Holy is… God

The more I’ve researched the word ‘holy’ in the Bible, the more it has weighed on my soul. The more I’ve dug into what wise, learned believers have to say about ‘holy’, the less I feel I have to say – because there is not one of us, no not one, who truly grasps what ‘holy’ is. 

Yet, just as weighty is the conviction that we must begin to reclaim ‘holy’ as a believing people. To continue to live with such shallow ideas of this most defining attribute of the God we worship is to live without truly knowing Him.¹ 

Despite holy’s weightiness and the concern I carry about doing it justice in this space, with you, I have not faltered in my confidence that this is the word God has given me to explore with Him this year. I’m coming to understand just how good and right it is to realize how little we understand this idea, this state of being. It’s good and right to fall on our knees and confess, what do I know of holy?²

And there’s the point! God’s not asking me to grasp everything there is to know about this word or Himself before beginning this post, this year of ‘holy’. Rather, He’s asking me, us, to faithfully follow Him as He leads us through His Word, to lay down resistance fueled by fear or pride or shame, and to receive more of Him. Because when we know more about ‘holy’, we’ll know more about God. And, the more we know about God, the more we’ll understand ‘holy’.

Awakening to the More of ‘Holy’

I’ve written here before about an experience I had in the Holy Land a few years ago – the moment when the deep realization of how little I understood ‘holy’ knocked the breath out of me. Yet here I will write of it again because, really, it’s where all of this began.

Our group was typical. All over Israel we’d cross paths with people who followed a tour guide just like ours through the crowds, who huddled in corners to hear the guide speak, who walked and walked and walked across the land of the Bible, seeing it come to life. But every once in a while, groups would be set loose to explore on their own, as individuals. 

It was in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre that our group scattered. Each of us could pause and ponder the places of Jesus’ crucifixion and burial – at our own paces. We could marvel at the church itself while doing our best to see these places as they would’ve been in Jesus’ day.

Though our group had only been in Jerusalem a day or two, we’d already been in many churches. They all marked a place where something happened in Scripture – the angel’s annunciation to Mary, Peter’s denial of Christ, Jesus’ prayer in Gethsemane. So I walked-in a bit overwhelmed, not only finding myself in the largest crowd yet but in another church. 

And this was a church that overwhelmed my senses. Every corner was packed with ornate decor, with images and styles of many different traditions, all of which felt foreign to me: Armenian, Greek Orthodox, Catholic. I didn’t understand ‘icons’ or ‘via dolorosa’ (though they became part of my learning experience as the week progressed), and all the gold everywhere felt like too much while the smell of melting wax and burning incense overtook me. So, I walked around a bit numb, trying to take it all in – because on some level I understood this place was meant to be ‘holy’. 

Then as my eyes shifted from the place to the people, my overwhelm morphed into something like skepticism. I gaped at the tears people shed when it was their turn to enter the tomb. I gawked at folks laying full-out on the floor, begging God for blessings on the trinkets they had placed on the marble slab where Jesus’ body was said to have been laid. 

Just as I was about to bolt out the door, an older woman caught my eye as she took her place before that marble slab. After kneeling painfully before it, she began rocking back and forth as her hands lifted toward heaven and tears streamed down her cheeks. I was mesmerized.

Then it hit me. This woman understood ‘holy’. This was no show for her. This was no delusion or tourist-trap construct. This was a woman who knew her Holy Father in heaven. She grasped, as much as any human is able, that where she knelt was holy ground – because Jesus had been there. She was wracked with sobs because she felt her utter unholiness in the presence of such perfect holiness.

The memory of light dawning within me that day has never left – because as I saw how much that woman ‘got’ God’s holiness, I realized how little I did. Thus began my awakening to ‘holy’.

Here’s a bit of irony for you. A decade after that experience, my husband and I paid for a tour of the Sistine Chapel in Rome. And let me just tell you, I was ready for ‘holy’!! We’d saved this particular tour for our very last day, so I had not only been anticipating it for the months since I’d booked it but for the entire time we were in Italy. We’d even paid extra to go in after hours, being told we’d avoid crowds that way. 

When, instead, we filed into a line of other tourists, led like cattle into an empty room. No furnishings. No altar. Well, not empty-empty – because there were hundreds of people just like us trying to glimpse Michelangelo’s gorgeous ceiling from every angle. We nudged our way across the room, elbow to elbow with people from all over the world, with our heads craned back to look at this manmade marvel. 

Yet I came away heartbroken – for there was no ‘holy’.

