“Without holiness no one will see the Lord” (Hebrews 12:14b).
A generation ago, Dr. Harry Ironside wrote a book entitled Holiness: The True and the False. He hit upon an important truth—people always counterfeit the real thing. Trying to reproduce the characteristics of holiness without understanding the nature of the real thing, though, is much like counterfeiting money: it’s fraudulent; it’s a practice that can get you into a lot of trouble.
Today, our understanding of the word “holy” is clouded by images of Indian gurus, their bodies emaciated, garbed in dirty white robes, their beards long and unkempt, and their eyes glazed as they stare into space. We sometimes refer to these aberrations of humanity as “holy men”! Yet this is not holiness in the Biblical sense. Ascetics? Yes! Nonconformists? Certainly! Religious? Perhaps. But, please, don’t call them holy in the sense that God is holy.
Now, other people would have you believe that holiness includes wearing hats or veils, or not driving an automobile, or not using electricity or modern vehicles such as tractors to till the soil. After my conversion to Christ, at the age of 12, I quickly was told there are some things which Christian do and other things they do not do. Some of the admonitions were based on the teaching of the Bible, but most had little, if anything, to do with what Jesus or the writers of Scripture taught. They were cultural appendages, tacked onto Christianity in the name of holiness. Like what? Like going to the movies or playing sports or reading a newspaper on Sunday all forbidden.
So, what’s the difference between true and false holiness? In answering the question, I need to define the issue. What does it mean to be holy?
Turning to the pages of the Bible in answer to that question, you learn very quickly two things:
- Holy is one of the words which describes God, and
- He expects this same kind of difference in His people. When the law was given, God spoke to Moses, saying, “Speak to the entire assembly of Israel and say to them: ‘Be holy because I, the LORD your God, am holy” (Leviticus 19:2).
The words that are used in both the Old and the New Testaments have two thoughts or ideas behind them: 1. Purity. 2. Separation. There is nothing more in the entire Bible to suggest that genuine holiness is wearing black or drinking vinegar or failing to drive an automobile or a gasoline-powered tractor.
In the Bible, this word “holy” is used more than any other adjective to describe the nature and character of God. But in pondering a holy God, we usually tend to think of someone far removed from the reality of life on earth, as though God lives in a hermetically-sealed “heaven”, somewhere out there, free of dust and dirt and filth, and certainly free of the kind of people we are, with our sins and failures.
But holiness relates to God’s nature, not His separation from our lives and our world. To the contrary, the point of the entire Bible is that this kind of God penetrated our world with its rottenness and filth, in sending His Son to Bethlehem so we can partake of the nature of God and thus be like Him.
Arthur Pink, in his book, The Attributes of God, makes a valid point when he says, “We are not called to be all-knowing or all-powerful as God is, but we are called to be holy … and that ‘in all manner of deportment’” (1 Peter 1:15). The Bible says, simply, “Without holiness no one will see [God]” (Hebrews 12:14).
Resource reading: 2 Peter 1.
