If you ask most people, love is God’s number one attribute. I won’t argue with passages like 1 John 4:8 that say “God is love,” but we shouldn’t forget some of the other qualities that scripture attributes to God.
For example, did you know that the idea of “holy” appears 900 times in your Bible? Many commentators say that holiness is the most frequently described attribute of God. Holiness is important to God’s people, too. Hebrews says, “Strive for peace with everyone, and for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord” (Hebrews 12:14)
Almost every time that a human gets some glimpse of God, the attribute of God that overpowers them isn’t his goodness or even his grace—it is his holiness. When we see God’s holiness, our unholiness is revealed in stark and painful contrast. When Isaiah peeked into the throne room of God, he witnessed the seraphim crying, “Holy, holy, holy”–the same thing John saw in Revelation 4, by the way—and it nearly broke him. He 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” (Isaiah 6:1-5).
Why, then, does “holy” rarely make the top of our lists of God’s attributes?
Perhaps we haven’t understood the beauty of the word “holy.” Maybe some “holier-than-thou” types have caused us to think less of holiness than we could. Maybe our own unholiness doesn’t like to be confronted with the perfect holiness of God.
Whatever the reason—it would do us well to look into this attribute of God, one that he specifically commands us to imitate. God himself said, “You shall be holy to me, for I the Lord am holy and have separated you from the peoples, that you should be mine” (Leviticus 20:26). That’s what we’ll be doing for the next several weeks in our worship assembly. I hope you’ll come, ready to be challenged by the holy God of scripture!