Weekly Dose Of Lloyd-Jones

Now we often forget, I fear, that in a sense, the great business of the Old Testament is to reveal the holiness of God. We have been far too influenced, many of us, by the false teaching of the past century, which would have us believe that Old Testament history is just the history of man’s search for God. It is not. The Old Testament is primarily a revelation of the holiness of God, and of what God has done as a result of that, and, therefore, you find this teaching everywhere. What was the purpose of the giving of the law if not to reveal and to teach the children of Israel about the holiness of God? There He separated a people unto Himself, and He wanted them to know what sort of people they were. They could only know that as they realised and appreciated His holiness: so the giving of the law was primarily to that end.

Then take all the various instructions about the making of the tabernacle—the division into the outer court and the holy place, and the holiest of all, into which the high priest alone was allowed to enter once a year, and that not without blood. The tabernacle was simply designed to represent, as it were in actual practice, this great teaching about the holiness of God. Then, take all that you read about the ceremonial law and about the clean and unclean animals. Why all this? Well, the reason given is: you are a holy people and I am a holy God; you are not to eat what everybody else eats. There was to be this division, this separation, between clean and unclean. All that long list of rules and regulations is also a part of the teaching of the holiness of God.

Then, of course, the prophets constantly taught about God’s holiness. This was their great burden and message. It is summed up perfectly in the book of Habakkuk, where we are told, ‘Thou art of purer eyes than to behold evil, and canst not look on iniquity’ (Hab. 1:13).

And, again, you get the same emphasis in the New Testament. Our Lord, for instance, addressed God as ‘Holy Father’ (John 17:11). That is the supreme teaching about the holiness of God. Even He, who was equal with God, and had come out of the eternal bosom, even He addressed Him as ‘Holy Father’. And there is a definition of this in 1 John: ‘God is light, and in him is no darkness at all’ (1 John 1:5). So the Bible is full of this teaching. It refers to God the Father as the ‘Holy One of Israel’ (Ps. 71:22; etc.). The Lord Jesus Christ is referred to as ‘thy holy child Jesus’ (Acts 4:27), and the ‘Holy One’ (Acts 3:14). Then we speak of the ‘Holy Spirit’, thus the three Persons in the glorious Trinity are constantly referred to and described in terms of this quality of holiness.

But I suppose if you were to be asked to say where the Bible teaches the holiness of God most powerfully of all you have to go to Calvary. God is so holy, so utterly holy, that nothing but that awful death could make it possible for Him to forgive us. The cross is the supreme and the sublimest declaration and revelation of the holiness of God.*

Soli Deo Gloria!

For His Glory,
Fernando


*Lloyd-Jones, D. M. (1996). God the Father, God the Son (70–71). Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway Books.