“Pursue… holiness, without which no one will see the Lord.” Hebrews 12:14
“O Lord, how shall I meet Thee,
How welcome Thee aright?”
So asks the translated hymn written by Paul Gerhardt way back in the mid-17th century. It is a question that needs to be asked by Christians today more than ever. We are given the free grace of salvation and forgiveness, the way to God through Jesus Christ is freely offered and freely given to those who will come to Jesus.
I can come and meet with Him. I long to do so, to enter into His presence, to see Him and be with Him, to sit at His table and dine with Him…
But Lord, how shall I meet Thee and welcome Thee aright?
Moses’ meeting with the Lord at the burning bush gives us a telling insight into how to answer this question. He was commanded to take off his sandals because the place where he was now standing (in the presence of the Lord) was holy ground (Exodus 3:5).
The word ‘holy’ quite simply means ‘different’. To be holy is to be different in a special, pure and perfect way. There is something ‘different’ about God and we need to recognise this if we are to come and meet with Him. R.C. Sproul points out with profound simplicity that, “the Bible never says that God is love, love, love; or mercy, mercy, mercy; or wrath, wrath, wrath; or justice, justice, justice. It does say that He is holy, holy, holy.”[1]
This is such an important matter because without holiness we quite simply will not see the Lord. We need to be holy but we cannot do this by ourselves. Thankfully, it is God’s work to do – yet it still ought to be a major concern of ours also.
What this means for our salvation is that Jesus Christ loved us so much that He gave Himself up for us to make His people holy (a giving up that accumulated in His death at Calvary’s cross), cleansing us, “by the washing with water through the Word” (Ephesians 5:26). This water is the sanctifying touch of the Holy Spirit that cleanses us with the shed blood of Jesus Christ.
But we simply cannot just stop there. We have been made holy as the people of God but 1 Thessalonians 4:7 (as in other places in the New Testament) also points out that, “God did not call us to be impure, but to live a holy life.” This is something that we must strive for – but, thankfully again, not alone. The Holy Spirit is our help in this, even working in us the power of Jesus’ resurrection as we seek to overcome our sinful selves and the world.
This is only one aspect of the salvation that we have in Jesus that the Holy Spirit brings to us and we neglect it at our peril. If there is a verse that brings me face down in the dirt in contriteness and sorrow it is this, Ephesians 4:30, which tells us, “do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.” How right was the Prodigal Son to say that he had sinned against the whole of heaven – Father, Son and Holy Spirit – as well as his own earthly father!
Colossians 3:12 is very helpful in explaining practically some of what this means for our daily living: “Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience.” That would be a helpful verse to wake up to every morning!
That then leads us on to the main concern of this study, which really is just an extension of the holiness we are given in our salvation and that we need to pursue in our lives - what does this mean for when we seek close and intimate communion with God – to meet with Him and welcome Him aright?
Matthew Henry explains what this call for holiness means for our worship:
“In all our approaches to God, we ought to be deeply affected with the infinite distance there is between us and God, Eccl. 5:2 … We ought to approach to God with a solemn pause and preparation; and, though bodily exercise alone profits little, yet we ought to glorify God with our bodies, and to express our inward reverence by a grave and reverent behaviour in the worship of God, carefully avoiding everything that looks light, and rude, and unbecoming the awfulness of the service.”
Carrying the holiness of Jesus Christ that the Holy Spirit has sanctified us with, and with the pursuit of holiness in our daily living behind us (relying on the grace of God and the forgiveness of our sins for all of our failings in this), we then must come to worship recognising that our Saviour is the “Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty” (Isaiah 6:3).
The holiness of God is intimately linked with God’s being “a consuming fire” (Hebrews 12:29). It is a fire that purges sin and destroys all wickedness and ungodliness. It is a consuming fire both to the wicked and ungodly and to the redeemed people of God - so what does that mean for us who are taking refuge in the Ark of Jesus Christ?
Have you ever opened an oven door when it is boiling hot, and you’ve left your face too close to the door, and the heat powerfully hits you full in the face? I imagine the holiness of God as being something like that:
To come into God’s presence means to be destroyed by the consuming heat of God’s holiness if you come in your wickedness and unbelief, but to come and meet with God in Jesus Christ means to be consumed by the purging fires of grace, mercy and love.
We have been called to be holy, and this means to live a holy life, but thanks to the grace of God this also means to be made holy by God as we come to Jesus Christ and meet with Father, Son and Holy Spirit in Him. And so we can come.
To come and meet with God is no small thing and we must always remember that.
“Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship.” Romans 12:1.
[1] R.C. Sproul, The Holiness of God, (Illinois: Tyndale House, 1998), p.25.