Holiness

"We cannot grasp the true meaning of the divine holiness by thinking of someone or something very pure and then raising the concept to the highest degree we are capable of. God's holiness is not simply the best we know infinitely bettered. We know nothing like divine holiness. It stands apart, unique, unapproachable, incomprehensible and unattainable... Holy is the way God is. To be holy He does not conform to a standard. He is that standard." -A.W. Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy 

I've been thinking about holiness of late. I guess I've always thought of it as some characteristic of God that inevitably and rightfully separated me from God. I imagined this chasm between the Creator of the Universe and me. I felt like I couldn't be very intimate with God because He was so holy, and I was so... not. 

But as I started studying holiness and reading about how people in the Bible acted when they encountered God's holiness, my perspective changed. No one ever sees God's holiness and walks away the same. 

Take Isaiah (the prophet and the OT book). In Chapter 6, he encounters God and is immediately undone, crying "Woe to me! I am ruined. For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty." Even being in God's presence undoes Isaiah. He's freaking out. Once he is cleansed by the seraph, though, he doesn't just walk away, but he also doesn't just sit and bask in God's holiness. He responds to the encounter. My (very limited, mind you) understanding of holiness seems to be that holiness necessitates, if not demands, a response. Isaiah willingly offers to be sent by God after his encounter with God's holiness. Moses reacts in much the same way. 

Holiness is less about creating a massive gap between God and me, and more about me acknowledging (as Isaiah did, e.g.) the extent of God's holiness and just how short I fall of that standard, and then responding to His holiness with a willingness to be used.