God is Infinite: part 2 of the Attributes of God

God is infinite.

We humans are finite.  That means we have a beginning and an end to our lives here on earth.  We are limited in our understanding of things.  For example, we don’t fully understand cancer and how it begins or how we can cure it.   We are limited in power and limited in our ability to make what we want happen.  For example, just because we want a million dollars, we can’t just make that happen because we say we want it.  We are limited by time and space.  We are only in one place at one time. You can’t play soccer with one friend at the same time that you have ice cream with another friend.  You have to choose one place to be at a time.  We have a limited amount of resources.  We have to choose how to spend our money and our time because we have a limited amount of both.

But, God is infinite.  He has no beginning and will never end.  “God has no bounds.  Whatever God is and all that God is, He is without limit.” God has no limit to His knowledge and wisdom.  There is absolutely nothing that confuses or stumps God.   God is not limited by time and space.  God is everywhere - past, present, and future - in all places, at all times.  Everything on earth, everything in heaven, everything everywhere is God’s, and He could create more at any time.  When God said, “Let there be light”, it appeared because He is infinite in power.   He has no limit to His resources. Look at this symbol below.  This is what math people use for infinity.  Where is the beginning of this shape?  Where does it end?  This symbol stands for infinity because there is no beginning or end, you can trace it over and over and never reach an ending.  That is how God is.  He has no beginning and no end.  There is no beginning or end to any of God’s attributes.

We simply cannot understand fully what God’s infinitude means because we are not infinite.  

But, we should spend time thinking deeply about this attribute of God and what it means to us.  God has revealed this attribute of Himself for His glory (so we will think highly of Him) and our benefit.  Everything about God is without limits.  God’s mercy is infinite.  God’s grace is infinite.  God’s love is infinite.  How does God’s infinitude impact our lives?  How can we rest in God’s character of His being absolutely limitless?  How can God’s infinitude lead to trusting Him more?

Consider these verses.

Romans 11:33-36  “Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God!  How unsearchable are His judgments and how inscrutable His ways!  For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been His counselor?  Or who has given a gift to Him that He might be repaid?  For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things.  To Him be glory forever.  Amen”.

Psalm 50:10-12  “For every beast of the forest is mine, the cattle on a thousand hills.  I know all the birds of the hills and all that moves in the field is mine.  If I were hungry, I would not tell you, for the world is mine and its fullness are mine.”

Psalm 90:2  “Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever you had formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God.”

Revelation 1:8 . “I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, “who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.”

While we cannot understand completely a Being who is so unlike us in this aspect, we can marvel at the wonderful God who is infinite.  

How is God’s infinite nature a reason to be joyful?  

Getting to know God in relationship:

How will you talk to God differently and read His word differently because of this attribute?

Written by Wendy Wood, CHCC counselor

Attributes of God

Over the next couple of weeks, this blog will feature a study of God.  Each day you will be reminded of an attributes of God and how understanding that attribute can change your relationship with God.

Introduction to the attributes of God study:

If someone asked you to describe God, what would you say?

Can you describe God as well as you can describe your best friend?

God sent Jesus to live on earth the be the perfect sacrifice for our sins so that we could be in a relationship with God.  God invites us to get to know Him in a deep and personal way.

What do you know about the President of the United States?  Do you know his name?  Do you know where he lives?  Do you know his wife’s name?  Do you know something about his personality?

You probably know something about the President, but you don’t know Him personally.  He wouldn’t invite you to his house or call you on the phone and ask for you by name.  You know about him, but you don’t have a relationship with him.

A relationship definitely involves getting to know stuff about a person, but it is more than that.  It is not just having facts about someone, though that is a part of it.  A relationship is deeper connection where you share your thoughts and struggles, and you depend on and trust the other person.  

You get to know someone by asking them questions, spending time with them, watching what things they like to eat, drink, and do.  You ask questions and listen to how the person talks.  You want to know what is important to the other person and begin to understand how they think. Getting to know someone takes time and effort.  It takes time to trust a new friend.  It takes time to understand how they think and to get to know how they will respond in certain situations.

