Holy Space and Holy Time

Each of our lives is marked by sacred sites
that we cherish in our memories.
~ R. C. Sproul

For me? Yes, the lowly church van. One of my sacred sites.

We were heading home on the 7-hour drive from cleaning up Katrina debris. We had all worked hard. Had seen some sad sights. Had heard some hard stories.

But we were energized just the same. That’s what God does in sacred sites.

So for hour after hour, we sang to our Lord. And sang. And sang. One song led to another and another. Sometimes two of us, sometimes three, sometimes the whole van.

God was accepting our praise; we felt it in our bones. And it felt right. It felt holy.

R.C. Sproul finishes The Holiness of God describing holy space and holy time. Our culture rarely gets it (although we caught a glimpse with the public outcry against a potential mosque on Ground Zero in Manhattan).

In our society, religion is limited to a kind of personal therapy for people who have difficulty dealing with the difficulties of life. Ours is a profane existence, with no sense of the presence of the holy.

But we need to see the holy. We need to believe there’s a miraculous opening from our world to a better one, a step into the wardrobe to step out into Narnia (thank you, Mr. Lewis).

We need to see a baby in a manger and know he is really a king.

And we get it in Jesus.

Moses first got it in a burning bush. He discovered he was on holy ground. Because the Holy’s presence made it so (Exodus 3:5-6).

Jacob got his sacred space in a dream at Haran with ladders and angels and the voice of the Lord (Genesis 28:16-17).

Men throughout the Bible built altars to honor hallowed spaces. To mark the spot where heaven spilled over on earth, where the divine touched the profane.

But we know it really has nothing to do with place. It has everything to do with Person. With God. An encounter with our Creator opens holy space.

Time also marks sacredness. Sproul differentiates between the two Greek words for time—chronos time, the ordinary moment-by-moment passing of time, and kairos, the special moments with certain significance. The historic moments.

Kairotic events include such crucial moments as the Creation, the Fall, the Exodus, the Captivity, the Incarnation, the Cross, the Resurrection, the Ascension, and Pentecost.

These events are watershed moments in God's work in history. They are filled with redemptive significance.

While God is with us all the time and in every space, we still benefit when we mark moments of transition, moments of importance. God did. When he completed his work of creation, he declared the seventh day as holy (Genesis 2:3).

We understand such moments. We set apart birth dates and anniversaries and other holidays as sacred time, time to pause and recognize significance and give thanks to God.

We’re in the eves of a sacred Christian holiday. As you celebrate Christmas, in whatever way you do, remember that on one day in time (December 25 or not), in one space in Bethlehem, our world was injected with a sacredness like it had never seen before.

And has never been the same since. Praise God!

My mouth will speak the praise of the LORD,
and let all flesh bless his holy name forever and ever.
Psalm 145:21

* * *

Do you have a sacred place or time? What is it?

More on Chapter 11—Holy Space and Holy Time—at Challies.
Previous chapter reviews from The Holiness of God.

Look through nature to God

When you look at the greatness of the universe, does it make you feel less important or more important?

The psalmist looked beyond himself into the heavens and asked God, “What is man that you are mindful of him?” (Psalm 8:4). But instead of giving the answer we’d guess (I am NOTHING!), he was awed that God was not only capable of making all creation, but also of crowning one of his creatures with glory, giving him dominion over much.

As David looked through the medium of nature to see God, he became more amazed by God.

Everybody can see or hear or touch manifestations of God’s glory. But not everyone acknowledges it as God (Romans 1:21-23).

R.C. Sproul says in The Holiness of God that our failure to know God isn’t the problem. It’s our failure to believe what we know to be true (Romans 1:25). 

Here we face a problem that is not an intellectual problem. It is a moral problem. It is the problem of dishonesty.

…The dishonest exchange that is in view here is the substitution of the creature for the Creator, an exchange that is dishonest precisely because we know better.

…God's holiness is on display daily for everyone to see. Again it is not merely that it is available to be seen for those who earnestly search for it. Rather Paul’s point is that God’s holiness is seen, and it is seen clearly.

Sproul goes on to say that we’re accustomed to connecting God’s holiness with goodness. And connecting his holiness with truth.

But how often do we connect his holiness with beauty?

He speaks of this triad of virtues—the good, the true, and the beautiful—as pointing beyond themselves to the glory of God.

