CHAPTER THREE

A PASSION FOR HOLINESS

The Old Testament presents us not only with the particular history of Israel; it introduces us to God’s passion for holiness. The question this raises is, what does this mean for an unholy people?

A lot of people associate the Old Testament with an angry God. They even think of this Old Testament God as unjust. But nothing could be further from the truth. He’s a God of love who makes covenants. When God becomes angry in the Old Testament, you can be sure it is not whimsical tyranny. He is committed to his own holy and glorious character, and he is committed to his covenant with his people. Sin, the culprit that stirs up God’s anger, robs God of glory and breaks his covenant with his people.¹

Covenant

What is meant by this language of “covenant”? Christians refer to a “covenant” when they gather at the Lord’s Supper and recall Jesus’ words, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood” (Luke 22:20). Jesus’ language of covenant is not cold or legal, as some might think; he takes it from the Old Testament language for relationship-making. A covenant is a relational commitment of trust, love, and care, and God makes a number of covenants with his people in the Old Testament—with Abraham, Moses, and others. God’s passion for holiness becomes most evident when his people break the terms of their covenantal relationship with him, terms that are defined by the Mosaic Law and that accord with his own holy character. So we can define sin as law breaking, but we also know that law breaking means covenant breaking, relationship breaking, and—at the deepest level—“God’s holiness defying.” So does the Old Testament present us with an angry God? Yes, but it is a God who is angry exactly because he is not indifferent to sin and the incredible pain and suffering it causes.

Like the New Testament, the Old Testament teaches that every man and woman is a sinner, and that no one can deal with this by himself or herself.² Sin requires some kind of reparation. But how can reparation occur? God is holy, and justice can be restored only, it would seem, when God justly condemns the person who has wickedly broken his law (the terms of his covenant with Moses). So the sinner must be condemned! Or—and here is our only hope—some type of atonement must be made.

Atonement

What is atonement? Our English word atonement, Anglo-Saxon in origin, is a great picture of what the word means—­2 at-one-ment. An offering of atonement enables two warring parties to be at one, or reconciled. The people of Israel were not the only people in the ancient Near Eastern world who knew they needed atonement before God; the idea of placating a deity was common, yet only the Old Testament places the idea of atonement within the context of a genuine covenantal relationship between God and man.

Atonement in the Old Testament is unique in another way. As in many cultures, it is linked with sacrifice. But in the Bible, a sacrifice of atonement does not depend on human initiative, such as some pitiful attempt to propitiate a volcano god by dropping a beloved object into the fire. In the Old Testament, the living God speaks, and he tells his people how to approach him. He takes the initiative in providing the way of reconciliation.

Sacrifice

Sacrifice is not the only image the Old Testament uses to describe atonement,³ but it does play a central role from the beginning. Immediately after the fall, Cain and Abel offer sacrifices (Gen. 4:3–4). Before leaving Egypt, the Israelites are commanded to slaughter a Passover lamb without defect and paint its blood on the doors of their houses (Exodus 12). The lamb’s blood causes the Spirit of God to pass over a house, sparing the life of a family’s firstborn (who represents the whole family) from God’s just punishment of sin. In all of this, God very clearly is the object of the sacrificial event. Sacrifices are done to satisfy him and his just requirements. So God says to Moses, “When I see the blood . . .” (Ex. 12:13).

The book of Leviticus played a large role in teaching the Israelite people that their relationship with God needed to be restored through a sacrifice. Every sacrifice was to be voluntary, costly, accompanied by a confession of sin, and according to God’s prescriptions. The life of the animal victim, symbolized by its blood, was given in exchange for the life of the guilty human worshiper. What does some animal have to do with an individual’s guilt? In one sense, nothing. In fact, the animal was supposed to be unblemished.⁴ Yet atonement had to be made through blood.⁵ God tells the people that “the life of a creature is in the blood, and I have given it to you to make atonement for yourselves on the altar; it is the blood that makes atonement for one’s life” (Lev. 17:11). God used the sacrificial act to implant in his people’s minds the image of an innocent life being given in exchange for guilty lives. The shed blood plainly revealed that sin causes death. Sin is costly. Salvation and forgiveness are costly. Now, I know the whole idea of sacrifices and all that blood is unpopular—to say the least!—among many people today. Still, this is how the Old Testament shows God’s holiness and his wrath against sin. Unlike other ancient sacrifices, biblical sacrifices were not made by the grateful so much as by the guilty; they were not made by the ignorant so much as by the instructed.

The design of the Old Testament temple was also used to teach the people that their sin separated them from God. In the back of your Bible you might find a diagram of the temple that shows that it was designed as a series of concentric squares and rectangles. The worshipers on the outside were separated from God in the innermost square, called the Most Holy Place. The temple’s design physically demonstrated that sin hinders access to God. It was a visual picture of how sin separates humans from their Creator. Aside from the sacrifices that occurred throughout the year in the outer court, the high priest entered the Most Holy Place once a year to offer a sacrifice for all the people (Leviticus 16). This was the Day of Atonement.

Yet the mere fact that the sacrifices had to be repeated annually showed that the sacrifices, in and of themselves, were never the point.⁶ Their repetition showed instead that the people were in a state of sin, and that no perfect and complete sacrifice could take away sin entirely. Sacrifices were most efficacious, ironically, when they were made with the understanding that they were not efficacious and that only God’s grace saves. But notice the problem here. If the sacrifices were not finally effective for the removing of sin, how could God’s grace justly save?

A Riddle

Here we come to the riddle of the Old Testament. In Exodus 34, God refers to himself by saying, “The LORD, the LORD, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished” (vv. 6–7). Now, how can that be? How can God forgive “wickedness, rebellion and sin” and yet “not leave the guilty unpunished”?

The good news is, the God of the Old Testament has a passion for holiness, but he also promises hope. And that brings us to the last thing we need to understand about the Old Testament and the God it reveals.

¹ Prov. 15:29; Isa. 59:2; Hab. 1:13; also Col. 1:21; Heb. 10:27.

² 1 Kings 8:46; Ps. 14:3; Prov. 20:9; Eccles. 7:20; also Mark 10:18; Rom. 3:23.

³ For instance, Isaiah uses the image of a hot coal that purges unclean lips (Isa. 6:6–7); Hosea describes the purchase of an offender (Hos. 3:2–3); Zechariah refers to the removing of filthy clothes (Zech. 3:4).

⁴ E.g., Lev. 1:3, 10; 3:1, 6; 4:3, 23, 28.

⁵ E.g., Gen. 9:5; Lev. 1:4; 4:4; 14:51; 16:21.

⁶ As you can tell if you read Jeremiah’s denunciations of them in Jeremiah 7.