From the Pastor's Study
From the Pastor’s Study
Holy and Whole
April 27, 2022
In a conversation I had recently, someone commented that she thought that the words, “holy” and “whole” must be closely related. I told her that I thought that these two words were completely unrelated in their origin (but it was fortuitous that they sounded a lot alike). I was wrong. It didn’t take me long to discover that both “holy” and “whole” have the same root that comes from the idea of being uninjured, undamaged, or healthy.
When asked to define “holy” we often say that to be holy is to be set apart. That is true enough, but there is more to holiness than just being set apart. God is holy, for he is set apart from us, but he is also different from us. What makes God different is that he is undamaged, untainted, or uninjured in any way. We, on the other hand, are damaged, tainted, not whole, for sin damages everything it touches. We can picture battery acid eating a hole into a pair of jeans or rust creating a cavity around the door handle of our car. Sin, like acid or oxidation, takes what is whole and creates a cavity or a hole. (I also discovered that “hole” is completely unrelated to “holy” or “whole” and is the opposite of those words.) To put it another way, God has no holes in him (he is undamaged) while we do. He is holy, and we are not.
In the Old Testament it was imperative that anything that was damaged not be brought into God’s presence. When an Israelite offered an animal as a sacrifice, for example, that animal had to be whole, that is, without blemish. Any blemish on the animal was symbolic of the effects of sin and therefore could not be brought into the presence of the holy God because God was not to be “damaged” by sin. Thus, not only animals but also people who has skin diseases or had a deformed part of their body (a missing finger, for example) would not be allowed to enter into the presence of God. God’s holiness, his wholeness, was to be maintained. The prohibition against anything with physical damage to be allowed into God’s presence was symbolic of the fact that anything that was sinful in any way was also prohibited.
The problem that the Old Testament presents us is this: how do people who have become damaged by sin, who are less than whole, have any sort of relationship with a holy God? Because God is holy, and his holiness was to be maintained, sinful people were not allowed near him. No damage was to be done to God by exposing him to something that was sinful. Sin, like a virus, it was perceived, could jump from one place to another, thus tainting that which was holy. If that is the case, then nothing that is not completely whole (or holy) can enter into God’s presence, ever.
God solved the problem in the Old Testament by allowing a substitution. If a person brought a whole (unblemished) animal (lamb, young goat, calf) for a sacrifice, the blemished nature of the person was transferred to the sacrificial animal and the unblemished nature of the animal was transferred to the one offering it. Thus, a person could be made whole (holy) through the sacrifice of a fitting animal. Sadly, that wholeness would not last long, for the next sin committed by the individual would cause new damage. Sacrifices in the Old Testament had to be made repeatedly and often.
The problem of the Old Testament remains a problem today. Sin still pervades every part of life, damaging everything it touches, and it does touch everything. Nothing in this world is completely whole (or holy) because of sin. This creates a problem for everything in creation, for God remains holy, and his holiness cannot be compromised. Only that which is perfect can enter into God’s presence. In other words, nothing that has even the smallest damage as a result of sin can hope to ever be in heaven. Every single person on this earth, therefore, is ineligible to go to heaven because every single person is damaged in some way by sin.
The only way for any person to have any sort of relationship with God, either now or in eternity, is for that person to somehow be made whole again. That can take place only through substitution, but now we do not have to offer perfect sacrifices. Rather, a perfect sacrifice has been offered for us, Jesus Christ, who was not damaged by sin, and when we believe in him, he takes upon himself our sin and he transfers to us his wholeness, his holiness. His sacrifice is so complete that he needed to offer himself only once, and that was good enough forever for as many people who would put their faith in him. God the Father allows this substitution, as can be seen in the Old Testament, and Jesus offered himself as our substitute. To become holy, then, is to be made whole. We cannot be whole unless we are made holy through Jesus Christ.
I have been reflecting, in the past few months, why so many people today do not understand that because they are damaged by sin they cannot go to heaven. There seems to be the assumption out there that all who live a pretty good life will spend eternity in “a better place,” meaning heaven. Some have suggested that the problem today is that we are not aware of our sin, and that certainly is true. Sin is not something we want to talk about, and when we do, we think only of sin as being the worst possible behaviour imaginable. There are many who do not understand the damage that even small sin causes and how it takes away our wholeness (our holiness). It seems to me, however, that a greater problem is that we do not understand God’s holiness. While we use the word often in our songs (praise songs especially) we do not fully grasp the implications. Holiness is wholeness. It is to be undamaged, uninjured, completely healthy. God protects himself from becoming anything but holy (whole), and so he prohibits anything that is sinful from coming near him. Thus, it is not only because of our sinfulness that we cannot go to heaven; it is also because of God’s holiness. Only when we become holy can we enter into God’s presence. It seems to me that so many in our culture do not understand God’s holiness and if we did, we would seek Jesus Christ more earnestly, for it is only through him that we can be made holy (whole). Thus, if we are going to talk to others about believing in Jesus Christ, we need to talk about sin, but, more so, we need to talk about God’s holiness.
Pastor Gary