Beauty, though it involves the mind, goes beyond the limits of mere cognition. When we are “moved” by great works of art, we are gripped by an affective sense that stirs the soul as well as the mind.

To cultivate an appreciation for beauty is to set our course to follow after the sublime Author of all beauty.

Let the beauty of nature, of art, of music, etc., draw you into a greater appreciation of God’s glory and holiness. Look at a starry night and be amazed at its grandeur, but don’t stop there.

Keep looking until you see through it and are in awe of the good, true, and beautiful holy one who crafted it all, including you, for his glory and your good.

* * *

NEXT:
Chapter 11, Holy Space and Holy Time

More on Ch 10, Looking beyond Shadows, at Challies

Previous chapters

God in the Hands of Angry Sinners

This is a tough chapter. Almost ugly.

Chapter 9 in The Holiness of God challenges me to check my heart. And instead of finding how good I am in there, I see how self-righteous I still am instead.

It all starts with Jonathan Edwards’ famous sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” Honestly, would it play in most churches today? Who wants to hear about a God of wrath anymore? The God we’ve conceived in our image would override such a temper.

But as R.C. Sproul points out,

If we think soberly for five seconds, we must see our error. If God is holy at all, if God has an ounce of justice in His character, indeed if God exists as God, how could He possibly be anything else but angry with us?

We violate His holiness; we insult His justice; we make light of His grace. These things can hardly please him.

Well, if you put it that way.

It’s only by God’s gracious hand holding you up that “you have not dropped into hell since you arose in the morning” (Jonathan Edwards). If you had to depend on your own righteousness to keep you out of hell instead of depending on God’s, you’d have no more chance than “a spider’s web would have to stop a falling rock.” (And really much less than that.)

God’s wrath is divine, is fierce, and is everlasting. So why do we STILL not take it seriously?

We think hell couldn’t happen to us.

We’re almost insulted at the thought. We mistakenly assume that our God of love could never do such a thing. But if our God is not a holy God with holy justice, he is not God at all.

Edwards’ sequel sermon (with Sproul’s rewording) was “God in the Hands of Angry Sinners.” Anyone not born again is an enemy of God and hates God. He considers God unworthy of worship and refuses to be ruled by him. The love of God is not in him. Want proof? Look at what such men did to Jesus.

But that’s not us, we cry. We love God. Yet even here Sproul reminds us to be careful:

There remains a vestige of our fallen nature with which we must struggle every day.

There still resides a corner of the soul that takes no delight in God. We see its ragged edge in our continued sin, and we can observe it in our lethargic worship.

Ouch. So what’s a self-righteous, sinner to do? Throw ourselves into God’s gracious hands.

On our own, we can never love him as he deserves to be loved. But the more we realize his love for us and the more he continues to change our hearts, the more we can love him, wrath and all.

* * *

NEXT:
Chapter 10, Looking beyond Shadows

More on Chapter 9 at Challies
Previous chapters

I am a saint

I cringe at that title.

I know the Bible calls us saints (Romans 1:7) but I don’t usually feel like one. Or think I act like one.

I still mistakenly think of a saint as somebody who is always kind, doesn’t make mistakes, is super spiritual.

Not just regular believers. Like me. Like you. But, hey, we’re it.

Regardless of our misconceptions, we are the “holy ones” because He says so. Not because we’re sinless, but because we’re set apart to mirror his glory.

In Chapter 8, “Be Holy Because I Am Holy” of The Holiness of God, R. C. Sproul points out that God led the Hebrews out of Egypt to set them apart, make them a special nation for a special purpose. His special purpose. Not because of anything they had done, but because of something he wanted to do.

And he told them, “Be holy, because I am holy” (Lev. 11:44). Yeah, we see how well they obeyed that. About as well as we do. For the most part, they continued to chose their own purposes over God’s purposes. But no matter. God still succeeded in accomplishing his purpose (as he always does, Isaiah 46:10-11), and he brought forth from them the everlasting King that we still worship today.

We have the same high calling to be holy as he is holy (1 Peter 1:15-16). To be vessels for honorable use (2 Timothy 2:21). To be transformed, living sacrifices (Romans 12:1-2).

To be separate. For a purpose. Different like Jesus is different. By conforming to Jesus. Think as he thinks. Obey as he obeys. Value things he values and detest things he detests.

