Passionate for God's Holiness - Part 2 — John Piper

The Holiness of God as a Rock in Suffering

Three months later, the husband came to me and said something I will never forget. It has a lot to do with what I'm saying today and how I'm saying it. He said, John, these have been the worst months of our lives.

You know what's gotten us through? The vision of God's holiness from last January. It's been the only rock in our lives. Your generation can get it. And I pray that you would become passionate for the holiness of God.

Finding Freedom Under the Weight of God's Holiness

That you would see and live in the brightness of His blazing holiness. That you would feel in your life the weight of the rock of His holiness. Could it be that your struggle with pornography, masturbation, fornication, Josh will talk to you about later, might find the liberty that you've been aching for in the rock of God's holiness, pure and simple, seen and bowed before.

Could it be that your struggle with an eating disorder or with food from morning till night might find the liberty and the freedom that you've been aching for in the sheer weight of the rock of God's holiness.

Could it be that when you wake up someday, as happened to one man recently, to the sound of his wife bludgeoning his children to death on the front lawn, one rock would get you through those days, namely the rock of God's sovereign, gracious holiness.

And could it be that the 200 ,000 that I so ache for and long for, pray for, preach for in this generation, might arise if their hearts were impassioned by a glimpse of the holiness of God. That's my assumption, that those kinds of things could happen if this generation became passionate for the holiness of God.

Why Christians Struggle to Define God's Holiness

So I ask, what stands in the way? And I only have two things to mention. Number one, most Christians today, and I assume you're included, don't know what the holiness of God is. I doubt that you could give a five-minute talk right now about the biblical meaning of the holiness of God.

There's a reason for that, and it isn't all your fault. Definitions, when it comes to God, are hard to come by. Definitions all depend on putting things in classes, using analogies. If I ask you, what's a rabbit?

I've never seen a rabbit. What's a rabbit? You'd say, well, it's a small, furry mammal that has long ears and chews a cud. Now, my mind at that point would say, small. I know what small is. I've seen small things.

Furry, I've seen cats. I know what that is. Mammal, I know what that is. I had a hamster one time. Ears, I've got one, and if it's long, I can imagine that. Chews a cud, I've seen a cow. Okay, I think I've got a little composite rabbit in my head.

You know what? You can't do that with God. There's a reason. If you say, what is God, or what is holy God? There aren't any classes to point to. There aren't any categories. He is absolutely one of a kind, which makes definitions almost impossible with God.

Defining God, who has no analogies, is very difficult. You might say, well, we are sort of in His image, and sort of have some righteousness, and some power, and some intelligence, and some morality, and so you can point to us and then back to God.

The problem with that is, God defines you. You don't define Him. God is definer. We are defined. You try to move from us to God, instead of from God to us, you will skew Him badly, which is one of the great errors of our generation, inferring from our imperfections what God is like.

God's Holiness as Absolute Uniqueness

So what can we say about the holiness of God? Let me try. Let me at least try. I think it would be biblical to say that the holiness of God is rooted exactly in God's inability to be defined. It's paradoxical, but let me say it like this.

God's holiness is His absolute uniqueness. God's holiness is His incomparable-ness. God's holiness is precisely the fact that there is none other. That's what you read in Isaiah 40, 25. To whom will you compare me that I should be like Him, says the Holy One.

God's Moral Perfection and Separation

Or Hannah's words in 1 Samuel 2. There is none holy like the Lord. There is no God besides You. There is no rock like our God. Many of you have heard holy means separate. Well, yes, in this sense, when you talk about God, separate into a class by Himself.

Utterly separated from all that is not God constitutes Him as absolutely unique, incomparable, and thus holy. But that's not enough. That's not enough. Here's the problem with that definition. There's no qualitative content to it.

There's no moral quality. You say, unique in what? Incomparable in what? Now the biblical answer to that question is going to be incomparable in absolutely perfect moral perfection. Moral perfection is what He's incomparable in.