How Do You Define God’s Holiness?

Audio Transcript

When something is unique, it’s really rare. It’s absolutely rare. So I asked my wife, Noël, on Friday night, “Why is gold used as the standard of our money? Why do we prize gold so highly?” And she accurately said, “Because it’s rare.” I said, “Yeah, but there are fish that are really rare.” And she said, “Gold has some permanence, but fish rot and get smelly. They can’t be the standard of anything no matter how rare they are.” I said, “That’s right.”

So you got rare and you got permanence, and I would add accessibility. There are rocks probably under this field so far down way more rare than gold, but you can’t get at some, and so they’re useless. They’re no help to being the monetary standard at all. And there are fish at the bottom of the sea nobody has ever caught or even classified, and they’re no use either.

“A passion for God’s infinite value will sever the root of all Judas joys.”

So you’ve got rare, you’ve got permanence, and you’ve got accessibility, and I think the uniqueness of God is all of that. He’s the rarest of all beings, he has absolute permanence, and in Jesus Christ, he’s made himself accessible. Therefore, I draw this as my concluding definition, if you allow me a definition of the indefinable: God is infinitely valuable.

So here’s my full definition: God’s holiness is his infinite value as the absolutely unique, morally perfect, permanent person that he is and who by grace made himself accessible — his infinite value as the absolutely unique, morally perfect, permanent person that he is.

And now my prayer for the generation becomes not simply that you become a generation passionate for God’s holiness, but that you become a generation passionate for God’s supreme infinite value. And that will sever the root of all Judas joys.


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