How? According to Sproul’s interpretation of the apostle Paul’s writings,

The key method Paul underscores as the means to the transformed life is by the “renewal of the mind.”

This means nothing more and nothing less than education. Serious education. In-depth education. Disciplined education in the things of God.

It calls for a mastery of the Word of God. We need to be people whose lives have changed because our minds have changed.

We’re still in process of being transformed, obviously. But even now as sinners, we are still saints. We are already separated from our sins and set apart for good works.

He counts us righteous even when in and of ourselves we are not righteous. But this is the gospel!

There’s no waiting for us to get our acts perfectly together before he justifies us and calls us righteous.

The instant we believe, we are immediately justified. God does not wait for our good works before He declares us just. We are still sinners when the declaration comes. How much time elapses before the sinner begins to become pure? The answer is none.

But can we know if we’re at least making progress in living out our holiness call? Sproul suggests looking for fruit of the Holy Spirit in our lives as signs (Galatians 5:22-23).

These are the marks of a person who is growing in holiness. These are the virtues we are called to cultivate. To yield the fruit of the Spirit, we must practice the fruit of the Spirit.

That doesn’t mean it’s easy or that it comes naturally.

There is nothing easy about becoming holy. Yet, the Bible does make it easy for us to know what holiness is supposed to look like.

So we stay focused on Christ to know the ultimate Holy One. We seek his kingdom and his righteousness (Matthew 6:33) as we live out our holy call.

I will continue to struggle calling myself a saint according to the world’s definition, but according to God’s definition, I’m there.

If he calls me a holy one, then so be it. I am a saint.

* * *

NEXT:
Chapter 9, God in the Hands of Angry Sinners

More on Chapter 8 at Challies
Previous chapters

RELATED:

• Are you scared of holy?
• Grappling with his justice
• Is holiness boring?

War and peace with God

What does it mean to fight with God and come out with peace?

It means God has shown you holy mercy.

R. C. Sproul finds out by looking at Jacob, Job, Habakkuk, and Paul in chapter 7 of The Holiness of God.

“When we wrestle with the Almighty, we lose.”

Jacob
God let Jacob survive his wrestling match with the angel (Genesis 32:24-32), but Jacob was crippled the rest of his life. Sproul says a lesson here is that,

God will engage us in our honest struggles. We may wrestle with the Holy One. Indeed, for the transforming power of God to change our lives, we must wrestle with Him.

Job
When Job challenged God, he was looking for answers. Instead,

God answered job's questions not with words but with Himself. As soon as Job saw who God was, Job was satisfied. Seeing the manifestation of God was all that he needed. He was able to leave the details in God's hands.

Job repented and made no further challenges (Job 42:2-6).

Habakkuk
Habakkuk was a prophet in the Old Testament who was offended that God was letting his own people suffer at the hands of those more evil than they (Habakkuk 1:2-4).

But after demanding answers from God, like Job, Habakkuk too was quickly humbled when God spoke (Habakkuk 3:16). He turned from despair at what God had planned to having a confident hope in the final outcome, and leaving us with some of the most beautiful verses in the Bible: 

Though the fig tree should not blossom, nor fruit be on the vines, the produce of the olive fail and the fields yield no food, the flock be cut off from the fold and there be no herd in the stalls, 
yet I will rejoice in the LORD; I will take joy in the God of my salvation.
Habakkuk 3:17-18

Sproul summarizes these Old Testament stories in this way:

Jacob, Job, and Habakkuk all declared war on God. They all stormed the battlements of heaven.

They were all defeated, yet they all came away from the struggle with uplifted souls. They paid a price in pain.

God allowed the debate, but the battle was fierce before peace was established.

Paul
Saul of Tarsus was another who fought against God. While blatantly persecuting God’s true followers, he was abruptly challenged on the road to Damascus by the Lord himself (Acts 26:13-19). He was thrown to the ground and instantly blinded by Jesus’ holiness.

His first question was, “Who are you, Lord?” Finding out turned his fight against Christ into a fight for Christ.

You and me
We often struggle against a holy God, too. Only when we come to grips with own unholiness and accept the gift of his righteousness do we find peace. A lasting peace.

Our peace with God is not fragile; it is stable. When we sin, God is displeased, and He will move to correct us and convict us of our sin.

But He does not go to war against us.

This peace gives us access to God’s presence forever. We may still tremble before him, but we are no longer at war with him.