Holy is…God

Between my two incredible trips and experiences with ‘holy’ came years of seeking more of God, of searching for more of Holy Spirit. I’d ‘known’ Jesus for all my life, but after that Holy Land tour, I realized I lacked a fuller understanding and experience of God. Not only did I study Scripture with the desire to know our holy God better but I began exploring with deeper sincerity spiritual practices that I’d once been skeptical of. (I know…. There’ s a theme here…)

My ache for ‘holy’ only grows with each new experience, with each new revelation. And right now God has called me to put my whole focus on this mysterious, all-consuming, God-defining concept. Twelve years after my awakening, He has called me to better understand what holiness is and to see how the lack of holiness is impacting today’s Church.

So. Let us begin where holiness begins. With God.

We read Scripture and see God described as holy. We know His Spirit is named Holy while His Son is often announced as the Holy One. We even recognize who is referenced when we read “the Holy One of Israel.” God. All of these monickers describe God. But ‘holy’ goes much deeper than a name.

“Holy is the way God is. To be holy He does not conform to a standard. He is that standard. He is absolutely holy with an infinite, incomprehensible fullness of purity that is incapable of being other than it is.”   

A.W. Tozer¹

Holy is the way God is. At the core of what makes God God is holiness. He is innately holy. His essence is holy. It’s not part of who He is – holy is what God is! And there is no other like Him!

After watching the God of their fathers lay Pharoah and all of Egypt flat with the plagues and a wall of water that entombed Pharaoh and his army, the Israelites got it. At least for that moment, they ‘got’ that God was unlike any other god on the planet. So they sang His praises:

“Who among the gods
    is like you, Lord?
Who is like you—
    majestic in holiness,
awesome in glory,
    working wonders?” 

Exodus 15:11 NIV

Scripture tells us that this majestic God inspires awe as He dwells high above the cherubim. Nations tremble at the thought of Him. He. is. holy (Psalm 99:3). Yet the reality most of us experience in our churches and along our own faith journeys falls plenty short of such majesty! 

Decades ago, A.W. Tozer submitted a challenge to the Church universal to rediscover ‘holy’. He believed, as many still do, that the Church has “surrendered her once lofty concept of God and has substituted for it one so low, so ignoble, as to be utterly unworthy” of our thoughts.¹ 

Tozer is helping me understand that this “loss of the sense of majesty” of God has caused us as believers to lose our religious awe, even our awareness of God’s divine presence.¹ When I consider my own journey in light of Tozer’s words, I find myself nodding fervently. I didn’t grasp ‘holy’ because I didn’t know God fully! I did what most humans do – I shaped God into my ideas of Him.^1b And in my inability to conceive of His holy nature, I, like so many, had no “spirit of worship,” no comprehension of withdrawing “inwardly to meet God in adoring silence.”¹ Most believers today have no true sense of ‘holy’.

And yet the story is not over. Hope is not lost! We can recapture ‘holy’!

Tozer’s solution? “We must begin to think of God more nearly as He is.”¹

Holy. 

As we more fully immerse ourselves in God’s Word, we’ll be reminded again and again that God’s name is Holy, that He reigns from a holy place and is enthroned as the Holy One (Isaiah 57:15; Psalm 22:3). We’ll begin to understand that this Holy One, He is eternal and morally flawless (Habakkuk 1:12-13). And we’ll remember why we worship Him – because He is holy (Psalm 99:9).³ 

God has been so good as to offer us glimpses in Scripture of His high and holy throne room. In Isaiah’s vision we are not only given the chance to witness angels worshiping God but to experience how they express their worship, calling to one another:

“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of Heaven’s Armies! His majestic splendor fills the entire earth!”

Isaiah 6:3 NET

Three ‘holies’ – the number of perfection – “underscores the idea that no attribute of God is more defining than His holiness.”³ And no one else – not ever in all of history, beginning to end – will ever be holy the way our God is holy. It’s what sets Him apart. It’s what makes Him different.

There’s an idea behind the ancient uses of the word ‘holy’ that speaks to ‘otherness’. God is other. He is different from anything or anyone else. And that’s why it’s so hard for us to fully comprehend holiness. There’s no one and nothing to look to on earth who is pure or holy enough to give us a picture of divine holiness.¹ 

Tozer teaches that God’s holiness is not “simply the best we know infinitely bettered.”¹ Rather, he says, we can’t even imagine ‘holy’ because there’s nothing like it in our earthly experience. It’s too other. 

Yet, here is our hope – “the Spirit of the Holy One can impart to the human spirit the knowledge of the holy.”¹ 

And so it is that this year we will follow the Spirit’s lead as He helps us explore, engage, and experience ‘holy’. We’ll explore holy places and people. We’ll engage with the ideas of the Holy Trinity and Holy Days. We’ll experience more and more of the Holy Spirit, discovering as we go that we are becoming more and more sanctified, or holy, ourselves. 