To get to know God, to have a relationship with Him, takes time.  You need to spend time getting to know what God is like.  You need to understand more about His character, what He likes and dislikes.  As you spend time getting to know the attributes of God, you learn more of what He values and what is important to Him.  You begin to see that He is very different from humans, but still invites us to be His friend.  It takes time and energy to know God and to build a relationship with Him.

Have you ever had a friend that talked too much?  You felt like you never got to speak and had to listen to them talk about themselves all the time?  A good relationship is a conversation.  You take turns talking and listening.  You get to know each other, it is not just one sided.  Both people get to know one another.

The same is true of our relationship with God.  We can talk to God in prayer and tell Him about what we are dealing with (even though He already knows!) and ask for His help.  But if our relationship with Him is one-sided, it’s not a healthy relationship.  We equally need to listen to God and hear what He has to say.  God speaks to us through His word, the Bible.  He reveals all about who He is and what He likes and dislikes.  God reveals His purpose for giving us life and how to live a life that pleases Him.  As we get to know God more and more, our lives should be changing and becoming more and more like Christ.  That’s the evidence of being in a relationship with God.

We can know a lot about God, like the President of the United States, but still not have a relationship with Him.  We need to spend time hearing from God in His word, and talking to Him sharing our struggles and joys with Him.  He calls us His friends if we have trusted in Jesus as our Lord and Savior.

The following attributes of God are designed to help you get to know God better and to begin to build a relationship with Him.  As you read about God, talk to Him about Him.  Praise Him for how great He is and ask Him to help you live in a way that shows you trust that everything God says about Himself is true.

Written by Wendy Wood, CHCC counselor

Know What Not to Say

Article by  Jon Bloom

Christians should be the most careful speakers in the world. We ought to be characterized by two kinds of trembling when it comes to words: we should tremble at the words God speaks and we should tremble at the words we speak.

We know we should tremble at God’s word, for he tells us,

“This is the one to whom I will look: he who is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at my word.” (Isaiah 66:2)

But why should we tremble at the words we speak? Because Jesus said,

“I tell you, on the day of judgment people will give account for every careless word they speak, for by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned.” (Matthew 12:36–37)

“Every careless word.” That should stop us in our tracks. It should set us trembling, considering how many words we speak. And by “speak” I mean every word that comes out of our mouths, our pens, and our keyboards. We speak thousands of words every day, sometimes tens of thousands.

When we experience these two kinds of trembling, they occur for the same reason: we love and fear God and don’t want to profane his holy word or to profane his holiness with our unholy words. Such trembling makes us want to speak carefully and sometimes not speak at all. Because we believe,

For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: . . . a time to keep silence, and a time to speak. (Ecclesiastes 3:1, 7)

A Time to Be Silent

There really is a time to keep silent. And that time comes more often than most of us are conditioned to think.

We live in an age of unceasing talk. Never in human history has the noise of human communication been so constant. Even when we are quiet we are not silent, as we receive and dispense talk through our digital media. Our culture does not believe that “a fool multiplies words” (Ecclesiastes 10:14).

On one level, it believes that multiplied words brings multiplied knowledge, and multiplied knowledge brings multiplied wisdom. On another level, not fearing God, it simply doesn’t really care how many words flow. So it relentlessly inundates us with information, analysis, commentary, critique, punditry, and mockery through every communication stream. We cannot help but be conditioned by this environment.

And with the advent of social media, nearly everyone now has a broadcast platform from which they can publicly hold forth on any social, cultural, political, economic, or theological issue, any controversy, any scandal, any whatever anytime they wish, regardless of what they know. And while the democratization of public communication is a remarkable historic phenomenon and certainly has some wonderful benefits, it is a dangerous thing, spiritually speaking. It’s an immense, cacophonous forum of multiplied, foolish, careless words, for which every participant, whether they know it or not, will give an account to God.

