Biography of God by Skip Heitzig

Author:Skip Heitzig [Heitzig, Skip]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Religion, Christian Theology, General, Christian Living, Spiritual Growth, Biography & Autobiography, Religious
ISBN: 9780736977746
Google: vqHoDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Harvest House Publishers
Published: 2020-10-13T00:16:00.456523+00:00

Chapter 10

GOD’S MOST UNPOPULAR ATTRIBUTE: HOLINESS

The Problem of Evil, Part 1

Yousuf Karsh was an Armenian-Canadian artist, world-famous for his large-format film photography. One of his most famous published collections is called Portraits of Greatness. It features ninety renowned figures, including Winston Churchill, Ernest Hemingway, Georgia O’Keeffe, Albert Einstein, and Robert Frost.1 His goal was to capture the common traits of greatness—and he succeeded. But greatness isn’t always what people expect.

Seventy of Karsh’s ninety portraits feature people who could be considered physically unattractive. The high detail and resolution of the large-format 8 × 10-inch film camera he used reveal a host of imperfections: thirty-five of his subjects have moles, thirteen show liver spots, twenty have acne, and two sport visible scars. In a way, Karsh showed these famous people for who they really were—no pretenses, and certainly no smartphone filters. And yet many of his photographs are considered the most iconic shots ever taken of these people.

Holiness Challenges Self-Sufficiency

Some of God’s characteristics have broad appeal. Who doesn’t want to hear about His love, grace, or compassion? Who isn’t drawn in by accounts of God’s faithfulness or providence? But what about His holiness? It seems that one of the least-discussed attributes of God is, to many, one of His least attractive. That’s because this attribute accounts for some of God’s unappealing actions. It’s because of God’s holiness that He is a God of judgment. It’s because of God’s holiness that He is a God of wrath and even, at times, vengeance. God’s holiness led Him to create hell.

But God’s holiness is not a flaw. In fact, it’s His most-noted characteristic throughout the Bible. God is called holy in the Scriptures more than He is called loving, mighty, or gracious—or anything else. Isaiah alone referred to God as “the Holy One” thirty times. But God’s holiness still makes a lot of people squirm.

This isn’t a new development. Rather, it’s simple human nature—we shy away from hard truth, especially when that truth is so unlike our character. Paul warned the young pastor Timothy about this trend: “A time is coming when people will no longer listen to sound and wholesome teaching. They will follow their own desires and will look for teachers who will tell them whatever their itching ears want to hear” (2 Timothy 4:3 NLT). This sounds like it’s describing modern times, but it was written in the first century!

Certain teachers today play to this tendency, giving crowds the parts of Scripture that make them feel good but not the parts that challenge them with their shortcomings. But the good news of the gospel isn’t that God is a really nice guy who’s there for you when times are tough. While it’s true that He is good and that He is there for you through thick and thin, that’s only the secondary good news. The primary good news is that God has met the requirements of His holiness by giving His Son as a sacrifice to pay the cost of our sin.

I understand that sin is an ugly word; it ought to be.

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