How to be acceptable to a completely holy God

We sang a song in church that goes: “We cry, ‘Holy, holy, holy is the Lamb!’” in church, and I thought of all the different words that describe holy. My first thought was Other. Then Above. Beyond. And Good. Perfect. Pure. And Just. Ruler. Absolute. I love this conception of God’s holiness being beyond just His goodness. When we think of being made holy, we think of being made good. But His holiness is His otherness, His beyondness. That state of Him being Him and us being us; the fact that He is so far beyond us and His very being describes what goodness is—that is what I think of as holiness. Good is that which is in accord with His being, and that is why being made holy is being made good. This is something I don’t think about often enough. How far beyond religiosity and works that description of holiness and goodness is! How easy it is to fall into the thought that our holiness is in what we do, not that what we do reflects our holiness.

John 6.28, 29: “They asked him, ‘What must we do to do the works God requires?’ Jesus answered, ‘The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.’” They expected a difficult, Pharisaical answer, not doubt, and what Jesus answered was so very simple. Believe in Him. People always think they have to do something. Even Christians. Even me. Certainly the people He was speaking to did. Educated by Pharisees as to what they had to do to be acceptable to God, and He said merely, “Believe in the one he has sent.” OK, maybe not so easy for a Jew or a Muslim or a Hindu and so on. But the difficulty is not in getting to Him but in getting away from their culture. The point is that our primary work, act of worship, whatever, is believing in and loving Him.