The Beginning of Wisdom

Christians know that “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” and “the beginning of knowledge” (Psalm 111:10; Proverbs 1:7). And one expression of that fear is trembling at God’s holy word, and at our own.

We are taught that it is profoundly wise for us to cultivate the discipline of being slow to speak (James 1:19). Slow to speak implies that there is a time for silence. Sometimes it means we are silent for some appropriate brief or extended period of time while being quick to hear (listening carefully), so we gain an accurate understanding of an issue before we speak carefully. And sometimes it means we don’t speak at all. The former is always a necessity for us; the latter is often a necessity.

God calls us to live counter to our hair tongue-trigger culture. In a world where rapid-fire information, rapid-fire commentary, and rapid-fire counter-commentary are continually igniting raging forest fires of words (James 3:5), the sons and daughters of God are called to be fire-quenching peacemakers (Matthew 5:9). And one of the underutilized ways of peacemaking is recognizing the time to keep silence. Less words can be less fuel for the fires.

A Time to Speak

But Christians must not always keep silence. There is a time to speak and there are things we must say. Our God is a speaking God and we know he most definitely wants us to speak (Matthew 24:14; 28:19–20).

But when God speaks, he speaks very intentionally and, considering his omniscience, he speaks with tremendous restraint. And that’s the way he wants us to speak, as his exceedingly non-omniscient children and ambassadors (2 Corinthians 5:20): intentionally and with restraint. He wants us to learn to speak like Jesus.

We, like Job, have the tendency to speak rashly and confidently about things we really don’t understand (Job 42:3). But Jesus often said less than he knew because he was prayerfully listening to the Father and saying only what he discerned he was supposed to say (John 8:26). Just because he had a mouth and a public platform did not mean he should always employ them. Rather, he said, “I do nothing on my own authority, but speak just as the Father taught me” (John 8:28). He perfectly lived out and modeled for us this verse:

Set a guard, O Lord, over my mouth; keep watch over the door of my lips! (Psalm 141:3)

God deploys his children strategically in every sphere. He gives us each a few assignments and gives us each some things to say in order to bring the gospel to bear in our limited spheres. Each of us must prayerfully discern our spheres and limitations. None of us, as individuals, churches, or organizations, is called to address every current issue. And if this is true of issues we have knowledge about, it’s especially true of issues with which we have little or no personal experience.

If we are in some form of leadership where we are called to address such an issue, we should first pray for wisdom, then we should be publicly honest about what we don’t know and not succumb to pressure and try to speak more than we do know. And then, if the Lord leads, we should pursue the understanding required to speak more helpfully.

And when we do discern God’s direction for us to speak, we, like Jesus, remember that our mouths, fingers, and platforms still belong to God. We are not free to say whatever we wish about what we know. We do nothing on our own authority, but must say only what we discern God wants us to say.

Tough, Tender, or Quiet?

We speak the truth in love (Ephesians 4:15), but we don’t speak for human “likes”; we speak for God’s approval. So that means we sometimes speak a loving truth that’s tender and sweet (Proverbs 16:24), and other times we speak a loving truth that’s graciously hard (Proverbs 27:6). This is speaking like Jesus, who sometimes said things like, “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28), and who at other times said things like, “Unless you repent, you will all likewise perish” (Luke 13:5).

Discerning when to say a loving tender truth, when to say a loving tough truth, and when to say nothing at all is the tension God has purposefully designed to keep us prayerfully dependent on him. It is frequently not patently obvious. There are times we really want to speak and we should not. And there are times we really don’t want to speak and we should.

What will help us most in discerning when it’s a time to keep silence or a time to speak is cultivating a holy trembling at God’s word and at our words. The right kind of fear of the Lord is our best mouthguard.

Jon Bloom (@Bloom_Jon) serves as author, board chair, and co-founder of Desiring God. He is author of three books, Not by Sight, Things Not Seen, and Don’t Follow Your Heart. He and his wife live in the Twin Cities with their five children.

