BEAUTY OF HOLINESS pt.2

Ps.29:2 – Give unto the LORD the glory due unto his name;

worship the LORD in the beauty of holiness.

Have you ever wondered why the Spirit of God is called the Holy Spirit? That is the very essence of His nature, holiness. There is nothing tainted or impure in Him but that alone is not why He is called holy. Holiness is connected to His goodness. The presence of the Holy Spirit is the manifestation of that goodness, what we sense when we draw near to the Lord can be described as the beauty of holiness. This is why man cannot approach the Lord in His fallen condition. Our sins have separated us from this holy God. It’s only by His mercy displayed at the cross that we can approach God. Our sinfulness is taken away by the precious blood of Jesus enabling us to approach the Lord. This is why David sang, “the Lord is good and His mercy endures forever”. This song was often connected to the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. It’s His mercy that allows us to taste of the beauty of His holiness. Here is how Dane Ortlund, quoting Jonathan Edwards, explains this incredible beauty.

“…according to Edwards, to speak of God’s holiness is virtually the same thing as to speak of his beauty. Edwards refers in one 1730 sermon to God’s “beauteous holiness.” Whenever he refers to God’s beauty, a reference to his holiness is often not far behind. Beauty, to Edwards, is fundamentally a moral matter. One might still wonder, however—is not beauty an aesthetic matter, not a moral one? Yet here is the genius of Edwards’s understanding of God and of the Christian life. The moral is the aesthetic. The holy is the beautiful. God does not happen to be beautiful and holy (for Edwards, you cannot have one without the other), but is beautiful in his holiness. This is not a collapsing of categories so as to eradicate all distinction between the moral and the aesthetic; rather it is to understand that supreme loveliness is found only in supreme holiness. What then is holiness? The “moral excellency of an intelligent being,” says Edwards in Religious Affections, “when it is true and real, and not only external, or merely seeming and counterfeit, is holiness. Therefore holiness comprehends all the true moral excellency of intelligent beings: there is no other true virtue, but real holiness.”

When we suddenly come into His presence by the mercy of God we taste holiness for the first time. Our immediate response has to be worship as we are overcome by this beauty. This is not a physical beauty seen with the eyes but beauty none-the-less. This is the very nature of God, His goodness which is described by all of the creatures worshipping in heaven as “holy, holy, holy”.