Becoming Holy
Two of Scripture’s most prominent prophets have described for us what no one has ever seen — a vision of God in heaven. As both Isaiah and John, over 700 years apart, gazed in awe at what was being revealed to them, they heard angels sing the praises of God:
In the visions of both prophets, the angels in heaven themselves call God not just holy, but “holy, holy, holy”, the iteration meant to convey the perfection of God’s holiness.
God is not only holy, but perfectly holy.
This implies that there are levels to holiness — if holiness can be further perfected, how holy is holy enough? We may be holy, but not as holy as God intended us to be.
In his famous Sermon on the Mount, Jesus set for us what seems to be an unachievable standard — “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” [Matthew 5:48] He seems to be echoing God’s words to the Israelites through Moses — “You shall be holy, for I the Lord am holy.”
But while we may take these to be impossible commands, both statements are meant to imply a relational holiness — we ought to be perfect because God is perfect; and we too shall be holy, because our Father is holy. A kitten is a cat before it has grown into one, simply by virtue of being born of a cat. The source of our being (if we accept him as our Father and our God) is holy — and by this relationship, we are made holy too.
Holiness is then not a prescription, but a prediction!
God was not commanding the Israelites to be holy, but declaring and promising that they would be. The root word for ‘holy’ is qadosh (Hebrew) and hagios (Greek), which mean “set apart, sacred, sanctified”, and all through the book of Leviticus, God speaks to the Israelites about holiness and what it means to be “set apart”. God says, “I have separated you from the peoples” [Leviticus 20:24] — if in the first half of the book, he has ‘set apart’ the Levites from the other tribes as priests for the people, in the second half, God reiterates how he has ‘set apart’ the Israelites from the rest of the world. At this point, although they were far from what we would call ‘holy’, the Israelites were already holy to God — “You shall be holy to me, for I the Lord am holy and I have separated you from the other peoples to be mine.” [Leviticus 20:26]. There is a purpose to holiness.
Just as the Israelites were taken out of Egypt, God ‘separates’ us too from the world — so that we can truly become his people.
Do you feel, sometimes more strongly than others, that you don’t fit in with everyone? That you don’t quite belong where you are? That there must be more to life than this? This dissatisfaction and disconnection is God ‘separating’ you from this world, preparing you for a better one — this is the beginning of holiness.
But what must we do to continue on our journey to true holiness?
Scripture tells us of a man who came to Jesus one day with this very question. “Then someone came to [Jesus] and said, “Teacher, what good deed must I do to have eternal life?” [Matthew 19:16] Though rich and young in years, the man was dissatisfied with life. Despite his considerable wealth, there was something he hadn’t been able to buy; and though still young, he was preoccupied with the idea of eternal life. Here was a man clearly ‘set apart’ from the world by God.
While most readings of this incident focus on Jesus’ answer to him to go and sell his possessions, we are invited to pay close attention to what Jesus says before — “Why do you ask me about what is good? There is only one who is good.” Nothing Jesus says or Scripture mentions is without reason and so we are invited to examine the reason behind Jesus’ words, which are addressed to us too. Like the rich, young man, our lives too may be preoccupied with knowing and doing what is ‘right’ or ‘good’.
Jesus is telling us that we ought not to be asking what is good, but listening to the One who is.
Like the rich young man, our first ancestors Adam and Eve too, wanted to know good. Unfortunately, the only way to know good, is to also know evil, for in the absence of evil, good just…is. The serpent was able to tempt Adam and Eve because he knew what they wanted; they were not content with being good by virtue of being made by God — they wanted to do good. While every other fruit in the Garden of Eden was “good for food” and “a delight to the eyes”, this fruit, the serpent claimed, “was to be desired to make one wise” But did Adam and Eve need to be wise? Hadn’t God already personally seen to it that everything in the Garden was good, and given them the freedom to go anywhere and do anything? What Adam and Eve had failed to realise was that they didn’t need to know good from evil…as long as they were with God. We too don’t need to know the good to do it — when we do what God tells us to, everything we do will be good.
While Adam and Eve were asked to leave Eden when they gained a knowledge of good and evil, Scripture also tells us of those who were finally allowed to enter another Eden, the Promised Land. These were not the people that had been led out of Egypt by Moses, but the second generation of Israelites — of whom God had said, “[these] children who today do not yet know right from wrong, they shall enter [the Promised Land].” [Deuteronomy 1:39]. Unlike Adam and Eve, who lost Eden, this second generation of Israelites, who did not yet know right from wrong — who had no knowledge of good and evil — were the ones that gained the Promised Land.
Ultimately, it is not those who know or do good, but those who trust God enough to allow him to lead them, that are taken to true holiness.
Significantly, the next generation of Israelites that was allowed to enter the Promised Land was also the generation of the first-borns that God had saved in Egypt. They were the ones of whom God had said, “ On the day that I struck down all the firstborn in the land of Egypt I consecrated them for myself.” [Numbers 8:17] God not only saved the first-borns of the Israelites that day in Egypt, but on the very day of their salvation, he consecrated them for himself. Even before we can come into the promises of God, at the very hour of our salvation, God consecrates us to himself, declaring us holy, so that we can begin to be his.
But this is only one half of God’s repeated promise — “they shall be my people, and I will be their God.” [Jeremiah 32:38] We may, like this, be God’s people — but is he our God?
It is not enough, therefore, for God to consecrate us to himself — we too must consecrate ourselves to him. And so, the very next day, God tells Moses “Consecrate to me all the firstborn; whatever is the first to open the womb among the Israelites, of human beings and animals, is mine….” [Exodus 13:2] Consecration is the conscious act of dedicating/devoting oneself to God in order to be made holy. Only when we have consecrated ourselves, of our own free will, to God, can we be truly his. Only when we truly belong to God, as his children and his people, will we allow ourselves to be made holy.
Lessons in Holiness — From Tomb to Temple
So how can we attain holiness? Here are some lessons from some of Jesus’ most loving disciples:
- Seek God — Like Mary Magdalene, who peered desperately inside Jesus’ empty tomb, looking for him, we need to begin by wanting Jesus more. Read more here!
- Pursue relationship — As Jesus stood outside Lazarus’ tomb and called to him to arise, our Lord calls to us from outside our own tomb. Do we know him as well as Lazarus did, to recognise his voice and the love in it? Read more here!
- Lay down your defences — In the dark tomb of our heart, Jesus can enter with the light — but not if the entrance is blocked from the inside. The apostle John, who had once asked to be Jesus’ powerful right hand in his kingdom, decided that Jesus was more important than securing himself against obscurity — he allowed himself to push away a need for recognition, to be known only as ‘the disciple that Jesus loved’, gaining his identity simply from the love of Jesus. God calls to us to roll away the stone on the inside that is keeping us ‘safe’ from the pain and ridicule of the world, but far from him and holiness. More here!
- Consecrate yourself — When Jesus is invited into the tomb with us, his light slowly fills the dark corners of our heart, until every black corner begins to sparkle. It is now no longer a tomb, but a temple of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit will lead us, when we are ready, to dedicate this temple to God; to recognise and declare from our spirit that we belong exclusively to him. It is when we can wholly dedicate ourselves to God, claiming him as our Lord and Father, when we can declare, like Paul, “It is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me.”, that we can truly be made holy by him.
When God declared to the Israelites, “Consecrate yourselves, therefore, and be holy” [Leviticus 20:7], he wasn't telling them to do two things, but one — consecrate yourselves, and you will be holy.
Let us consecrate ourselves to God, allowing our Father to make us truly, holy.
