"Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was, and is, and is to come." — Revelation 4:8b

I wouldn’t call myself a particularly speedy runner, but I did sprint in search of a pen recently. The catalyst? This colorful and insightful line in a book (Holiness Here by Karen Stiller, p. 8) about holiness:

        “Being holy is deeply associated in our culture with being a pain in the butt rather than being a balm to the soul.”

I suppose I can apologize if you’re sensitive to the word “butt.” (My young children are unfortunately oppressed and not allowed to say it, though one recently confessed to looking it up in the dictionary. I thought this was hilarious, and I’m proud he knows his way around a dictionary.) 

Regardless of our personal word rules, I’m sure we can all agree that writer Karen Stiller makes a compelling point. Is it possible we’ve completely misperceived holiness? What is holiness anyway?

What is Holiness?

R.C. Sproul describes holiness as primarily about “set-apart-ness” and secondarily about moral purity (find out more here). Neither the word “moral” nor “purity” goes down particularly easily in our culture, so perhaps it’s reorienting to view these words through the lens of goodness. That is, after all, what these words are getting at: that which is ultimately and truly good.

In trying to define holiness, it’s important to note that Scripture describes God as holy—or more accurately, “holy, holy, holy.” As Richard Lints observes, holy is “the only description of God repeated in the three-fold formula—a literary device to bring great emphasis. God is not just a little bit holy. God is REALLY, REALLY, REALLY holy" (Read his essay here).

As we chew on this, we realize God is good, the inventor and upholder of goodness—and of course, this sets him apart! No one is like God—no one is so unflinchingly, steadfastly good. The rest of us shape-shift, adjusting our morality as needed and deciding what to label “good” or “bad” based on our circumstances, environment, traditions, or inclinations. Many of us may even do good but with an inner posture that is decidedly not good: obsessed with its own goodness, hungry for glory, eager to be better than others. (Perhaps this is the origin of the “pain in the butt” associations.)

But this is not so with God. His goodness is gloriously immovable, forever unchanging, flowing from a heart that is centered on true, uncompromising goodness. We can trust that God will always call bad things “bad,” that he will always call good things “good,” and that he will not mix-up the labels to advance some nefarious agenda. (Consider how God’s holiness offers hope to the person who’s been harmed by something truly bad that others have dismissed or even relabeled “good.”)

We can trust God to be good, and we can trust him to help us understand what is truly good. This sets him apart from everyone else—“holy, holy, holy.”

Why Do We Fear God’s Holiness?

And yet, sometimes God’s holiness doesn’t seem like it’s particularly good for us. We envision him peering down from heaven with disgust and disappointment. We’re like Adam and Eve, covering up our spiritual nakedness and shame with fig leaves, trying to hide from God the way a kid hides behind his own hands. Sometimes his holiness scares us.

Three Old Testament glimpses help us understand this response:

Firstly, remember God’s holy presence on Mount Sinai. God commanded his people through Moses not to touch the mountain or they might die (Exodus 19:12).

Secondly, consider the part of the tabernacle called “the Holy of Holies.” Only the high priest could enter one day of the year after following a series of rituals designed to remind him to be “set apart” (Leviticus 16). Anyone violating this would die.

And thirdly, think about the prophet Isaiah. When he encountered God’s holiness, he cried out, “Woe to me! 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). 

In all of these situations, God’s holiness exposed humanity’s lack of holiness. The chasm between us is deeper than we could have imagined. In the face of true goodness, our Academy Award winning performances of goodness don’t hold up. We cannot curate personal PR campaigns or rationalize our evil thoughts and actions. Instead, we have to be honest: We aren't holy. We aren’t moral, pure, or good. We’re sinful, deserving punishment. We’re so clearly in need of rescue.

As we recognize our deep need, we fear God will be like others we’ve known: eager to lord his goodness over us. But God is set apart. We remember how God made a way for the Israelites to know him through mediators like Moses and the high priest. We notice the verse right after Isaiah cries out, “Woe is me!” God responds in two ways: he takes away Isaiah’s sin and guilt, and he commissions him to take a message to God’s people.

God’s holiness isn’t something he hoards for himself. His set-apartness and goodness flow out of him, graciously extended through a mediator to those who look to him.

When we recognize God’s holiness, we fear it—but we also realize that we want it, desperately.

Why Do We Want God’s Holiness?

Our holy God doesn’t overlook our sin or cram it into closets so visiting guests will think we’re shiny. There is no pretending. God actually dealt with our holiness problem: He himself came as a man—a mediator—living the holy life none of us could live, dying the shameful, punishing death we deserve, and stepping out of the grave in new life, proving that even death is no match for him. Truly, no one is like him!

When we look to Jesus, our mediator, God’s set-apartness and goodness flow to us! Our sin debt is paid, our shame is truly covered, and we are reborn into his holy family, being parented by him day by day to grow in holiness. We praise God for this—because once we know him, we long to be more like him.

Pursuing holiness isn’t about being a pain in the butt or being a person who flexes their moral muscles to impress others. Instead, pursuing holiness is about letting God’s definition of goodness become ours. It’s about learning from our Father what it looks like to genuinely flow this goodness to those around us. Of course, this will mean we are set apart! As we walk with him and enjoy his goodness, he slowly makes us holy.

I probably don’t need to convince you that the world is desperate for this healing balm: men, women, and children who cling to what is good and acknowledge what’s bad, who can’t be manipulated to switch the labels, who resist temptation to obsess over their own goodness because they know their goodness is borrowed from a holy God. It’s not about being shiny—it’s about being surrendered.

Here’s the truth: the holiness we fear is the holiness we want, the holiness we want is the holiness we have through Jesus—and the holiness we have through Jesus is the holiness the world needs. Today and every day, may the set-apartness and goodness that are ours in Jesus flow lovingly to the aching world around us.