God's Holiness

Is it no true that we consider ourselves as wise most of the time? The pride of life is a poison that permeates our being in such a way, that we are usually convinced that our own goodness exceeds that of the Scribes and the Pharisees; when in fact we do not possess any goodness or righteousness of our own, and the wisdom that we thought we achieved is, by comparison to that of the world, dark and ostentatious; it is not worth mentioning the wisdom of God because is too lofty and pure.

I remember when I was a teenager, how prideful and arrogant I was, as everybody else my age; and how in my ignorance I broke my parents hearts more than once. Thinking me as wise I became a fool, and in my transgression I became dark in my imaginations, and in the thoughts of my heart. I made a habit of breaking God's law and man's laws. Anybody would think that as the years go by, we would become wiser, but is all to the contrary, because when we become young adults, in our twenties; there is not a soul under the sun that can point the right way to our pride.

Things change by when the thirties hit, and we see the reality of years gone by, and of so much wasted time; still we think that we are in control, and we continue to deceive ourselves, unless we are confronted with the majesty of God. As we have discovered, we are nothing compared to the King of the universe; and the words from Isaiah the prophet: "your righteousness is as filthy rags" become more and more true in our minds.

I have continued to discover that we are still far from the goal of being conformed to the image of His son, to which we have been predestined; but it only appears to be that way because we now realize the depth of our depravity, and the blackness of our minds. It is because of His mercy and grace that we usually do better than we think; but in my mind, I'm doing worse and worse; it is a mystery.

Some, and this must be by reason of insanity, still think that they are righteous; to consider one to be right in any way is the same thing as thinking ourselves to be righteous; proving true the word of God: they became fools. God does not have any other choice but to give them over to their own desires and to do what is not fitting for a fool to do; the newscasts are full of cases that illustrate this continually.

Still some, as Paul says in the book of Romans, are paying the penalty due their ignorance and the hardness of their heart. Some people contract HIV or AIDS, or some loathsome venereal disease; some fall into a deep mental anguish and depression; and some cannot take it anymore, being isolated from God by their foolishness, they see no other option but to blow their brains out.

Rom 1:24 Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonor their own bodies between themselves: Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshiped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen.
For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature: And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompense of their error which was meet.
And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient; being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers, backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, without understanding, covenant breakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful: Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them.

God is always right, and He will always prove Himself true and everyone else a liar; He is most Holy and Righteous, and we really don't have an idea of what that means; I hope and I desire to be like Him, and my flesh cries out, and my mind and my whole body thirsts and hungers for His righteousness.

I know that God sees me in a different light, that is what Paul means when he says that we have been raised with Christ and made us to sit together with Him in the heavenly places. If He has done this, seated us together with Christ in the heavenly places; it is not possible that He would look at us and see us, but Christ, and we together with Him, vested in His righteousness, and imputed by His holiness. That is why we strive to fulfill God's desires, when He has put those desires inside of us; we come to the place of delighting ourselves in the Lord, and He giving us the desires of our hearts.

If any of my brothers says they don't like Calvin, because of whatever washing of the brain they subjected themselves to; or because their pastor has been trained to follow the thoughts of Arminius and not Christ; or because they just cannot understand Calvin's point of view on the nature of God and the doctrines of grace; I have to say, please inform yourself and then express an opinion. Everyone has an opinion, and all opinions are based on darkness, unless they are based on the righteousness of the word of Christ our God, and God His Father and our Father. All thoughts of God are pure, and all His ways divine, therefore we try to think like He thinks and walk as He walked.

The following thoughts are form the Institutes of Christian Religion, by John Calvin; I am inserting them here to make a point, first about my own thoughts, and second to illustrate the genius and depth of understanding this man Calvin was gifted with; to my surprise and amazement, I never read Calvin before, which is surprising because I was often proud of having being taught by some of the best teachers ( I thought), and amazed because only one of my pastors, Barry is his name; has ever recommended this book to me. I can without a doubt say, that I learned more from Barry, than any other pastor I have ever listened to; so I praise God for him, here is Calvin:

"For what man is not disposed to rest in himself? Who, in fact, does not thus rest, so long as he is unknown to himself; that is, so long as he is contented with his own endowments, and unconscious or unmindful of his misery? Every person, therefore, on coming to the knowledge of himself, is not only urged to seek God, but is also led as by the hand to find him.

On the other hand, it is evident that man never attains to a true self-knowledge until he have previously contemplated the face of God, and come down after such contemplation to look into himself. For (such is our innate pride) we always seem to ourselves just, and upright, and wise, and holy, until we are convinced, by clear evidence, of our injustice, vileness, folly, and impurity.

Convinced, however, we are not, if we look to ourselves only, and not to the Lord also - He being the only standard by the application of which this conviction can be produced. For, since we are all naturally prone to hypocrisy, any empty semblance of righteousness is quite enough to satisfy us instead of righteousness itself.

