The Problem of Holiness

The most important questions to ask in this lifetime:

Who is God?

Who are we?

Who is God?

God is many things and His miraculous attributes deserve abundant attention. But to understand where our position lands us in relation to Him, we must understand one thing – God is holy.

Holiness noun:

hol·​i·​ness

absolute purity; eternal perfection. Complete and unique separation from all that is impure.

In other words, God is infinitely perfect, without a single trace of fault or blame.

He is sovereign. As the Designer and Creator of all things, He has full authority over His creation. It is His absolute right to establish a standard by which His creation must live.

He is just. His authority exacts justice when His creation chooses to reject His standard.

Absolute justice requires absolute obedience without partiality in regard to reward or punishment concerning those who obey or disobey His standard.

Holiness cannot tolerate the presence of unholiness. To stand in the presence of holiness, one must also be holy, without a trace of fault or blame. Because God is holy and just, none who have violated His standard are able to enter His presence or spend eternity with Him.

So, what seems to be the problem?

Who are we?

We are transgressors, sinners.

Transgression noun:

trans·​gres·​sion

an action, process, or instance that violates a law, command, duty, or code of conduct, an offense.

Christian implication ~ transgression = sin; an action that goes against God’s established law, commands, or code of conduct; an offense against God’s absolute truth.

Transgressor noun:

trans·​gres·​sor

one who commits a transgression, a sinner.

Christian implication ~ one who disobeys any part of God’s law.

Scripture is clear as to who falls into this category. “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God…” (Rom. 3:23)

All…

There is none righteous, not even one; there is none who understands, there is none who seeks for God; all have turned aside… (Rom. 3:10-12)

If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us. (1 John 1:8)

In a culture that seeks to build self-esteem and protect all feelings, this can seem harsh. But no feelings, emotion, self-talk, or identifying can change reality.

There is absolute truth.

There is one God who created all things and with that, established a foundation of truth and a standard for upholding it.

When Adam and Eve sinned in the Garden of Eden, they rejected God’s standard and consequently, passed their newly obtained sin nature to all who were born after them (Gen. 3:6-7). From that moment on, everyone born of flesh and blood falls into the category of those who do not inherently seek God. Our inborn nature desires self-exaltation and gratification rather than God-glorification which leads us to commit sin (transgressions), separating us from God.

The wages of sin is death… (Rom. 6:23)

For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles in one point, he has become guilty of all. (James 2:10)

No sin goes unpunished or unpaid. The payment and punishment for sin is death – not just grievous or heinous sin. Scripture tells us that if a person were to only sin one time in their life, it would be enough to separate them from God for eternity. Because we are all sinners, we all deserve the just penalty of an eternity separated from God in hell.

But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved). (Eph. 2:4-5)

But God…

These two words shifted the course of history and the plight of all mankind. Although God is holy, sovereign, and just, He is also merciful.

I will cleanse and pardon them from all their iniquity by which they have sinned and transgressed against Me. (Jer. 33:8)

For I will be merciful to their iniquities, and I will remember their sins no more. (Heb. 8:12)

While in the eyes of perfect justice, we deserve eternal punishment, God looked on us in mercy and chose to provide a way of escape.

He is not a tyrant, nor a bully, so He does not force His solution onto any person. But, through Jesus Christ, He provided payment that we could accept as our own, nullifying the penalty and punishment for our sins as Jesus took them on Himself.

We will cover His solution and the price that Jesus paid in far more detail as we uncover Christian definitions and concepts in the coming blogs. But for right now, we need to understand that there is a holy God with full authority over His creation and we, His creation, have rejected His authority. In doing so, our disobedience separated ourselves from the possibility of standing in His presence when our lives are over.

Without God’s gift of salvation through Jesus, His holiness seems a terrible problem for all humanity. However, for those who place their faith in Christ, God’s holiness is magnified as we realize the great sacrifice He was willing to make in order to pardon our transgressions and lovingly welcome us into eternity with Him.

Continue Back to Basics – The Condemnation Conundrum

Angie Ward

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