Andrew David Naselli
Holiness is woven through the Bible’s storyline. The holy God created holy people who became unholy. He later selected Israel as his holy people, but they repeatedly failed to be holy. Jesus, who embodies holiness, made his people holy, so Christians are holy and must strive to live in a holy manner, however imperfectly, until God consummates his plan to make his people holy.
Holiness Personified: God
Many people equate holiness with taboos. The Bible equates it fundamentally with God.
What Is Holiness?
“Holiness” is commonly defined as being separate or set apart. God is holy in that he is set apart from everything that is not God, and God’s people must be holy by being set apart from sin. So holiness, according to this definition, is separateness that entails moral purity. But that does not sufficiently describe the essence of holiness or distinguish different senses in which people and things can be holy. There is a sense in which only God is holy and another sense in which others can be holy.
God Is Holy
In its most focused usage, “holy” is an adjective uniquely associated with God. “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD Almighty” (Isa 6:3; cf. Rev 4:8). Surely this loses something if rendered “Separate, separate, separate” or “Moral, moral, moral.” Saying “God is holy” is like saying “God is uniquely God” or “God alone is God”: the word “holy” in such a context becomes almost an adjective for God. That God swears by his holiness (Ps 89:35; Amos 4:2) is equivalent to saying that he swears “by himself” (Amos 6:8). God is supremely and exclusively God. He has no rivals. As uniquely excellent, he is his own category: “There is no one holy like the LORD; there is no one besides you” (1 Sam 2:2; cf. Exod 15:11; Ps 77:13; Isa 40:25). The Bible calls God “the Holy One” over 50 times and calls the Spirit of God “the Holy Spirit” over 90 times.
People and Objects Are Holy in Relation to God
God alone is innately holy (Rev 15:4). His name is holy (Isa 57:15). Yet the use of the word “holy” stretches out in widening circles to apply to people and things. If human beings or things are holy, they are holy only derivatively—not because they are divine or moral but because God restricts them for his special use. In a broad sense, everything belongs to God, but in a more narrow sense, some things and people belong exclusively to God in a special way. For example, heaven—God’s dwelling place—is holy (Deut 26:15), and God refers to angels as his “holy ones” (Ps 89:5–7) and “the holy angels” (Mark 8:38).
Holiness Lost: Humans
Adam and Eve were the crown of God’s good creation, and they walked with God in the sanctuary of Eden. But the sinless couple sinned and lost their holiness, so God expelled them from his presence (Gen 1–3; Eccl 7:29). (See “Creation,” and “Sin.”) The story of the Bible is, from one perspective, about how God is working to restore to an even greater degree the holiness that our first parents forfeited.
Holiness Established and Practiced: Israel
God later selected Israel to become his holy people as he dwelt among them. The OT calls God “the Holy One of Israel” over 30 times.
Israel Was Holy
Following the exodus of God’s people from Egypt, Israel became a holy nation because God was uniquely present with them. Israel was God’s special people: “You are a people holy to the LORD your God. The LORD your God has chosen you out of all the peoples on the face of the earth to be his people, his treasured possession” (Deut 7:6; cf. Exod 19:4–6; Deut 14:2).
In the OT, holiness is usually associated with God’s special presence in theophanies (see note on Deut 4:24) or at Israel’s tabernacle and temple. God’s holiness radiated outward from the Most Holy Place, making everything associated with it holy: the building and courtyard (Lev 16:15–16; Ps 79:1); the furniture and utensils (Exod 30:26–29; Num 4:14–15); the priests and their clothing (Exod 29:21; Lev 21:6–8); the sacrifices, offerings, and tithed crops (Lev 27:30; Num 18:17); and the oil, incense, and censers (Exod 30:25, 34–37; Num 16:37). (See “Priest,” and “Sacrifice.”)
Israel Was Responsible to Be Holy
God commanded Israel, “You are to be my holy people” (Exod 22:31). “Be holy, because I am holy” (Lev 11:44–45; cf. Lev 19:2; 20:7; 21:8). “You are to be holy to me because I, the LORD, am holy, and I have set you apart from the nations to be my own” (Lev 20:26).
Israel was responsible to regard God as holy (Isa 8:13) by obeying his commands regarding rituals and morality (Num 15:40; Deut 28:9; cf. Num 20:12). They were to keep God’s Sabbaths holy (Exod 20:8–11), and the priests were to “distinguish between the holy and the common, between the unclean and the clean” (Lev 10:10). Uncleanness, which is linked to imperfection and death, is the opposite of holiness, which is linked to wholeness and life. God’s instructions about cleanness and uncleanness covered all spheres of life, including diet, purification after childbirth, skin diseases, infections, and bodily discharges, and they reminded the people of their holy calling (Lev 11–15).
But because Israel continually profaned their holy God, who judges unholy people (2 Kgs 17:7–23; 2 Chr 36:15–16), God graciously met the need of sinful humans with a holy Savior.
