Monday, August 04, 2008

God is Holy

Excerpt from "Crazy Love" by Francis Chan
A lot of people say that whatever you believe about God is fine, so long as you are sincere. But that is comparable to describing your friend in one instance as a three-hundred-pound sumo wrestler and in another as a five-foot-two, ninety pound gymnast. No matter how sincere you are in your explanations, both descriptions of your friend simply can't be true.
The preposterous part about our doing this to God is that He already has a name, an identity. We don't get to decide who God is. "God said to Moses, 'I am who I am" (Ex. 3:14). We don't change that.
To say that God is holy is to say that He is set apart, distinct from us. And because of His set apart-ness, there is no way we can ever fathom all of who He is. To the Jews, saying something three times demonstrated its perfection, so to call God, "Holy Holy Holy" is to say that He is perfectly set apart, with nothing and no one to compare Him to. That is what it means to be "holy".
Many Spirit-filled authors have exhausted the thesaurus in order to describe God with the glory He deserves. His perfect holiness, by definition, assures us that our words can't contain Him. Isn't it a comfort to worship a God we cannot exaggerate?

1 comment:

Connie said...

Francis Chan is awesome. We heard him preach at Willow Creek. That was a big treat.