We think God won’t mind a few sins here and there. The problem with this thinking is that we don’t get it. We don’t get how holy God is, and we don’t get how sinful we are. Isaiah understood it when he saw a vision of the Lord in his glory. He cried out, And I said: “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!” (Isa. 6:5) Isaiah saw his own sinfulness. He saw his total inadequacy to stand before God.

A lot of people think, “I’m not perfect, but I’m a pretty good person. God will let me into heaven.” This kind of thinking reminds me of the Esurance commercial where the woman says, “That’s not how it works; that’s not how any of this works!”

According to the Bible, getting into heaven by our own good deeds is “not how it works.” God is holy, which means that he is pure goodness, and he made human beings to be in a loving relationship with him. Because of the fall of man in the garden of Eden, “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Rom. 3:23).

Learning what it means that God is holy helps us to understand why the only way we can come to the Father is through Jesus. Here are seven essential things every person needs to know about the holiness of God:

1. God is different from his creation.

While humans have certain attributes that image their Creator, they are different kinds of beings than God. For starters, humans are created beings (finite), while God is spirit (infinite)—he has no beginning and no end:

“I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, “who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.” (Rev. 1:8)

In his classic book The Holiness of God, theologian R. C. Sproul writes,

When the Bible calls God holy, it means primarily that God is transcendentally separate. He is so far above and beyond us that He seems almost totally foreign to us. To be holy is to be ‘other,’ to be different in a special way” (p. 38). “And one called to another and said: ‘Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory!’” (Isa. 6:3)

2. God must uphold all his attributes.

Because he is spirit, God is always purely all of his attributes in complete perfection and unity. It is impossible for God to allow his mercy to override his justice. His holiness never conflicts with his love.

God must be true to all his attributes, because to do otherwise would be to deny his own self. As theologian Michael Horton so aptly states in his book The Christian Faith, ‘God would not be God if he did not possess all his attributes in the simplicity and perfection of his essence” (p. 229).

3. God’s holiness reveals our utter sinfulness.

We think God won’t mind a few sins here and there. The problem with this thinking is that we don’t get it. We don’t get how holy God is, and we don’t get how sinful we are. Isaiah understood it when he saw a vision of the Lord in his glory. He cried out,

And I said: “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!” (Isa. 6:5)

Isaiah saw his own sinfulness. He saw his total inadequacy to stand before God. He understood that he needed to be cleansed so he would not be destroyed by God’s utter goodness and purity.

We find another such example in the Gospel of Luke. When Peter witnessed the miracle of the great catch of fish:

But when Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord.” (Luke 5:8)

And when we get it—when we realize that there is nothing about us that is untouched by our depraved nature and how impossible it is for us to stand in righteousness before God on our own merits—this is when we must run to the foot of the cross and cling to Christ, our only hope.

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