The Doctrine of God
By Jerry Batson, Th.D.
Special to The Alabama Baptist
In the past two weeks, Theology 101 has examined several aspects of God’s attributes and actions. This called for a plurality of terms, such as His trinitarian person as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, along with His nature as spirit rather than material form, as well as His omnipotence, omniscience and omnipresence. To these we added His divine actions of creating, blessing, calling, forgiving and disciplining, as well as commanding and promising, choosing and calling, empowering and commissioning. The vocabulary necessary to approach an understanding of God’s essential being and variety of actions in keeping with those attributes is indeed wide ranging.
A holy God
If we were to attempt to express the essential truth God has revealed about Himself in the Old Testament and limit that expression to a single term, our best conclusion would be the assertion that God is holy.
This week we focus on the meaning of the holiness of God.
Holy describes something or someone that is set apart from other things or beings. To be holy is to be distinct from common objects or persons. For example, God pronounced the seventh day of creation to be holy. He intended it to be unique when compared with all other days of the week.
That which the Old Testament declared to be holy, such as a high priest or a Sabbath day, was to be unlike other people or days.
A helpful way to think about the holiness of God is to think of His otherness. God is other than what is earthly or creaturely. He is other than what is commonplace or ordinary. God is other than what is limited or temporary. He is other than what is time bound and spatially constricted. He is certainly other than what is finite or sinful.
In short, God is holy — a truth revealed consistently throughout the Old Testament.
A holy people
The practical and personal implication, as well as the divine commandment, from this truth about God is that we also should be holy. The long-standing and classic witness to this fact in the Old Testament is Leviticus 19:2: “You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy.”
The New Testament endorsement or reinforcement of this truth concerning the people of God is set forth in 1 Peter 1:15: “As He who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct.”
Our personal question must therefore be: “Are there evidences that I am other than the world’s precepts and practices?”
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