Tuesday, April 18, 2017

When the Holiness of God Seems Unappealing

“Holiness is a most beautiful and lovely thing. We drink in strange notions of holiness from our childhood, as if it were a melancholy, morose, sour and unpleasant thing; but there is nothing in it but what is sweet and ravishingly lovely. ‘Tis the highest beauty and amiableness, vastly above all other beauties." - Jonathan Edwards

"What is holiness then? The words used for holiness mean "set apart." But there our troubles begin, because naturally I think I'm lovely. So if God is "set apart" from me, I assume the problem is with him. His holiness looks like a prissy rejection of my happy, healthy loveliness.

Dare I burst my own bubble? I must. For the reality is that I am the cold, selfish, vicious one, full of darkness and dirtiness. And God is holy- "set apart" from me- precisely in that he is not like that.He is not set apart from us in priggishness, but by the fact that there are no such ugly traits in him as there are in us." - Michael Reeves from "Delighting in the Trinity"

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