Holy and True

HOLY and TRUE

"This message is sent to you by the one who is holy and true (Rev. 3:7).

God, who is infinite, here chooses to emphasize these two qualities of himself, that he is holy and true. Thus they must be of supreme importance, since he could have chosen from a multitude of other ways to describe himself. Therefore, we should pay attention to what he is saying regarding himself in using these two words.

First, God wants us to know that he is holy:

"For I am God and not man, the Holy One living among you" (Hosea 11:9).

A primary  meaning of the word holy is that of being distinct, separate. God is not man, man is not God. God is holy, man is not. Man is not God.  God is. And God is separate from man. He is holy.

So it is wrong to think of man as the highest being, wrong to fear man. But rather:

"The Lord Almighty is the one you are to regard as holy, he is the one you are to fear" (Isaiah 8:13).

And yet, though we are to be in fear of God, the very next verse says that "He will be a sanctuary" (Isaiah 8:14).

The one we are to fear is the very one who will be our sanctuary from fearing God because of our sin and unholiness in the presence of him who alone is holy. (See The One I Need Is the One I Fear--Jesus in the Dec, 2010 archive folder, or else click this link http://wisdomsfriend.blogspot.com/2010/12/i-need-one-i-fear-jesus.html.) He who is distinct from us by being holy and therefore the one to fear is the same one who enables us to approach him without fear because he has sent his Son to become one of us and live among us and reconcile us to him.

Here is the sequence: First, we cannot approach God because he is holy and we are not:

"Who would dare of himself to approach me? says the Lord" (Jer. 30:21).

But second, what we dare not do and cannot do, God has done for us in Jesus Christ:


"For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do: sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the just requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit" (Rom. 8:3,4).

And third, since all this is so, in Christ we no longer need fear to come before God but rather we can even do so boldly, without fear of condemnation, for "there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus" (Rom. 8:1).

"Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace . . ." (Heb. 4:16 KJV).

The Father sent his Son to make all this happen, to bridge the gap that separates us from him, the gap of holiness.

“Your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God” (Is. 59:2 RSV).

In his Son, we become fit people for him to be with and he has promised this very thing:

"If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching. My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him" (Jn. 14:23).

"This is what the high and lofty one says--he who lives forever, whose name is holy: I live in a high and holy place, but also with him who is contrite and lowly in spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly and to revive the heart of the contrite" (Isaiah 57:15).

These are but a few of the implications of the first quality God emphasizes in Revelation 3:7, that God is holy. That he is also true has just as many consequences.

Truth and being true is the basic foundation of all that exists. It is no coincidence that when Moses asked God what his name was, God replied, "I AM" (Ex. 3:14). God exists, he is, and that existence is the basis for all else that exists. Nothing else can exist except that he exist first, for from him comes all else that exists or can exist. He is the one in whom "we live and move and have our being" (Acts 17:28).

"For by him all things were created . . . all things were created by him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together" (Col. 1:16,17).

"All things" is another name for reality. Reality is what exists, what is really "there," what is ultimate truth. Reality is all about truth and what is true. Ultimate reality is that reality beyond which one cannot go, because there is no "beyond". This is what is true in the deepest sense of the word. This is God. Therefore it is entirely appropriate that God should choose to use this word to describe himself. God is true. God is holy. These are the two words he has chosen to give us the most basic description of ultimate reality, God. He is "the one who is holy and true" (Rev. 3:7).