Understanding the Holiness of God

The more we understand the holiness of God, the more we will pursue lives of holiness as we seek to bring Him glory. Today, R.C. Sproul explains what happens as we contemplate the character of our Lord.

I wish I understood the holiness of God, really understood it. I understand it a little bit, just a fraction. And I would say that in my own life, one of the strongest controlling dimensions of my thinking has resulted from detailed study of the holiness of God. You study God's holiness not because I'm holy, but because I'm not holy and I know it. I know that the more I understand about the character of God, the easier it is for me to love him, the easier it is for me to understand that what this world embraces and tolerates is abhorrent to him.

See what God considers unholy, we consider commonplace. In fact, the word we use for the unholy more than any other term is the word normal. What we call normal, God normally calls evil when judged against the character of his holiness. The older I get, the more I study theology, the more I immerse myself in the scriptures, the more transparent that becomes to me, that I need to understand the character of God, his holiness. It's not enough simply to say, "I believe in God, amorphous, mysterious, cloudy spirit up in the sky," but the God we believe in is personal and the God that we believe in is moral. He is ethical. He is holy, and he gives commandments to his people. And he gets exercised about whether we obey those commands.