Inspired by Grant Layman’s message from Psalm 8, I am rereading R.C. Sproul’s The Holiness of God in my quiet time. Wow. I highly recommend it. My eyes are being opened again to this most majestic of topics. Here are some choice quotes: (Note: I have an old edition, so my page numbers might not exactly line up with yours.)

“The one concept, the central idea I kept meeting in Scripture was the idea that God is holy.” (18)

“God is inescapable. There is no place we can hide from him… Therefore we must seek to understand what the holy is. We dare not seek to avoid it. There can be no worship, no spriritual growth, no true obedience without it. It defines our goal as Christians. God has declared, ‘Be ye holy, for I am holy.’ ” (20-21)

“The Bible never says that God is love, love, love, or mercy, mercy, mercy, or wrath, wrath, wrath, or justice, justice, justice, justice. It does say that he is holy, holy, holy, the whole earth is full of his glory.” (39)

“He is so far above and beyond us that He seems almost totally foreign to us. To be holy is to be ‘other,’ to be different in a special way.” (58)

“But when the word holy is applied to God, it does not signify one single attribute. On the contrary, God is called holy in a general sense. The word is used as a synonym for his deity. That is, the word holy calls attention to all that God is.” (60)

Remember that A.W. Pink quote I blogged a few months back: “What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.” So, there is a question for us to ponder: “What does come to mind when we think about God?” Do we think of him as so far above and beyond us that He seems almost totally foreign to us?

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