The Holy One

If you read the Old Testament, one theme will surely dominate your reading – the holiness of God. And if anyone ever forgets, don’t worry, God is quick to remind his people who He is. “Whom have you mocked and reviled? Against whom have you raised your voice and lifted your eyes to the heights? Against the Holy One of Israel!” (2 Kings 19:22). The term “Holy One of Israel” continually refers to God and his “set-apartness” from creation. He is altogether separate from us in His substance and His being, and He wants us to remember that.

But that is not all. Not only is God a holy God, he desires for us to be holy as well. For I am the LORD your God. Consecrate yourselves therefore, and be holy, for I am holy (Leviticus 11:44a). Out of all the nations, God set apart Israel for himself and gave them a set of laws – some practical, some ceremonial, but all for the purpose of making them a holy nation, set apart for the glory of God. The OT constantly commands Israel, “Be holy to your God!”

The religious obligations on Israel were so central that by Jesus’ time the religious elite had created various traditions, rules, and observances in order to not come close to breaking the laws of God – fences built around fences, if you will. With good intention – to not dishonor God – these traditions eventually evolved into the superficial practices that we see in the religious scene in the NT. No longer were people seeking to honor God by observing the law, but rather seeking after the law as an end to itself.

It is precisely at this time when God chose to send Christ, the fulfillment of the law, to Israel. With earthshaking teachings and unprecedented authority, Jesus both taught and showed Israel what the Law looked like in its fullness. Christ possessed the very character of the Law within himself – He was its source! His perfect obedience to the Law and sacrificial death would do what the Law could not do in itself:

1There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. 2For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. 3For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, 4in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. (Romans 8)

So what then? Are we stil called to be holy? In the same letter to the Romans, Paul says to believers, “I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship” (Romans 12:1). The Bottom Line: We are still called to be holy, just as God is holy….BUT, God knew that we would never be able to achieve this standard of holiness, so he “has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do.” He has sent his Son, Christ, who has borne our transgressions, and he lives forever as our intercession before the Father – Our perfect holiness.