* * *

When have you fought with God? How did it turn out?

More on Chapter 7 at Challies
Previous chapters

Next:
Chapter 8, Be Holy Because I Am Holy

Grappling with his justice

If you’re like me, you don’t have a problem with God’s grace. We may not fully understand it, but we love him for giving it.

But his justice?

That’s a sticky issue. I don’t fully understand it either. And while a part of me loves him for being a just god, another part of me struggles with it.

So I’ll warn you up front:
Chapter 6—Holy Justice—won’t be summed up in a blog post. It’s too full. Read the chapter for yourself. (It’ll be a reward for making it through Chapter 5—The Insanity of Luther.)

As I see it, some people turn away from God when they see bad things happen to good people. They can’t explain it. (Could something bad happen to me, too?) So they blame God.

And some people turn away from God because he has done and will do bad things to bad people. They’re not comfortable with that. (After all, even on our best day, aren’t all of us bad?) So they resent God.

R. C. Sproul addresses the latter issue in this chapter by looking at the most offensive Bible stories. 

Like Nadab and Abihu (Leviticus 10:1-3). Immediately executed for offering unauthorized fire. And Uzzah (1 Chronicles 13:9-11). Reached out his hand to steady the ark of the covenant, then whammo—instant death. God, isn’t that a bit harsh? we ask.

Even in the New Testament we learn about the instant deaths of Ananias and Sapphira (Acts 5:9-10) for telling lies.

Is that very nice, God? Do you have to take sin so seriously?

Yes.

His justice is never unfair, never whimsical, never tyrannical. It is impossible for God to be unjust, because his justice is holy.

The reason we don’t fully understand these stories, according to Sproul, is because we don’t fully understand “four vitally important biblical concepts: holiness, justice, sin, and grace.” We don’t really believe that “every sin is a capital offense.” God doesn’t owe us life. He made us to reflect his image. Yet look how we flub that up every day. We are not an innocent people.

God's justice is never divorced from His righteousness. He never condemns the innocent. He never clears the guilty. He never punishes with undo severity. He never fails to reward righteousness. His justice is perfect justice.

We don’t always see God’s justice because we see his mercy instead. But that mercy had a price, and it’s been paid in full. It was Jesus who saw the wrath.

If anybody has a right to complain of injustice, wouldn’t it be Jesus?

He was the only innocent man ever to be punished by God. If we stagger at the wrath of God, let us stagger at the Cross.

Here is where our astonishment should be focused. If we have cause for moral outrage, let it be directed at Golgotha.

He traded his innocence for our guilt. It’s in his justice that we find mercy.

But mercy isn’t ours to demand. It’s undeserved. Only justice is deserved.

Sproul says it’s the confusion between justice and mercy that make us recoil at the stories of Nadab, Abihu, Uzzah.

When God's justice falls, we are offended because we think God owes perpetual mercy. We must not take His grace for granted. We must never lose our capacity to be amazed by grace.

I still don’t understand God’s holy justice, but if it leads to his amazing grace, that’s more than enough for me.

* * *

How do you resolve struggles with God’s sense of justice?

Next:
Chapter 7, War and Peace with a Holy God

More on Chapter 6 at Challies
Previous chapters

Another set of eyes

Let God be God.
MARTIN LUTHER

I’m not sure why R. C. Sproul included Chapter Six—“The Insanity of Luther”—in this book.

But I’ve concluded for me, looking at God’s holiness through someone else’s eyes helps me see Him in a different light.

He’s too big for one set of eyes at a time.

At Luther’s first mass after his ordination, he froze at the altar. Why? He explained:

Who am I, that I should lift up mine eyes or raise my hands to the divine Majesty? The angels surround him. At his nod the earth trembles.

And shall I, a miserable little pygmy, say “I want this, I ask for that”? For I am dust and ashes and full of sin and I am speaking to the living, eternal and the true God.

I can relate. You?

But Sproul points out two things about Luther that separated him from others: He knew who God was, and he understood the demands of God’s law.

And he felt extreme guilt that he couldn’t meet those demands.

He concluded that if the Great Commandment was to love God with all the heart, then the Great Transgression was to fail to love God with all the heart. He saw a balance between great obligations and great sins.

Who can perfectly keep the Great Commandment? No human. So Luther wrestled with how God could accept him:

The genius of Luther ran up against a legal dilemma that he could not solve. There seemed to be no solution possible. The question that nagged him day and night was how a just God could accept an unjust man.

