Holy 12.22.2022

    In the 21st century, amid the delirium and debris of our consumer culture, It can be difficult to feel holy at Christmas. It does not matter how often you hear or sing Oh Holy Night, there is something incongruous about the whole nation stopping, pausing for a few hours of peace on earth, then getting back to the narcissism at the heart of contemporary, Postmodern Culture. Holy is one of those good, solid Biblical words that can carry a lot of weight. The initial idea of holiness is separation. God is holy, first and foremost because He is not proximate to our sinfulness. Holiness is first a proximity function that then serves a moral and spiritual function. Throughout the Bible, the unholy (profane) were those whose personal sin kept them perpetually separate from God in worship and other humans in fellowship. 

    One of the perpetual goals for the highly motivated Christian should be personal holiness. There are many reasons to pursue holiness, though only one should be central. Let’s get the obvious out of the way first. The central reason Christians should desire holiness is that God is, Himself, holy. He is set apart and distinct from His creation. This was so prior to the fall, and more so after. This distinction between creator and creation is central to sound theology. We, humans, are made in His image, but that does not mean we are little versions of God. To be like Him in will, intellect, and emotion means that we are moral creatures—persistently tested. For the most part, we as a race, have universally failed this test. In retaining the image, we still long for proximity and relationship—which is to say, God’s own holiness. 

    On our own, we concoct a wide-ranging variety of attempts at conceptualizing and attaining holiness. Human-created “religion” is the Imago Dei seeking God blindly, without information. Paul says something to this effect in Acts 17

“So Paul, standing in the midst of the Areopagus, said: “Men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious. For as I passed along and observed the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription: ‘To the unknown god.’ What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you.” (Acts 17:22–23 ESV)

    One of the primary purposes of Jesus’ coming was to begin the final stage of God’s disclosure of the truth of His own holiness and how we might attain it, despite our fallenness. One of my favorite texts is from the prologue to John. I provide the quotation from the NASB 2020 because, in this case, I think it does a better job of translating the passage the way I would.  “No one has seen God at any time; God the only Son, who is in the arms of the Father, He has explained Him.” (John 1:18 NAS20) The word translated “explain” is ἐξηγήσατο. This word is the basis of our English term “exegesis”. Jesus exegetes or explains God to us. By becoming incarnate, Jesus provided Himself as God's ultimate disclosure. To know God’s holiness is to know Jesus. 

    This must have been quite a shock to Jesus’ contemporaries and helps to explain the reaction to Him in all versions of formative Judaism. Whatever their differences, each of the 1st-century Jewish sects sought ways to either maintain or increase the distance between themselves and gentiles or other "sinners". At the same time, they sought to decrease the distance between themselves and God. They, however, viewed this process as a sort of zero-sum game in which drawing closer to God, and participating more fully in His holiness necessarily increased the distance between all others, whether by degree, with other Jews, or completely with other ethnic/religious groups. The genius of the Gospel (I can’t really summarize here. To really understand the doctrinal basis for what I’m describing read in the New Testament from Matthew 1—Revelation 22. That should cover it.) of Jesus Christ is that He proposed closing the distance, both between God and me and between me and others—at the same time as a part of the same process. Jesus calls us not only into a renewed relationship with God but also into a renewed covenant relationship with others--His Church. Jesus’ final explanation of God is in essence “Look at Me! Do it like this!” We are nearly 21 centuries into this process and, as far as I can tell, we are just scratching the surface.

    So, the Holy Word of God took on human flesh. He closed the distance between His fallen creation and Himself, finally obliterating that distance once and for all upon His cross. Sleep now, Holy infant, so tender and mild. Soon enough ministry will beckon, the cross will call, and the Holy work of redemption will unfold. Holy, Holy, Holy—is the Lord God Almighty, who is and was and is to come.