Holiness Embodied and Accomplished: Jesus
Jesus Is Holy
“Who can stand in the presence of the LORD, this holy God?” (1 Sam 6:20). Only one can stand on his own merits: Jesus. He is “holy and true” (Rev 3:7; 6:10). Jesus is the one whom “the Father set apart as his very own” (John 10:36). The angel Gabriel announced to Mary, “The holy one to be born will be called the Son of God” (Luke 1:35). An unclean demon recognized Jesus as “the Holy One of God” (Luke 4:34). Jesus made unclean people clean by touching them, and he never became unclean because he is inherently holy. Peter called Jesus “the Holy One of God” (John 6:69), “the Holy and Righteous One” (Acts 3:14), and God’s “holy servant” (Acts 4:27, 30).
Jesus Makes People Holy
Jesus is both the Holy One and “the one who makes people holy” (Heb 2:11). He is “our righteousness, holiness and redemption” (1 Cor 1:30). His perfect life and sacrificial death satisfied God’s holy wrath against sinners: “We have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all” (Heb 10:10). “Jesus also suffered outside the city gate to make the people holy through his own blood” (Heb 13:12).
To serve in God’s presence, OT priests were made holy by a consecration ritual involving atonement, purification, and eating a special meal. These same elements also underlie the Passover ritual, by which God consecrated Israel as a holy nation. This pattern continues in the NT: Jesus brings about a new exodus that consecrates believers as holy. God is uniquely present with the church, composed of both Jewish and Gentile Christians, because it is “a holy temple in the Lord” (Eph 2:21; cf. 1 Cor 3:17). God has chosen Christians to be “a holy priesthood”; they are “a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession” (1 Pet 2:5, 9). (See “Exile and Exodus,” and “Temple.”)
Holiness Applied and Practiced: Christians
Many theologians sharply distinguish justification from sanctification. (“Sanctify” means to make holy.) Justification is the instantaneous, completed act in which God declares a believing sinner to be righteous, and sanctification is the progressive, incomplete, lifelong maturing process in which a Christian is gradually made more holy. Those are valid and important systematic categories, but the latter category can confuse people because the NT letters present three tenses of sanctification: past, present, and future. A Christian can say, “I am sanctified. I am being sanctified. And I will be sanctified.”
• Past. Definitive or positional sanctification occurs when God sets people apart for himself at the moment they become Christians.
• Present. Progressive sanctification is what many Christians today refer to as sanctification (see above).
• Future. Ultimate sanctification corresponds to glorification. This happens when God sets his people apart from sin’s presence and possibility.
Christians Are Holy
When the Bible refers to Christians as “holy” or “sanctified,” it usually refers, not to progressive sanctification, but to definitive or positional sanctification (e.g., Rom 1:7; Eph 1:1; 5:3; Col 1:2, 12; 3:12; 2 Thess 1:10; Heb 2:11; Jude 3; Rev 13:7). In this sense, every Christian is a saint; every Christian is holy; every Christian is sanctified. For example, Paul addresses the church at Corinth as “those sanctified in Christ Jesus and called to be his holy people” (1 Cor 1:2; cf. 1 Cor 6:11). They were already “sanctified” even though they were failing to be holy in several areas.
Christians Are Responsible to Be Holy
God commands Christians, “Just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do; for it is written: ‘Be holy, because I am holy’ ” (1 Pet 1:15–16, quoting Lev 11:44–45). Christians must worship God by offering their “bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God” (Rom 12:1). Since Christians belong exclusively to God, they must reflect God’s moral character with “holy and godly lives” (2 Pet 3:11; cf. Rom 6:19, 22; 2 Cor 7:1). “It is God’s will that you should be sanctified: that you should avoid sexual immorality; that each of you should learn to control your own body in a way that is holy and honorable . . . For God did not call us to be impure, but to live a holy life” (1Thess 4:3–4, 7). “Make every effort to live in peace with everyone and to be holy; without holiness no one will see the Lord” (Heb 12:14).
Holiness Consummated: Glory
Paul prayed, “May he strengthen your hearts so that you will be blameless and holy in the presence of our God and Father when our Lord Jesus comes with all his holy ones” (1 Thess 3:13; cf. 1 Thess 5:23). A day is coming when Christians will fully become what they already are positionally. The OT anticipates the time when all of God’s people “will be called the Holy People, the Redeemed of the LORD” (Isa 62:12). Before God created the world, he chose his people in Christ “to be holy and blameless in his sight” (Eph 1:4; cf. Eph 5:27). With pure hearts God’s people will “worship the LORD in the splendor of his holiness” (1 Chr 16:29; Pss 29:2; 96:9) like never before, joining the heavenly hosts who “never stop saying: ‘Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty,’ who was, and is, and is to come” (Rev 4:8). (See “Worship,” and “The Consummation.”)