But he finally did get it. Me, too. And you?

Once Luther grasped Paul’s teaching in Romans, he was reborn. The burden of his guilt was lifted.

I get that. I hope you do, too. It sounds insane, but it’s not.

It’s Truth. Let’s keep working it out together.

* * *

Does it help you to see God through others’ eyes?

Next:
Chapter 6, Holy Justice

More on Chapter 5 at Challies
Previous chapters

The Über Curve Breaker

Unless you were him, you probably hated him at test time.

The one who scored the highest. Who set the standard out of reach for everyone else. Who made your grade stay low instead of being scaled up after a hard test.

So when R.C. Sproul pointed out that Jesus was a curve breaker, I got it.

No wonder the Pharisees and Sadducees hated him. In a side by side comparison, they failed miserably.

If God were to grade on a curve, the last man you want taking the same test as you is his genius boy.

Unless...unless...when he takes the test, he trades grades with you. You get his perfect score. And he takes your F.

That’s radical. And it can change the way you look at Jesus. If you think you have to compete with him, you won’t like him. But if you realize he’s earning bonus points to give them all to you, you’ll love him.

Sproul continued on in chapter 4 in The Holiness of God to say that sometimes Christians get the same reaction that Jesus got: 

No one sees Him or speaks audibly with Him in the flesh today. Yet the threatening power of His holiness is still  felt. Sometimes it is transferred to His people. As the Jews at the foot of Mount Sinai fled in terror from the dazzling face of Moses, so people today get uncomfortable in the mere presence of Christians.

He even goes so far to say that:

Holiness provokes hatred. The greater the holiness, the greater the human hostility toward it. It seems insane. No man was ever more loving than Jesus Christ.

But if it’s true that “sinful people are not  comfortable in the presence of the holy,” then we all should be uncomfortable.

Except...except...for that exchange: my sin for his holiness. And after he paid the price for my sin by taking on the wrath of God, he got his holiness back. So all is well.

I don’t have to be afraid of this curve-breaker.
I can cheer him on instead.

* * *

Previous chapters
More on Chapter 4 at Challies
Next: Chapter 5, The Insanity of Luther

Are you scared of holy?

Do you like getting scared at horror movies?
Love a good ghost story? Haunted houses?

Not me. I’ll be glad when Halloween is over.

Does the thought of God ever scare you? Not just because he has tremendous power to do anything he wants to.

But because he is holy?

I don’t think of myself as scared of God. I trust him. I know he loves me. But if he appeared here suddenly out of the blue? I’d be scared. Would you? People in the Bible were. They were even scared when God’s angels appeared out of the blue.

But why?

R.C. Sproul suggests it’s because God is so different from us.

I’ve been waiting for this chapter in The Holiness of God. Sproul finally defines holy. For years I had a cultural definition. I thought it meant spiritual, sinless, perfect. I’d picture an aura of haloes and angels and God on his big white throne.

While holy does have those secondary meanings of purity and moral perfection, I’ve since learned as Sproul points out that the primary meaning of holy is separate.

When the seraphim sang their song, they were saying far more than that God was “purity, purity, purity.” The primary meaning of holy is “separate.”

And upon an even closer look, it further means “a cut apart, or a cut above something.” So,

...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.

Is it that “otherness” that scares us?

Rudolf Otto thought so. A German scholar who scientifically studied holiness in 1917, Otto called it the “mysterium tremendum” – translated, the awful mystery (I’m reminded of Hebrews 12:18-21). Otto explained that,

The clearest sensation that human beings have when they experience the holy is an overpowering and overwhelming sense of creatureliness.

That is, when we are aware of the presence of God, we become most aware of ourselves as creatures.

God is obviously not like us.

God is the ultimate object of our xenophobia. He is the ultimate  stranger. He is the ultimate foreigner. He is holy, and we are not.

And because of his holiness, we feel threatened. His “otherness” contrasts too greatly with who we are.

God is too great for us; He is too awesome. He makes difficult demands on us. He is the Mysterious Stranger who threatens our security. In His presence we quake and tremble. Meeting Him personally may be our greatest trauma.

Thankfully, that’s not where our relationship ends with holy...

But this is where Sproul ends Chapter 3. Chapter 4 begins “The Trauma of Holiness,” next week. Read along with us at Challie’s.

