I have titled this post as “When Did God Become Holy and Are You Holy?” The question of “When did God become Holy” may seem to be a rather strange question. This question occurred to me one day as I was pondering the scripture “But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do; for 
it is written: “Be holy, because I am holy.” (1 Peter 5:15-16). I realized from this passage that I would never understand what it means for me to be holy in all I do unless I understood what makes God holy. Part of the challenge in understanding what makes God holy is the common belief that God cannot have anything to do with what is not holy, i.e sin. If this is true then it leads me back to my question of when did God become holy, if my understanding of holiness is in anyway defined by sin. God is holy because it is his nature! He was holy before the creation of the cosmos and humanity and before sin entered this world! He will never be anything other than holy! Therefore, I am to be holy in all I do because it is my nature as a born again son of God.
God is from everlasting to everlasting (Psalm 90:2), he is the uncreated one, without beginning or end. From his very being he spoke the entire created world into being (Genesis 1:1-31). The Hebrew word used for God in the Genesis creation account is elohim. It is a plural expression of the person of God who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit yet they are one. This is a divine mystery of how three persons can be one. Moses told the people “Hear O Israel, the LORD our God (Elohim) is one LORD” (Deut 6:4). It is commonly understood that being holy is being set apart. We tend to think that this means being set apart from something, i.e. sin. However, if God was holy before sin entered this world then it has to mean something more than being set apart from anything. Being holy has to mean being set apart unto something and that something is God himself. This is because God the Father, Jesus the Son and the Holy Spirit, are holy or set apart unto each other, in being one. Their entire being is relational, they are in fellowship with one another and the entire cosmos and humanity came into being out of that fellowship that they have shared from everlasting to everlasting. From that eternal fellowship we were chosen by God before the foundation of the earth to be holy and blameless before him (Ephesians 1:3-14). He set us apart unto himself before we ever came to be!
We are holy because he has made us holy by his own choosing and by his declaration (Hebrew 2:11 & Ephesians 5:25-27). Once I can see that God has made me holy and that holiness is my nature then I can begin to be holy in all that I do. Being holy is not defined by what I wear, eat, drink or do. But when I understand what being holy is, it will change what I do! We have been chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through the sanctifying (made holy) work of the Spirit, to be obedient to Jesus Christ (1 Peter 1:2). Whatever I do that is because of being conscious of being in fellowship with Jesus who is alive in me, is holy. Whatever I do that is because I am going my own way is unholy because it does not flow out of fellowship with Jesus. But either way I am still holy because he has set me apart unto himself and set his seal upon me and has given me the Holy Spirit as a deposit guarantying what is to come (Ephesians 1:13-14).
Please join with me in believing what God has declared to be true about us. 1 Corinthians 6:9-11 is a great comfort to me because it states what I used to be, but that I have been made holy by God’s doing.
“Do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor men who have sex with men nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified (made holy), you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God”. (1Co 6:9-11)
Blessings,
Kevin