Contemplating holiness
Doug McHone shares some thoughts at CoffeeSwirls on the holiness of God. He looks at Isaiah 6 and considers the dangers of the kind of prosperity found in Isaiah's day (and ours):
The god of this age seeks to pacify us with comfort and prosperity. The goal is to satisfy our carnal cravings so that we will not look to the needs of the spirit. No god who exists solely to satisfy our wants is worthy of our worship, though. If the chief end of God is to satisfy man, then God is guilty of idolatry and that cannot be. God’s chief end is to enjoy Himself forever and He is the only being who can have that end and not fall into sin, for He is of all things most glorious.Even though I understand the biblical and theological explanations, it's still amazing to me how the infinitely holy God invites us to call him abba, "Daddy." And I believe that until we appreciate the holiness of God (and our sinfulness in contrast), we will not enjoy the blessings of being his own.
The holiness of God is such that no man, no matter how good we try to be, can bear His presence. . . .
The view of true holiness will lead men either to repentance or to ultimate despair. But because God is holy, he is merciful.
posted by Milton Stanley at 6:41 AM
2 Comments:
Ah, how important it is to remember both that God draws us to himself and bids us call him abba, for we are his beloved children, at the same time that God is awe-some and draws from us a holy fear. We cannot fully appreciate the great gift of the Abba relationship if we don't also retain a sense of his great holiness and power. It is not just anyone who bids us call hid "daddy," but the creator of the universe. Each of these perpectives is enriched (even completed) by the other.
Bob, maybe this is a function of my being a Southern boy, but I suppose it's inevitable that in contemplating God as father, I remember my own upbringing. As a little boy, I called my earthly father Daddy, crawled up in his lap all the time and felt free to ask him for what I wanted. Yet when I answered him, I called him Sir.
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