My friends, until we more fully awaken to God’s truest essence, His holiness, we will miss who He is, who we’re meant to be, and what this faith journey is all about. 

Holy is…God. 

Father God, the Holy One of Israel, our Holy and Righteous One, we already sense the truth You are beginning to show us – we are missing out on the fullness of your majesty. We have barely begun to grasp what it means that You are ‘holy’, and we confess how much we resonate with the question, “What do we know of holy?” We trust that these are much needed first steps toward embracing the fullness of your holiness. Of grasping how imperative it is that we look to You as our Holy One – for all that it means. Because without an understanding and experience of your divine holiness, we fail to know You as You truly are. Which means we fail to become all that You want us to be. Heavenly Father, we seek more of You. We ask that You would fill us afresh with your Spirit so that our hearts and minds and spirits will more fully see and receive every impartation of ‘holy’ that You have for us. Even now, we long for the kind of awe of You that brings us to our knees – because we realize we are in the presence of ‘holy’. We bow low before You, the One enthroned on high in your Most Holy Place, and open ourselves to more of You. In your Son’s most holy name, amen.
(inspired by Psalm 71:22; Acts 3:14; Isaiah 6:3; Proverbs 9:10; Ephesians 4:24, 5:18-20; Psalm 99:3,9, 22:3)

Resources: I love sharing with you the books, podcasts, articles, and anything else that has inspired, encouraged, or taught me. These are humble offerings with no expectations.

• 1 – A.W. Tozer wrote an entire book, The Knowledge of the Holy, with this very purpose in mind. He pretty much said this very statement. 
• 1b – In the same book, Tozer describes the tendencies we humans have for shaping God into our ideas of who He should be, saying “We tend by a secret law of the soul to move toward our mental image of God.”
• 2 – Addison Road’s song, “What Do I Know of Holy?”
• 3 – I pull these biblical citations about God’s holiness from Strong’s Concordance on one of the Hebrew words for ‘holy’, qadosh – as well as the quote!
• The song, “What Do I Know of Holy” is not on our Holy is…. playlist because it has less to do with God’s actual holiness and more about our inability to conceive of it. And my heart for this particular playlist is to infuse our ears and hearts and minds with truths about God and His holiness. Songs like Bristol House’s “Holy” have music that feels holy — even if we don’t have words to actually describe why it feels holy — and lyrics chocked full of scriptural descriptions of God. Ultimately, for whatever else God is, He is holy. And it’s my hope this playlist will help us to believe that even as we seek to better understand it.
• Each Wednesday I upload a “Teacup” teaching video that carries on the topic here. You can find all the videos on my Facebook Author Page, Instagram, and YouTube.
• Many of you have found me on Substack. Thank you so much! And, if you’d like to listen to (rather than read) these weekly posts, you can do so on Substack. It’s easy to see and use the audio bar across the top of each post. While you’re on Substack, check out the ministry I’m blessed to be part of, the Devoted Collective.
• My monthly newsletter, The Abiding Life, goes to email inboxes the first week of each month to those who have subscribed on my website. I also post them on Substack. My most recent edition can be found there, and you can subscribe for future newsletters on Substack, here.

Rhythms: As my newsletter’s title infers, we seek to develop an abiding life in this space — a place where we can get informed but also be transformed as we learn to abide in God’s presence throughout our days. I like to think that developing rhythms is one way to aid us in our desire to become more Christlike.

• This first series of our new year invites us to give considerable thought to what ‘holy’ is. We will be challenged to bring to our level what is so lofty that we really won’t fully grasp it. And yet, we are called to know God and to know His holiness — to allow His holy-ness to shape a higher reverence for Him, to grow within us a humble respect for His utter majesty. So for these next six weeks, I want to encourage us to notice when we see or hear or experience something of ‘holy’. I’ll go first!
  • For as long as I can remember, any time I have gotten to witness clouds in the sky breaking open just enough to allow rays of sunlight to shoot out, I have thought of heaven. So it occurs to me — my reaction to such beauty, which cannot be seen or experienced anywhere else, is my spirit resonating with the ‘holy’ of who God is — as represented by a sky that looks, at the time, ‘holy’. How about you?

• We’re all called to share the truth about who Jesus is. One way you can do that is by sharing this site and telling others your own stories of faith experiences. May we use our whole selves to tell others about our holy God!!

Featured Photo by Michael Michelovski on Unsplash. “All the Bits and Pieces” Photo by Sahand Babali on Unsplash.
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