What is God like? Infinitely holy!

“The Lord Almighty will be exalted by his justice, and the holy God will be proved holy by his righteous acts.” (Isaiah 5:16)

Who is God? What is God? In this blog series so far we have been looking at aspects of what God is – how He is distinctly unlike us. Now we’re moving onto talking about who God is: His character. See how God describes Himself to Moses: “The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children and their children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation.” (Exodus 34:6-7)
We continue to see that God is unlike us. Nevertheless we’ll see as we go how God calls us (and helps us by the Holy Spirit) to grow into some of these attributes for ourselves, even though we can only do so partially.


Perfect holiness

First up we have God’s holiness. Holiness is God’s “other-ness”, how He is distinctly unlike humanity in His character. We see this “other-ness” particularly in God’s perfection of character: His righteousness and justice, and His perfect wisdom.

When Isaiah sees a vision of God and hears the angelic beings around God’s throne sing that He is “Holy, holy, holy,” he immediately knows he’s in trouble – because in his impure state he can’t survive being close to such otherworldly perfection (see Isaiah 6:1-5). The rest of the Bible makes Isaiah’s problem clear: God is perfectly righteous – that is, He acts perfectly in accord with right; He is the ultimate standard of right. God is perfectly just – that is, He always does what is right and fair. Lots of Psalms remind us about this (see Psalm 7:11; 96:13; 145:17). We know that when the Bible speaks of God’s wrath (e.g. Revelation 19:15) we’re not meant to envisage the hot-headed selfish anger that we so often see in ourselves. As Rico Tice reminds us in the Christianity Explored course, God’s wrath is His settled, controlled hostility to all that is evil and wrong in the world.

Perfect wisdom

A related attribute is God’s perfect wisdom. How can He act consistently rightly? How can He rule and judge the world consistently rightly? Because He is infinitely wise. So when Job is considering where true wisdom is to be found, he concludes that it’s to be found only in God. And so for humans, the first and most important step in gaining any measure of wisdom is to fear God (see Job 28:20-28).

God’s holiness presents a problem for Isaiah, and also for us. Nevertheless in His perfect wisdom, God is able to cleanse and purify us from our unholiness, our unrighteousness, our injustice. In Isaiah 6 God sends one of His angelic attendants to touch Isaiah’s lips with a burning coal from the altar, symbolising burning off his imperfections to make him fit to serve as God’s messenger. It’s a huge act of grace considering the state of God’s people at the time!

If you go out to eat somewhere posh enough to have a dress-code and you turn up in ripped jeans and trainers, you’re in trouble! Turning up before God in the filth of our sinfulness is infinitely worse!

In the New Testament we find out how God manages to achieve this purification. In Romans 3:21-26 Paul explains how Jesus cleanses us from our unrighteousness by His death on the cross, taking our guilt upon Himself and giving us His righteousness. In our fine dining analogy this is like Jesus swapping clothes with us so we can get into the restaurant looking smart – but infinitely greater, because we’re getting into eternal joy with God on the basis of Jesus’ perfection. Paul overflows with praise, but he doesn’t stop there: He explains how this means both that God is able to stay just (because sin gets punished) and to justify us (that is, to make us just/righteous/pure/clean). 

What next?

Having been made clean, righteous and holy, God calls us to live out our holiness. So Peter writes to his exiled church family, “Therefore, with minds that are alert and fully sober, set your hope on the grace to be brought to you when Jesus Christ is revealed at his coming. As obedient children, do not conform to the evil desires you had when you lived in ignorance. But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do; for it is written: ‘Be holy, because I am holy.’” (1 Peter 1:13-16). This doesn’t mean that God gets us clean and then we have to stay clean in our own strength. The power to live a holy life is found in the grace of Jesus. God implants in us a desire to live as His children and a joyful expectation of future grace as we live in hope of heaven. And He provides us His Holy Spirit to grow holiness in us. What a privilege that God chooses to make us more like Him in this way!