Fighting Sin with a Knowledge of God's Holiness

With T-shirts declaring that "Jesus is my Homeboy," and constant talk of how God is our "buddy" it may have been lost in our culture that God is holy! When asked what he felt most Christians needed to learn R.C. Sproul responded by saying that God is holy! How sad that even the church should lose the practical knowledge of God's holiness.

God's holiness is so important for us on several levels. One His holiness means complete freedom from all moral evil. God won't ever be inclined to betray you as His child. He won't ever trick you, decieve you, or prove Himself un-trustworthy, for His holiness prevents such defects in His character.

Secondly God's holiness is his absolute moral perfection. In talks of God's goodness we saw that He is the standard of goodness and all that is good derives its nature from God's goodness. But what a comfort it is to know that He is not only good in some areas, but all! His absolute moral perfection is a testimony to the complete and perfect goodness of our God.

But we must not undermine the importance of this holiness for one other reason. It is a threat to us who are sinners. Our sins are offenses to God and His holiness demands that He punish sin, and as such that means there is a threat to us who sin against Him. There are only two ways that God punishes sin: (1) Either He punished Christ for your sins, in which case you must repent and beleive upon Jesus solely for your salvation from this righteous wrath, (2) or you will face the punishment from God yourself, and it will be an eternity in hell.

Now for Christians we must recognize that our salvation is not disconnected from real life, but that it has real implications for how we live day to day. Jesus tells us that you may know a tree by its fruit. Thus a good tree produces good fruit, and a bad tree produces bad fruit. So if we sin and find no remorse in our hearts, no longing to be holy as God is holy, then we evidence that we are not truly saved, and as such the warnings of Scripture about hell apply to us. Fear sinning because you know that God is holy.

As I said this holiness is good for us. We must fear sinning because God is holy, but we may also rejoice in knowing that if we are truly God's He will not let us go even though we will fall throughout our lives here on earth. This is the great news of 1 John 1:9, "If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." Rejoice in God's holiness and trust Him because of it!