* * *

Previous chapters

Related:

• My favorite spooky stories
• Is holiness boring?
• Written to make you holy

Is holiness boring?

I’m disturbed. And I don’t know what to do about it.

R. C. Sproul says in chapter two of The Holiness of God that one main reason people stop going to church is because it’s boring.

I get that. Sometimes I don’t want to go for that reason, too. I hate being bored.

But it bothers me. Because I know God is definitely, certainly, positively NOT boring. And if church is where we meet with others meeting with God, why do we let it get boring?

Sproul talks about Isaiah seeing God in Isaiah 6. It was an experience far from boring. The foundations trembled, smoke was everywhere, angels flew in and out, His glory was blinding. And Isaiah quaked (a definite sign of NOT being bored).

When Moses wanted to see God face to face (Exodus 33:19-23), God told him He would be too much for Moses. So He showed him His back instead. And even then it left Moses’ face so bright that other people couldn’t look directly at him.

No, God is not boring.

God is holy. And holy is not boring.

Holy is so exciting we can hardly bear it. When we stand next to holiness, we quake. Our own sinfulness is so horrid in comparison that God in His mercy reveals Himself to us slowly. And reveals us to ourselves slowly.

We need God if we’re going to see either Him or ourselves. And He must purify us before we can. After Isaiah cried out, “Woe is me! I am a man of unclean lips!” (Isaiah 6:5), his guilt was taken away and his sin atoned for. He followed that with, “Here am I! Send me” (Isaiah 6:7-8).

Only a holy God could make an unclean man useful. Only a holy God can make any of us useful. It’s a wonder to be amazed at, not a boredom to be yawned at.

So how can we keep our churches from being boring?

Maybe we need to stop talking so much around the things of God, and instead start talking more to God. Stop pointing fingers at each other, and instead lift hands up to Him. Stop looking inward, and instead look upward.

And see Him, the Holy God. There would never be a dull moment.

* * *

How would you solve boredom at church?

Meet us at Challies to discuss Chapter 2, Holy, Holy, Holy.

Previous chapters

Next week
Chapter 3: The Fearful Mystery

Related:

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• Complainer or encourager
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Do you have to understand holy?

Does it really matter what you think about God?
If you picture him as a nice, loving Santa Claus icon,
isn’t that good enough?

Um, no.

How we understand the person and character of God the Father affects every aspect of our lives.

It affects far more than what we normally call the “religious” aspects of our lives.

God isn’t just some convenient deity that you bring out in a crisis, then forget about afterwards. He is the God that deserves all your attention, in all parts of your life, all the time.

R. C. Sproul writes in The Holiness of God that,

The one concept, the central idea I kept meeting in Scripture, was the idea that God is holy. The word was foreign to me.

Today I am still absorbed with the question of the holiness of God. I am convinced that it is one of the most important ideas that a Christian can ever grapple with.

It is basic to our whole understanding of God and of Christianity.

Whoa. Those are some serious statements.

Sproul points to the first petition of the Lord’s Prayer to show the emphasis Jesus himself places on God’s holiness:

Pray then like this: “Our Father in heaven, hallowed [make holy] be your name.”
Matthew 6:9

Jesus immediately established that the first request to the Father be that he’s regarded as holy. Everything else follows behind. 

Is this what you establish as a first priority in your prayers? Regarding God as holy?

Unfortunately, not many of us do.

And if not, we would be wise to change it.

Because if we want God to reign over every part of our lives in his holiness, and if we want to obey his command that we be holy because he is holy, we need to seriously grapple with what his holiness means.

God is inescapable. There is no place we can hide from Him. Not  only does He penetrate every aspect of our lives, but He penetrates  it in his majestic holiness.

Therefore we must seek to understand what the holy is.

We dare not seek to avoid it.

There can be no worship, no spiritual growth, no true obedience without it. It defines our goal as Christians.

He’s got my attention. I’m in. How about you?

But as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, since it is written, “You shall be holy, for I am holy.”
1 Peter 1:15-16

* * *

How much do you understand about God’s holiness?

We’re meeting at Challies today to talk about Chapter 1, The Holy Grail.

Next week:
Chapter 2: Holy, Holy, Holy

Related:

• Why bother to know God?
• What do you know of Holy?
• Michelangelo and me: Why we didn’t want to paint God