Originally posted on DesiringGod.org  https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/know-what-not-to-say

The One Sure Mark of Christian Maturity

Article by Tim Challies

I suppose we all know that as Christians we are meant to grow up, to mature. We begin as infants in the faith and need to develop into adults. The New Testament writers insist that we must all make this transition from milk to meat, from the children’s table to the grown-up’s feast. And yet even though we are aware that we must go through this maturing process, many of us are prone to measure maturity in the wrong ways. We are easily fooled. This is especially true, I think, in a tradition like the Reformed one which (rightly) places a heavy emphasis on learning and on the facts of the faith.

The Bible is the means God uses to complete us, to finish us, to bring us to maturity.

When Paul writes to Timothy, he talks to him about the nature and purpose of the Bible and says, “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work” (2 Timothy 3:16-17). That word complete is related to maturity. Paul says that Timothy, and by extension me and you and all of us, is incomplete, unfinished, and immature. The Bible is the means God uses to complete us, to finish us, to bring us to maturity.

But what does it mean to be a mature Christian? I think we tend to believe that mature Christians are the ones who know a lot of facts about the Bible. Mature Christians are the ones who have their theology down cold. But look what Paul says: “That the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.” Paul does not say, “That the man of God may be complete, knowing the books of the Bible in reverse order,” or “That the man of God may be complete, able to explain and define supralapsarianism against infralapsarianism.” He does not say, “That the man of God may be complete, able to provide a structural outline of each of Paul’s epistles.” Those are all good things, but they are not Paul’s emphasis. They may be signs of maturity, but they may also be masks that cover up immaturity.

When Paul talks about completion and maturity, he points to actions, to deeds, to “every good work.” The Bible has the power to mature us, and as we commit ourselves to reading, understanding, and obeying it, we necessarily grow up in the faith. That maturity is displayed in the good works we do more than in the knowledge we recite. And this is exactly what God wants for us—he wants us to be mature and maturing doers of good who delight to do good for others. This emphasis on good deeds is a significant theme in the New Testament (see Ephesians 2:10; Titus 2:14, etc) and the very reason why God saved us.

Spiritual maturity is better displayed in acts than in facts.

This means that spiritual maturity is better displayed in acts than in facts. You can know everything there is to know about theology, you can be a walking systematic theology, you can spend a lifetime training others in seminary, and still be desperately immature. You will remain immature if that knowledge you accumulate does not motivate you to do good for others. The mature Christians are the ones who glorify God by doing good for others, who externalize their knowledge in good deeds.

Of course facts and acts are not entirely unrelated, so this is not a call to grow lax in reading, studying, and understanding the Bible. Not at all! The more you know of the Bible, the more it can teach, reprove, correct, and train you, and in that way shape your actions and cause you to do the best deeds in the best way for the best reason. More knowledge of God through his Word ought to lead to more and better service to others.

But in the final analysis, Christ lived and died so he could “redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works” (Titus 2:14). Knowledge of God and his Word is good. Knowledge of God and his Word that works itself out in doing what benefits others—there is nothing that glorifies God more than that.

Link to original posting: https://www.challies.com/christian-living/the-one-sure-mark-of-christian-maturity/

Run to Win

Renew Your Mind

by Tim Challies

There are many places in the Bible where God presents a stark contrast between two options, then urges the reader to make his choice. He gave his law to ancient Israel, then said, “I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore choose life” (Deuteronomy 30:19). In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus contrasted wide and narrow gates and pleaded, “Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few” (Matthew 7:13-14).

Another of these contrasts is found at a key point in the book of Romans. For 11 chapters Paul has expounded on the gospel, describing what Christ has accomplished for Jews and Gentiles alike. Then he confronts his readers with a contrast and implies they must make a choice: “Do not be conformed to this world,” he says, “but be transformed by the renewal of your mind” (12:2). There are only two options: conformity or transformation. You can be conformed to this world or you can be transformed by the renewing of your mind. The choice lies before you every day.

