Leaving Beyond – Grounded In Scripture

“The holiness of God is the otherness of God. It is His transcendence. It is what makes Him God and not man.” ~ R. C. Sproul

“The holiness of God is the crown of all His attributes. It is that which renders Him glorious in Himself and venerable to His creatures.” ~ A. W. Pink

There is such an otherness about God that, until we understand this, we never truly understand what it means to cry out against our own heart. The fool measures himself by the most base standard and thinks himself good. He measures himself against other finite, sinful, wicked men. The sheer absurdity of such measurements is only understood when we capture a glimpse of the glory of God revealed in Scripture. Many men preach about God, but such glory is never set forth such as even dead men tremble, though not all repent, as there’s no work of regeneration, only greater judgment that awaits them, having heard and cast off such words.

Saints find no encouragement where there is shallow theology. The Psalms are an excellent example of observing the wickedness of man, lamenting seeing the wicked seemingly prosper and the righteous suffer, where it seems God does not hear or has turned a deaf ear, though the Psalms are also rich in the Psalmists holding firmly to theological truth of who God is, even amid such wickedness of man.

The Scriptures reveal the glory of God, and in stark contrast, they go to great lengths to reveal the depths of the depravity of man. The contrast is very clear. God is not like us! His standard is perfection. He is other. And yet sinful man, regenerate and unregenerate alike, make the grave mistake of bringing God low. There’s no real comfort in that. The truth of who God is brings real peace, real comfort, real assurance, and encourages faith.

We struggle to understand or find comfort in the holiness of God, as He is perfect. The more we learn of who He is, we wrestle with how imperfect we are. We recognize that we can never achieve such perfection. We feel far apart and like we will never be holy as He is holy. How can He command something of us that we can never achieve?

That is what is missing from so many sermons. That is what we need to feel. That is what we need to understand. Until we do, we bring God low, we minimize sin, we water down the Gospel, we never truly understand justification or sanctification, and we may even begin to act as though we may experience glorification in some way now.

Oh dear saint, we must hear who God is. We must understand the otherness of God. Then we see His glory, and then we have NO room for boasting in salvation. Then we may understand justification, sanctification, and glorification.

Such holiness is impossible for us. We are not like God. We must understand that before we may ever glory in the imputed righteousness of Christ and of the imputation of our sins upon Christ. We may then understand our declared righteousness before God because of Christ alone. We may then understand what He commands of us and enables us to become. We are declared holy, and we are becoming holy. It is all grace. It is all Him!

Dear saint, we do not find encouragement by looking within and calling forth some inherent worth within ourselves or some inherent goodness within ourselves. Neither do we look to such holiness and think because we have accepted Jesus we have made it. Oh no, we recognize that God is other, and that we are declared righteous by the merit of another, Christ alone. We recognize that God, in His grace, has accepted us in the Beloved, and He has declared us holy by the merit of Christ, and at the same time we are becoming holy by His means of grace in our sanctification.

Friend, when you find in yourself that working in you that is now alien to such holiness—the dreaded wretched man that we are—we, like Paul, do not boast of ourselves, but we long to put off this body of death, that we may be with our Lord, in perfect holiness. We long for that otherness that is alien to our sinful nature. We long for future glorification. The lost man wants to add Jesus to his life to give him what he desires, or he wants to put Him out of his mind. He wants nothing of such holiness.

Be encouraged, saint, that sin which remains in us shall be put off, and though daily we crucify this wretched man, we shall at once be wholly set apart from him, such as he has no corrupting influence. We are holy by the merit of another, we are becoming holy by the sanctifying work of Christ, and we shall be holy whereby sin has no place ever again.

Wrestle now, dear saint, for in time we shall wrestle against sin no more.

Grace and Peace, y’all
Soli Deo Gloria

April J. Buchanan