1 Samuel 2:2 “There is none holy like the LORD; there is none besides you; there is no rock like our God.”

Last week, I wrote on personal holiness, but we cannot be personally holy until we understand the base of holiness. We need to understand about God's holiness and what it means. Too many people equate holiness with righteousness which is not true. Righteousness leads towards holiness, but it is not interchangeable – there are two different ideas between the two words. “Holy” (or “kedushah” in Hebrew) means “To be set apart” and it refers to God as the reference point. God is Holy and the entire old testament revolves around the Holiness of God. God's grace, mercy, and justice are all offshoots that point back to His Holiness.

Holiness also means “exalted or worthy of complete devotion as one perfect in goodness and righteousnes” (according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary) as well as “pertaining to the Divine” and “devoted entirely to the deity or the work of the deity.” God claims that only He is holy (Isaiah 40:25) and that therefore we, being adopted into His holy family are cleansed and made holy like Him (Ezekiel 20:41, Romans 11:16). We are to “put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.” (Ephesians 4:24) But to do this means we need to understand the root of our newfound holiness.

God - the creator, the saviour, the eternal, the all-providing, the almighty, the I AM – has set Himself apart from His creation. He reaches down and offers to help us and to aid us, to draw us to Him and to redeem us. He wanted fellowship and true companionship with His creation, so He gave us free will to do what we want. Because we are not mindless beings or compelled to worship and fellowship with Him, we are able to sin. Because of sin we are made unholy and impure (and yes, purity is a large portion of holiness). Because of sin, God could not have us in His direct presence and the fellowship we had with Him was broken. God provided an answer though. He set a people group apart to be a witness for Him to the nations. He then a portion of that peoplegroup apart to be a witness to the witnesses. He set a portion of the portion of the portion to be set apart because He wanted to ensure that we got the idea. We who follow (of our own volition and choice) God must be different from everyone else. We must run on God's time, on His rules, on His holiness. We can not be the same as the sinful world, but we must witness to them. Then God redeemed mankind. Not just one or two people, but He made the ultimate and final sacrifice so that everyone who wanted to could become Holy by sharing in His holiness, His purity, His Sanctity, and His precious son – Jesus. God's Holiness is shown to us as love. No one can love like God can love. No one forgives like God forgives and yet no one is as just as God. No one can bring as much joy into a life as God, and yet the proximity to Him gives us all such a sense of shame and sorrow even though He has saved us from that which shames us. God's holiness demands that we too be holy.

Let us follow Paul's advice and recommendation in 2 Corinthians 7:1 “Since we have these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and spirit, bringing holiness to completion in the fear of God.”

Help me to be holy, O Spirit divine;
Come, sanctify wholly this temple of Thine;
Now cast out each idol, here set up Thy throne.
Reign, reign without rival, supreme and alone!