Many of today’s men have made a poor choice. They’ve chosen to conform, to feed their lust with the pornographic images of the world, to speak as the world speaks, to take on a sinful lifestyle marked by pride, apathy, and self-indulgence. If you are a Christian man, you are called to something different, something better, something far more challenging and far more satisfying. You are called to godliness. You are called to renounce anything that would hinder you in your race and to embrace a life-long pursuit of knowing Jesus.

This is the third entry in the series “Run to Win!” in which we are considering how God calls men like you to live with the same discipline, dedication, and self-control that an Olympic athlete brings to the pursuit of the gold. Such commitment demands self-control that extends even to the mind. More accurately, it demands self-control that begins in the mind. To run to win, you must renew your mind.

A Darkened Mind

At one point in your life, you were confronted with the choice of entering the wide gate or the narrow gate. You are a Christian, which means you chose to enter the narrow gate and follow the way that leads to life. In that moment of decision, that moment of salvation, you experienced a kind of awakening. Your mind was suddenly able to understand what you had only ever denied—that you are a sinner, that you had defied a holy God, and that Jesus Christ was offering reconciliation by grace through faith. The reason you had never before accepted this truth or embraced this Savior is that your mind had not been able to understand it. This truth was hidden from you because of your spiritual blindness.

Paul talks about this in his letter to the church in Ephesus: “Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart. They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity” (Ephesians 4:17-19). You were born in a state of sinfulness in which your futile mind could not understand the truth of the gospel.

The alarming fact is that sin not only made you walk in the darkness, but it also darkened your understanding. Not only were you unable to do things that are pleasing to God, but you were also unable to even know what is pleasing to God. But when you turned to Christ in repentance and faith, suddenly your mind was illumined by God so you could understand. You could understand who God is, who you are, and why the gospel is such good news. In a moment, your mind was given access to true and saving knowledge. In a moment you understood just how blind you had been for all those years. This is what Wesley celebrated in one of his greatest hymns: “Long my imprisoned spirit lay, / Fast bound in sin and nature’s night; / Thine eye diffused a quickening ray— / I woke, the dungeon flamed with light; / My chains fell off, my heart was free, / I rose, went forth, and followed Thee.”

But while your mind had been awakened, it was still far from perfected.

You entered the Christian life with a mind that had just been pierced by that quickening ray of God’s truth. But while your mind had been awakened, it was still far from perfected. Through the rest of life you are faced with the constant challenge, “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind” (12:2). This choice is set before you each day: Will you allow the world to conform your mind, or will you invite God to transform your mind? To not choose is to make a choice—the world is so immersive, so powerful, and so present that unless you actively resist it, you will inevitably be conformed to it and consumed by it.

Do Not Be Conformed

When the Bible speaks of “the world,” it refers to any value system or way of life that is opposed to God and foreign to his Word. The world promotes “the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life” (1 John 2:16). As a Christian man, God calls you to live on this earth surrounded by human society, yet to display a very different system of values and to exhibit a very different way of life. Even though you are a Christian, it is easy to be conformed to the world so that you begin to desire what the world desires, to think how the world thinks, and to behave like the world behaves.

Men are most often conformed to the world by carelessness

Men are most often conformed to the world by carelessness, by neglecting to consider the allure of the world and by failing to guard against its encroachment. Just think of the countless seductive website advertisements that appeal to men who are ready to plunge into sinful desire. Think of the character traits displayed by men in popular sitcoms: ignorance, laziness, immaturity. Watch out for the unexpected gateways of conformity. It may be entertainment, when you fail to be cautious about what you watch, hear, and read, and when you fail to limit the time spent on entertainment. Sometimes the gateway is education, when you are influenced by people who are opposed to God. It may be friendships, when you maintain your most formative relationships with unbelievers. Or the main gateway of conformity may simply be neglect, when you fail to walk closely with God and instead allow the natural worldliness within your own heart to gain influence.

Worldliness is like gravity, always around you, always exerting its pressure. You must resist it because your spiritual life and health depend on it. You can resist it because you are indwelled by the Holy Spirit, who delights in transforming you by the renewing of your mind.

