Have you ever considered how people seem to endlessly throw about certain words without ever knowing their meaning? How often we hear the word gospel refer to music or just about anything but the actual message that Jesus proclaimed. However, readers of the Living Church News know that the word gospel means the good news of the Kingdom of God. That includes understanding who the King of that Kingdom is and how His Father gave Him as a sacrifice for our sins—so that we might have a part in that Kingdom.
But readers of this magazine also use other words that carry important meanings that they may not so clearly understand. One such word is holy, and understanding this word’s meaning is no small matter! It is used more than 500 times in both the King James and the New King James versions of the Bible, sprinkled throughout both the Old and New Testaments.
The term holy is used in reference to God, but also to His saints—His faithful servants, to whom the instruction is given to “gird up the loins of your mind, be sober, and rest your hope fully upon the grace that is to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ; as obedient children, not conforming yourselves to the former lusts, as in your ignorance; but as He who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, because it is written, ‘Be holy, for I am holy’” (1 Peter 1:13–16).
Now, if God is holy and we are to be holy, would it not follow that we should be sure that we know what it means to be holy—not just in a fuzzy, intuitive sense, but in fact and in truth? How many can confidently define the word? If you cannot, you are hardly alone, and this article is not meant to embarrass anyone; it is simply written to enlighten us on this important subject.
Terms and Definitions
Many people tune out when someone turns to a dictionary, as dictionaries are less than exciting and not always clear. “Word salad” has become a popular expression used to describe language that leaves the hearers wondering what was said, and dictionary definitions may indeed seem to add to that salad at times. Nevertheless, it is sometimes both necessary and enlightening to turn to the dictionary.
The Hebrew word translated into English as holy may not have the first meaning you think of. At its core, holiness means “separation” or “setting apart” (The New Unger’s Bible Dictionary, 1988, “Holiness”). Such an understanding hardly comes to mind when we hear someone say, “holy cow,” “holy Toledo,” or “holy Joe.” And that is the problem—the word holy is thrown about in all kinds of contexts. We hear it routinely used in and out of the context of Scripture. As a result, when we read that God is holy, our understanding of what this means may be fuzzy at best and totally in error at worst.
Add to this another word, one found in Scripture more than 80 times in its various permutations—sanctify, sanctifies, sanctified, sanctification. As many marginal references show, the meaning of sanctify is to set apart (The New Unger’s Bible Dictionary, “Sanctification”).
Holiness and sanctification are very closely associated. “The dominant idea of sanctification… is separation from the secular and sinful and setting apart for a sacred purpose” (“Sanctification”). “Holiness is a general term used to indicate sanctity or separation from all that is sinful, impure, or morally imperfect; i.e., it is moral wholeness” (“Holiness”). We see that sanctify is a verb requiring action, while holy can be part of a noun, as when it appears in a proper name, but is usually an adjective—a word describing what something is.
In the case of objects, sanctification is the act of separating for a holy purpose. Holy, then, describes what a sanctified object has become—an object that has become separated. “They [the priests] shall eat those things with which the atonement was made, to consecrate and to sanctify them [set them apart]; but an outsider shall not eat them, because they are holy” (Exodus 29:33). We also see this in the case of the altar: “Seven days you shall make atonement for the altar and sanctify it [set it apart for a sacred purpose]. And the altar shall be most holy [separated from anything sinful]. Whatever touches the altar must be holy [also in a state of being separate from the sinful or profane]” (Exodus 29:37).
Set Apart for What?
Many things are set apart in this world—perhaps dinner is set apart for a husband who is tied up in traffic. But that is not what this is about. As an adjective, holy describes what God is. He is the standard of what it means to be holy (set apart) in this context. Holiness is His nature. He is separate from all moral imperfection and is therefore whole. He is separate from the world, and we are instructed to be separate from the world in the same way He is. “Be holy, for I am holy” (1 Peter 1:16). Therefore, to be like God, we must be different from this world.
When God told Israel which animals are good for food and which are not, He ended with this reminder:
For I am the Lord your God [I am the One you are to follow]. You shall therefore consecrate [which is translated from the same Hebrew word translated elsewhere as sanctify] yourselves, and you shall be holy; for I am holy. Neither shall you defile yourselves with any creeping thing that creeps on the earth. For I am the Lord who brings you up out of the land of Egypt, to be your God. You shall therefore be holy [separate], for I am holy. This is the law of the animals and the birds and every living creature that moves in the waters, and of every creature that creeps on the earth, to distinguish between the unclean and the clean, and between the animal that may be eaten and the animal that may not be eaten (Leviticus 11:44–47).
It is interesting in this context that one example of holiness for us is abstaining from the unclean animals that God calls abominations. “You shall not make yourselves abominable” by eating them (vv. 41–43). Revelation’s reference to “every unclean and hated bird” confirms what is written elsewhere: that “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever” (Revelation 18:2; Hebrews 13:8). We must conclude that there remains a difference between clean and unclean. It is God who at creation separated the clean and the unclean by specific traits—for example, distinguishing as clean those that chew the cud and have divided hooves, as well as those that have both fins and scales—setting what is good for food apart from the “clean-up crew.”
But God’s holiness, His separation from all evil, goes far beyond what we eat. Peter’s context for repeating the command to be holy is found in the verses leading up to his quotation: “Therefore gird up the loins of your mind, be sober, and rest your hope fully upon the grace that is to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ; as obedient children, not conforming yourselves to the former lusts, as in your ignorance; but as He who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct” (1 Peter 1:13–15). The Greek word translated here as holy has the sense of being pure, complete, consecrated. Peter quotes from the Old Testament, where the word means to be set apart. When we combine these ideas, we see that we are to be set apart to be pure, as God is pure. We are to be obedient children—separate from the impure, lustful minds we had prior to God’s calling. Peter’s language prescribes this holiness for “all your conduct,” which explicitly confirms the command’s all-inclusive scope!
