is, in a word, "Holy." That word has little meaning to us today, as it's not used much except in this context, and the meaning is for most people something along the lines of "righteous."

But I have come to understand that the meaning of the word "Holy" has a more fundamental meaning, and that meaning is "Set Apart" or "Different." And that's something we as contemporary humans suffer from, I think -- a mistaken understanding that God is somehow "like us," or "comparable to us." When in fact, he is not. He is quite different. Staggeringly different.

This is what the Bible tells us ... over and over again. Moses, a man who the Bible portrays as perhaps the most righteous man in God's eyes ever, is prohibited from seeing God's face (in other words, his full glory). Moses is permitted to see only God from behind, and even then Moses' face radiates the glory he witnessed, so much so that the Israelites cried out and demanded Moses place a veil over his face. Isaiah, in a vision, sees something of the glory of God and cries out, '"Woe to me!" I cried. "I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the LORD Almighty."' (Isaiah 6:5, NIV)

In all cases those in the Bible who are given the opportunity to see something of God's glory immediately see the striking contrast with themselves. The glorious perfection of God Almighty compared to the lowliness of our condition.

When the Bible speaks of "fearing" the Lord, this is what it refers to -- not that we must live in fear of some capricious and arbitrary harm, but that we must understand that mighty glory of Him and the pitiful nothingness of us by comparison.

Unfortunately, we no longer do that much, do we? We view God as some amiable grandfather type, welcoming everyone to come or go in God's presence as they please, treating God with regard or contempt ... it doesn't matter because God will chuckle and forgive, like a good grandfather always does to his preciocious grandchildren.

We have, in effect, lowered God to our level. Worse, we have elevated ourselves above God.

I assert that the Christian faith makes little sense absent a view of God as utterly above us, beyond our comprehension of goodness, perfection and glory. If God were little more than a mallable grandfather type, little different from ourselves, willing to forgive and forget nearly every transgression, why then would someone have to die on our behalf? That makes no sense.

I firmly believe that the more one comes to comprehend the vast gulf between themselves and God, the more they will come to appreciate what was done on their behalf by God incarnate in the form of Jesus Christ. Only then will our sins be seen as what they are -- requiring a just response from a perfect God.

How truly amazing it is when one grasps on the one hand the Glory of God, and on the other God's willingness to humble himself in the form of man, to be ridiculed and abused and nailed to a cross, all on our behalf, so that through the sacrifice of Christ our sins will be atoned for, forgiven not through our efforts but through Christ's and Christ's alone.

So, there is cornerstone #3 -- the nature of God as "Holy" -- beyond measure different from us, utterly perfect in every way. By comparison, we are nothing ... which takes me to my next cornerstone -- very much related to this -- which will be in a separate post.