“HOLY, HOLY, HOLY”

1 In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and the train of his robe filled the temple. 2 Above him stood the seraphim. Each had six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. 3 And one called to another and said:

“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory!”

4 And the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him who called, and the house was filled with smoke.

Isaiah 6:1-4

Does God wink at our small, inconspicuous sins?

In our previous blog, we mentioned that Jesus' sacrificial death shows what the term “God is love” truly means. Let me give you another reason why I think God can’t simply ignore sins.

God is Holy

God is holy; that is, He is morally perfect and separate from all creation.

In today’s passage, the prophet Isaiah received a vision of the Lord’s transcendence and wrote a detailed account of his experience. He recalls the Lord seated on His throne in heaven, where seraphim, which are majestic beings with six wings, human hands, and voices, are in the presence of God. While these perfect, fiery, angelic beings are supernatural in their own right, they humble themselves before God. If these supernatural beings submit to God, how much more should we?

The threefold repetition of the word “holy” (qāḏôš, “sacred”) further amplifies the meaning of the term. God is absolutely holy. When God revealed Himself in this scenario, Isaiah was disturbed and thus confessed his uncleanness. The holiness of God is so powerful that the very sight of Him is deadly to a wretched sinner like Isaiah. If a godly person like Isaiah recognized his wretchedness in a vision of God, how much more should we?

If God is this holy, righteous God, is there any reason to lower His standards of holiness by ignoring “small” sins? I don’t think so. Regardless of its magnitude, sin is an affront against God. Turning a blind eye to sin would be a violation of God’s own holiness.

Would you allow me to put a little sewer in your drinking water? Absolutely not. Even a drop of it will contaminate the whole container. In the same way, God will not disregard even a seemingly inconsequential sin; doing so will desecrate the heavens. Therefore, God must judge sin—whether we think they’re big or small.

Pursue the Savior today!

Photo by Jill Heyer on Unsplash