Is this not also what Jesus meant? “For if you love those who love you, what reward have you? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet your brethren only, what do you do more than others? Do not even the tax collectors do so? Therefore you shall be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect” (Matthew 5:46–48).
It is easy to claim to be a disciple of Christ, but quite another thing to practice holiness. “Therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, put on tender mercies, kindness, humility, meekness, longsuffering; bearing with one another, and forgiving one another, if anyone has a complaint against another; even as Christ forgave you, so you also must do. But above all these things put on love, which is the bond of perfection” (Colossians 3:12–14).
Practicing Holiness
I recently saw an “influencer” railing against Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers and wondered why anyone would listen to her. She had a remarkable display of facial hardware, tattoos, and wild hairstyle. It can be easy to dismiss such a person with such comments as we often hear: “What a loser!” Her appearance, along with her irrational reasoning and strident voice, could make it difficult for some of us to see value in her, and we may have similar difficulty with seeing others like her as valuable. But what is the thinking of our Holy Creator? “The rich and the poor have this in common, the Lord is the maker of them all” (Proverbs 22:2). Even more pointedly, “The poor man and the oppressor have this in common: The Lord gives light to the eyes of both” (29:13).
And who can forget what Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount about the spirit of the law? “You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not murder, and whoever murders will be in danger of the judgment.’ But I say to you that whoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment. And whoever says to his brother, ‘Raca!’ shall be in danger of the council. But whoever says, ‘You fool!’ shall be in danger of hell fire” (Matthew 5:21–22).
Many are puzzled by Jesus’ use of the word fool in this passage. After all, do not the Proverbs speak repeatedly about fools? But the original Greek word is from móros, from which we get the word moron, and it carries the connotation of dull, stupid, or blockhead. The subject of Jesus’ statement, as explained in verse 21, is that of anger and murder. Is the spirit of murder not the result of writing someone off as being of no value, of having no worth?
Even in the too-often-extreme cases of drug-addicted derelicts, they are still made in the image of God with the potential to become His children. As the saying goes, “Except for the grace of God, there go I.” This is not to imply that we should encourage alcoholic and drug-addicted panhandlers. Especially in the Western world, there are government programs and charities that will help such people if they truly want help, but as many of us have seen, it is not a job or a bus ticket that most of them want—they want the money. I confess that I do appreciate panhandlers who carry signs such as “Why lie? I need a drink,” or “Water is overrated. I need a beer.” You have to give them credit for their honesty!
Jesus addresses our attitude toward the derelict or the screaming influencer. Now is not their time, but their time will come. Our time is now, and if we want to be there to help these pitiful individuals in the future, we must first come to love them now. We must learn to see the big picture, as God does. We must not act like others in the world who write them off. We must separate ourselves from that worldly attitude. We must be pure as God is pure, holy as God is holy.
Not of the World
Holiness goes beyond what we eat and even how we look at others. On the night He was betrayed, Jesus explained that He chose His disciples to be different from the world, and He warned how that difference would cause those in the world to hate them. “If you were of the world, the world would love its own. Yet because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world [to be separate from it and pure], therefore the world hates you” (John 15:19).
We read of Jesus’ prayer to His Father later that night, confirming once again how different we must be from those around us. “I have given them Your word; and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world…. They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world” (John 17:14, 16). He also reveals the one who is behind the world and its attitudes: “I do not pray that You should take them out of the world, but that You should keep them from the evil one” (v. 15).
Yes, the course of the world is directed by the prince of the power of the air (Ephesians 2:2). He directs the politics, the entertainment, the academics, the commerce, the approach of treating the effect of sickness rather than its cause. We must live in this world, but we must understand who is behind the path it is treading—and be separate from it. This is the challenge before us. Avoiding unclean animals is the easy part of being holy.
Paul warned us about the spiritual battle we face daily: “For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds, casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ, and being ready to punish all disobedience when your obedience is fulfilled” (2 Corinthians 10:3–6).
Our Savior’s prayer on the night He was betrayed tells us so much about what our relationship is intended to be with God the Father and our Savior. “Now I am no longer in the world, but these are in the world, and I come to You. Holy Father, keep through Your name those whom You have given Me, that they may be one as We are” (John 17:11). How wonderful it is to carry the Father’s holy name! But to represent Him as ambassadors of His own country we must be growing to be increasingly one with Him in mind and action.
Every year at the Passover, we read at least a portion of Jesus’ prayer in John 17, and perhaps the most beautiful and meaningful part for us begins with verse 20, where Christ explains that He is not only praying for those with Him at the time, but for all of His servants to come through the ages. His prayer was for us to be one with Him and with His Father—separate, holy, pure, just as They are:
I do not pray for these alone, but also for those who will believe in Me through their word; that they all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us, that the world may believe that You sent Me. And the glory which You gave Me I have given them, that they may be one just as We are one: I in them, and You in Me; that they may be made perfect in one, and that the world may know that You have sent Me, and have loved them as You have loved Me” (John 17:20–23).
Words have meaning. Even so, unless we act on them, they can become meaningless to us. Many of us were once in a worldly church. We very likely sang hymns proclaiming “holy, holy, holy,” but had little or no idea what we were singing. We walked out of a Sunday service only to become engrossed in the world—its politics, its off-color jokes, its obsession with entertainment, its attitude toward others. Let us meditate on the scriptures contained in this article. Let us truly embrace in every aspect of our lives what it means to be holy.