Be Transformed

For God to save you, he first had to open your mind to understand the truth of the gospel. But instead of immediately perfecting your mind, he assigned you the lifelong responsibility of renewing it. Just as a caterpillar undergoes the slow metamorphosis that transforms it into a butterfly, your mind is meant to undergo a steady, purposeful change as it is saturated and controlled by the Word of God. The Holy Spirit illumines the words of the Bible to your mind so you can understand and obey it. “We all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit” (2 Corinthians 3:18). There are no shortcuts and no alternative paths. The one and only way your mind can be renewed is by the Spirit of God working through the Word of God.

Christian man, you must renew your mind. Which direction is your mind changing: toward conformity to the world or toward transformation into God’s image? Which has more of an influence over your mind: the Sports page of the newspaper or the Word of God? Where do you find yourself more often: sitting on the couch watching television or bowing on your knees in prayer over the Word? Over a lifetime of commitment to God’s Word, you gain new wisdom to replace old foolishness and godly desires to replace satanic longings. The sins that once fueled your imagination and motivated your actions begin to lose their power and are displaced by virtues that motivate good to others and bring glory to God. Your eyes stop their lusting because your mind is now filled with love; your mouth stops its cursing because your mind is now filled with joy; your hands stop their stealing because you are convinced you can be as content with little as with much. Such transformed lives begin with transformed minds, for your body always obeys your brain.

Run to Win!

Now the choice lies before you. Will you be conformed to this world or will you be transformed by the renewing of your mind? There is no mystery to either one. To be conformed to this world, you simply need to immerse yourself in it, to allow yourself to be influenced by it. It takes no effort and brings no reward. To be transformed by the renewing of your mind, you need to immerse yourself in the Word of God, to allow yourself to be influenced by it. It takes great effort and brings great reward.

The Olympic runner longs to hear the crowd screaming his name and longs to feel the weight of the gold medal as it hangs around his neck. He determines in his mind that he must win and then instils habits that will force him to live with discipline, to train with persistence, to put aside anything that might threaten his success. If he does all this for the adoration of mere men and the reward of a few ounces of metal, how much more should you, Christian, resolve to “lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and run with endurance the race set before you” (Hebrews 12:1)? You run to hear your heavenly Father proclaim, “Well done, good and faithful servant” and to bestow on you a reward that can never fade and never be lost. If you are going to keep your legs moving toward the prize of Christ, you must keep your mind renewing toward the mind of Christ. Christian man, renew your mind!

link to original article:         https://www.challies.com/articles/renew-your-mind/?utm_content=buffer3687a&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer

Holiness Will Make You Unbelievably Happy

Article by Jon Bloom originally posted on DesiringGod.org website.

Staff writer, desiringGod.org

Christian, when have you been most free from sin?

When have you been least motivated by selfish ambition and laziness and lust and self-righteousness? When has the fear of man, the general cares of this world, and the deceitfulness of riches wielded the least influence over you (Matthew 13:22)? When have you felt the most capacity to love others and the most concern for perishing unbelievers, the persecuted church, and the destitute poor?

In other words, when has your life been most characterized by holiness?

I can tell you when. It’s when you’ve been most in love with Jesus. It’s when you’ve been most full of faith in his promises so that you live by them. It’s when his gospel has been most meaningful and his mission has been most compelling, so that they dictate your life’s priorities.

In other words, you’ve been most holy when you’ve been most happy in God.

Holiness is fundamentally an affection issue, not a behavioral issue. It’s not that our behaviors don’t matter — they matter a lot. It’s just that our behaviors are symptomatic. They are the outworking of our affections in the same way that our behaviors are the outworking of our faith (James 2:17).

Why Holiness Has a Bad Rap

For many Christians, holiness has largely negative connotations. They know holiness is a good thing — because God is holy — and it’s something they should also be — because God says, “You shall be holy, for I am holy” (Leviticus 11:44; 1 Peter 1:16). But they think of holiness primarily in terms of denial, as sort of a sterile existence. In fact, God’s holiness is something they tend to fear more than desire.

