A Holy Name

So why do we say that God is holy?

First, we know that God is holy because God reveals this to us in the Scriptures. As we said in our first module, our knowledge of God comes from our First Love revealing himself to us.

For instance, in Leviticus 19, YHWH reveals his nature. We read, "You shall be holy, for I the LORD your God am holy."

In the temple design, the area for encountering God - the most enclosed and private place - is called the "holy of holies". Only on the Day of Atonement, after making a sacrifice, could the high priest enter.

In Isaiah 6, the prophet shares his vision of the seraphim crying out in praise of God, "holy, holy, holy"!

Psalm 145 calls us to "bless God's holy name."

Jesus taught his disciples to pray, "hallowed be your name." That is, may his name be consecrated, spoken as holy.

We speak of the Holy Spirit.

Hebrews 12 tells us that without holiness, we cannot see God!

We see the word throughout the Bible, but what does it mean that God is holy?

To keep it simple, my former seminary professor, Richard Lints, defines holiness in this way:

"The holiness of God refers to the absolute moral purity of God and the absolute moral distance between God and his human creatures."

Those are two key meanings of God's holiness: absolute moral purity and absolute moral distance.