The Attributes of GodSample

Day 4
Holy

For you alone are holy. All nations will come and worship before you, for your righteous deeds have been revealed.
– Revelation 15:4b (NLT)

If you’ve ever tried to mix oil and water, you know that doesn’t work. The scientific reason is that water is denser than oil because water molecules are packed more closely together. So water will always sink, and oil will always rise to the top. Even if you try to mix them up, they will keep separating.

One of the most important attributes of God’s character is that He is holy. Holy means separate or set apart. God is perfectly perfect in every way. Think about God as the water and sin as the oil. God and sin can’t mix, no matter what. God is perfect and pure and without sin, and He will always be separate from sin.

But because all of us sin, that means God is also separate from us. He is holy; we are not. Sin is anything you do, say, or think that is disobedient to God—like lying, cheating, and hurting others. Even if we only ever sinned once in our whole lives, that sin would keep us from being holy. Being holy means being absolutely perfect in every way.

Thankfully, even though God is perfect and our sin separates us from Him, God’s love and goodness are also perfect. Through Jesus, He made a way for us to have a relationship with Him, even though we can’t be holy on our own. When we trust in what Jesus has done for us through His death and resurrection, we are forgiven, and our sins no longer separate us from our holy God.

God’s holiness shows us what is right. It shows us where we are wrong. We all think we know the right way to live. We want to do things our way. But most of the time, that leads to disaster. It’d be like if someone went on their first flying lesson, and instead of listening to the instructor, they decided to do whatever they wanted. That probably wouldn’t work out very well for them.

God shows us how to live the right way. We can learn from His holiness by reading the Bible and trying to be more like Him in everything we do.

Reflect: Do I think of God as holy, or do I tend to project human frailty and imperfection onto Him?

Read: Revelation 15:3-4; Isaiah 6:1-7