This is understandable, especially if the teaching they have received has emphasized behavioral holiness over affectional holiness. The Old Testament has a lot of very serious things to say about holiness. When Yahweh called Moses (Exodus 3:10) and delivered the people of Israel, it is clear his holiness was nothing to be trifled with. It was lethal if it was ignored or neglected (Exodus 19:12–14). Also, eight, arguably nine, of the Ten Commandments are prohibitions: “You shall not . . . ” (Exodus 20:1–17). Reading through the requirements in Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, the overall emphasis we get is the rigor that was required to maintain holiness before God and the warnings given if it wasn’t.

God’s Mercy in All His Prohibitions

But while that impression of holiness is understandable, it is very wrong. Holiness is neither dominantly denial, nor is it sterile purity. We need to remember why God instituted the rigorous moral and ceremonial laws: “in order that sin might be shown to be sin” (Romans 7:13).

[For] if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin. For I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, “You shall not covet.” But sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness. For apart from the law, sin lies dead. (Romans 7:7–8)

All the prohibitions and all the warnings are all mercy, because God wants us to know what our biggest problem is, how deep it goes (Romans 7:15–18), its horrific consequences (Colossians 3:5–6), and how hopeless we are to make ourselves holy (Romans 7:24), in order to point us to the glorious solution he has provided to our biggest problem (Romans 7:25; Romans 5:6–10).

God only emphasizes our unholiness, our sinful state, so that we can escape its grip and its consequences — and know the full joy of living in the abundant, satisfying goodness of God’s holiness. We must understand the nature and seriousness of our disease in order to pursue and receive the right treatment. But, remember, the diagnostic tool’s job is to emphasize the nature of the disease more than the essence of health.

What Holiness Is Really Like

If we want to know the essence of the health of holiness, we need to look elsewhere, like Psalm 16:11: “In your [holy] presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.” That is what holiness is really like: as much joy and pleasure as we can contain for as long as is possible — which, because God grants it, is forever.

Do you see it? Holiness is not a state of denial, characterized by abstaining from defiling thoughts, motivations, and behaviors. True holiness is a state of delight. And the more true holiness we experience, the fuller our joy and greater our pleasures!

Holiness is fundamentally an affection issue, not a behavioral issue. This is only emphasized by the fact that all the Law and the Prophets — all the prohibitions and warnings pertaining to our behaviors, the height of holiness — are summed up in the greatest commandments to love God with all we are and our neighbors as ourselves (Matthew 22:37–40). Holiness looks most like the delight of true love. And if we love Jesus, we will keep his commandments — meaning that when our affections are really engaged, our behaviors naturally follow (John 14:15).

To Be Holy, Seek Your Greatest Happiness

God is supremely holy. And God is supremely happy (1 Timothy 1:11). God is love (1 John 4:8). And he is all light with no darkness (1 John 1:5). All that is good, all that brings true, lasting joy, and all that is truly, satisfyingly, eternally pleasurable comes from him.

And we are to be holy as he is holy (1 Peter 1:16). So, to pursue holiness, we must pursue our greatest happiness. Who has delivered us from our bodies of indwelling, sin-induced death? Jesus Christ (Romans 7:24–25)! Our unholy sin disease has been given a cure in the cross. We no longer need to fixate on the diagnostic tool of the law. Now, in pursuit of holiness, we aim primarily at our affections, not primarily at our behaviors. For behaviors are symptomatic of the state of our affections. What is a delight to us ceases to be a duty for us.

So God’s call to move “further up and further in” in holiness is an invitation to joy! Your fullest happiness ends up being the “holiness without which no one will see the Lord” (Hebrews 12:14).

Jon Bloom (@Bloom_Jon) serves as author, board chair, and co-founder of Desiring God. He is author of three books, Not by Sight, Things Not Seen, and Don’t Follow Your Heart. He and his wife live in the Twin Cities with their five children.

LInk to original article:  https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/holiness-will-make-you-unbelievably-happy