Wednesday, November 2, 2011

Another School-Assignment-Turned-Blog-Post

An SATBP?  Doesn't really roll off the tongue.  Maybe an REB... recycled-essay-blog?  I'll work on the official label.  In the meantime, here's a response I wrote for my essay on the "Holiness of God".  How great is our God!

I found it ironic that something so fundamental can remain so obscure and inexplicable.  On the surface, the concept of God’s holiness is actually quite simple: God is holy, and holiness is the standard God has set for himself, similar to when God tells Moses, “I AM who I AM.”  Short and simple.  The complication comes in the explanation: So what does that mean?  I struggled to turn my convoluted thoughts into intelligible sentences.  Even now, as I reflect on all I’ve learned, the right words continue to allude me.  My mind remains stuck on the words of Isaiah, “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD Almighty!  The whole earth is full of his glory!”  My spirit is overwhelmed by the magnitude of my God.  In His perfect holiness, He would be completely justified to annihilate me on account of my sin.  But His perfect love demands an alternative.  So instead of destruction, He offers deliverance.  He invites me to join Him inside His holiness (1 Thess. 4:7).  Crudely put, He found the loophole.  Except the salvation He provides isn’t an afterthought.  It’s not a last-minute contingency plan to salvage what’s left of the Creation that failed Him.  It is, instead, a beautiful expression of His complete devotion to His Created, of His absolute refusal to stop pursuing the ones He desperately loves, of His persistent desire for relationship with his children—with me!  He is devoted to me; He is pursuing me; He desires me.  His love meets me in my depravity.  It obliterates my sin.  It brings me into His presence, “and where He is, is holy.”  His love sets me apart.  It is with great confidence that I can say, “I am holy as He is holy” (Lev. 20:26).

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