Holiness As Devotion to the Good

It is the first week of 2015, did you start a plan to read through the Bible in a year?  I have set out to do it many times, but have never followed through all the way.  I have read the whole Bible within the span of a year, but never by following a plan.  If you have tried one of these plans, you have probably noticed that some reading plans bounce you around the Bible like a game of pong, while others jog straight through from the beginning.  It is an almost universal experience that those who set out to read straight through the Bible push hard through Genesis and Exodus, but the plan crashes to pieces on the bloody pages of Leviticus.  And this is understandable, because Leviticus is exhausting.  I believe that the exhausting nature of Leviticus is part of the point of the book.  When you finish Leviticus, you should be worn out from all the blood and the sacrifice and the ritual.  But why?    

I think that a good summary verse of the book is in chapter 10, after God has struck down Aaron's sons for offering up their own DIY recipe as a sacrifice: "And Moses said to Aaron, 'This is what the Lord spoke, saying: 'By those who come near me I must be regarded as holy; and before all the people I must be glorified.' '  So Aaron held his peace" (Lev. 10:3 NKJV).  It is the biggest thing for sinners to come into the presence of the God of holiness.  We are told in Hebrews to come boldly into the presence of the Father in Christ, and so we should.  Leviticus reminds us of why it takes so much boldness.  The Bible is full of this kind of thing, if we look; "I will make him draw near, and he shall approach me, for who would dare of himself to approach me?  Declares the Lord" (Jer. 30:21b). Or, "...Let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire" (Heb. 12:28b-29). When Leviticus foreshadows the work of Christ to enable us to draw near to God, it gives exhaustive instructions.  This is because the gulf between sinful people and the holy God that is being crossed is greater than we ever let ourselves imagine.  By those who will dare to draw near, God must be regarded as holy!

If we are going to regard him as holy, we need a basic understanding of what that means.  There is obviously much that could be said here, but I want to motion towards a few important things.  While we generally gloss the word "holy" with the phrase "set apart," my brilliant Old Testament professor Peter Gentry regularly made a big deal of saying that a better gloss is "devoted."  As I have considered that over the years, it has born fruit in my thinking.  I encourage you to do the same.  God is devoted to his righteousness, devoted to his glory, devoted to his covenant.  For us, holiness means being devoted to God.

This leads to the related point that we should view God's holiness as primarily active rather than reactive.  Let me explain.  Imagine God in eternity past, before the creation of the heavens and the earth.  Was he holy?  What did that holiness look like before the heavens and the earth were brought into being, before sin?  Whatever it looked like (and we should admit we can get only a tiny glimpse at best), I don't think it was defined reactively, against sin.  When we commonly think of the word "holiness," we often think about a lack of sin, about not sinning.  This is true and accurate, but it makes sin the reference point.  But since there is no sin in God, and God has been holy for all eternity, the reference point for holiness should not be sin, but righteousness and love and glory.   Holiness has been around much longer than sin has.  God is the ultimate reference point.

This sheds light on the understanding of holiness as devotion.  It is not merely a set-apartness, defined by what God is not; but it is a devotion to who and what God is.  God's holiness is his devotion to all that is good, it is his passionate, fierce love among the members of the Trinity, delighting in what they see in one another, rejoicing in truth goodness, and beauty.  This will include a hatred for sin, but is far bigger and more exciting than that.

One staggering implication of all of this is that when he justifies us and declares us to be righteous in Christ, his holiness is directed towards us.  This may be different than what we think when we gloss "holy" with "set apart."  If we think of God's holiness as his being set apart, his being "other," then we think of it primarily in regards to his distance from us.  If his holiness is his devotion to all that is good and righteous, and if we are righteous in Christ, then his passionate, burning devotion is aimed squarely at us.  It is no wonder that Paul says that the love of Christ surpasses knowledge.

God is holy.  Let us draw near boldly in Christ.