And since nothing appears within us or around us that is not tainted with very great impurity, so long as we keep our mind within the confines of human pollution, anything which is in some small degree less defiled delights us as if it were most pure just as an eye, to which nothing but black had been previously presented, deems an object of a whitish, or even of a brownish hue, to be perfectly white. Nay, the bodily sense may furnish a still stronger illustration of the extent to which we are deluded in estimating the powers of the mind. If, at mid-day, we either look down to the ground, or on the surrounding objects which lie open to our view, we think ourselves endued with a very strong and piercing eyesight; but when we look up to the sun, and gaze at it unveiled, the sight which did excellently well for the earth is instantly so dazzled and confounded by the refulgence, as to oblige us to confess that our acuteness in discerning terrestrial objects is mere dimness when applied to the sun.

Thus too, it happens in estimating our spiritual qualities. So long as we do not look beyond the earth, we are quite pleased with our own righteousness, wisdom, and virtue; we address ourselves in the most flattering terms, and seem only less than demigods. But should we once begin to raise our thoughts to God, and reflect what kind of Being he is, and how absolute the perfection of that righteousness, and wisdom, and virtue, to which, as a standard, we are bound to be conformed, what formerly delighted us by its false show of righteousness will become polluted with the greatest iniquity; what strangely imposed upon us under the name of wisdom will disgust by its extreme folly; and what presented the appearance of virtuous energy will be condemned as the most miserable impotence. So far are those qualities in us, which seem most perfect, from corresponding to the divine purity". John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion; Book 1, Chapter 1, 1. 2. Excerpt taken from E-sword, Topic Notes.

After reading that, there is no more to say; if the guy is not brilliant, then I don't know who is.

In the book of Isaiah, we can read the account of the prophet having an encounter with God in a vision: Isa 6:1 In the year that King Uzziah died I then saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lifted up, and His train filled the temple.
Above it stood the seraphs; each one had six wings; with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. And one cried to another, and said, Holy, holy, holy, is Jehovah of Hosts; the whole earth full of His glory.
And the doorposts moved at the voice of the one who cried, and the house was filled with smoke.
Then I said, Woe is me! For I am undone; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, Jehovah of Hosts.
Then one of the seraphs flew to me, having a live coal in his hand, snatched with tongs from the altar. And he laid it on my mouth and said, Lo, this has touched your lips; and your iniquity is taken away, and your sin purged.

R.C Sproul in one of his series about the Holiness of God, says that in our language, when we want to stress the importance of something we are saying, when writing we use bold letters, underlines, exclamation points, etc; in the Hebrew language, and in general when the Jewish people wanted to stress the importance of something, either in their writings or speaking, they would repeat the word twice; as an example we have our Lord Jesus starting several of His teachings with the words "verily, verily", or "truly, truly, I say unto you"; this is to stress the importance of what He was about to say. As throughout the bible, when God repeats something twice, we need to pay attention.

Only in the case of the Holiness of God, the repetition is done three times; Holy, Holy, Holy is YHWH, the Lord of Hosts; the whole earth is full of His glory; when YHWH talks about His Holiness, the Holiness of God is taken to the maximum expression, and to the number of the trinitarian nature of Himself. Three times the cherubs are saying to each other: Holy, Holy, Holy!!!

In the book of Revelation, we have another instance where the following takes place: Rev 4:8 And each one of the four living creatures had six wings about him, and within being full of eyes. And they had no rest day and night, saying, Holy, holy, holy, Lord God, the Almighty, who was and is and is to come.

This is of the utmost importance even in heaven. This activity of worshipping God by saying Holy three times, is being executed by these living creatures day and night, there is no rest, they would not stop saying it, even if they could stop, because this appears to be the reason they were created in the first place.

God's holiness will make anyone that comes face to face with Him, either to dissolve in His light and die, or to become undone in the extreme and supreme holiness of the King of Kings. In the book of Isaiah the cherubs are before the throne of YHWH, and they not even look at God directly; they cover their faces with a pair of their wings; even these angelic beings in their pure and holy state cannot look into the Holiness of the Lord.

Is God an egocentric entity that demands to be worshipped? Did He create all He has created with the purpose of basking in His creation's adoration? It appears to be the case, and why is that so?

Look at this verse in Revelation: Rev 4:9 And when those beasts give glory and honor and thanks to him that sat on the throne, who liveth forever and ever, the four and twenty elders fall down before him that sat on the throne, and worship him that liveth forever and ever, and cast their crowns before the throne, saying, Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honor and power: for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created.

Did you catch the last part of that verse? We were created for His pleasure; as farfetched and whacked out that sounds to me, that is what He says. How is it possible that I could ever give God any pleasure, if when I look at myself all I see is darkness and a heart that is deceitful above all things? I am not even worthy to be called a child of God; but see, it is that way because of Jesus Christ, because of what He did for me, because of His blood covers my multitude of sins, because of His Love; like I said before, He did not set His love on me because I think I'm cool; He sure didn't think I was cool when He had to come and die in my place. All this is so becasue of His mercy.

Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honor and power: for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created.

Once again, I have to close this post with the only expression that I can come up with, and it is also from Him and for Him: to the praise of the glory of His grace.

You have a good night.