What does the word "holy" mean? Someone recently made the comment on a post of mine that I was redefining God's holiness. "Holiness" means, in English, "a state of being holy." But what does that word, "holy," actually mean? It's an English translation of both a Hebrew word, "qadosh," and a Greek one, "hagios," where the former is used in the Old Testament, and the latter is used in the New.
So, let's look at what these words actually mean. "qadosh," strictly speaking means "separated," and is a cognate of the Hebrew "qadash," meaning "to set apart, to separate." It's useful here to know that this word should not be translated as "holy" in every context, because it only takes on the implications of the English word within religious contexts. A thing could be "qadosh" for ceremonial use, and a thing could be "qadosh" to be destroyed. The chief meaning of the word is that this thing is separated out apart from everything else for a particular purpose.
"hagios," is a little more specific, and refers to something "devoted to the gods" in its original Greek language context. That is, again, something has been set apart or reserved for the divine use.
So, when the term "qadosh" is used of Yahweh in the Old Testament, what is being said is that Yahweh is set apart, separated out, and everything pertaining to Yahweh is to be set apart, and held apart from what isn't. The same came be said of "hagios" and it's cognates in the New. Notice that this is really the only thing this means. God and His things were to be treated with absolute care and respect, and not even touched or mixed with things meant for common use. Thus you have the "Holy of Holies" chamber in the tabernacle and temple which was so set apart, so separated, that no one was permitted to enter except the High Priest one day a year, and not without an offering. You didn't just go hang out with Yahweh in His personal chamber.
What sets God apart from us? What makes Him "qadosh, qadosh, qadosh?" God is, in fact, completely "other" than us. He is completely "other" than His creation, even as He is imminent to us, "in Him we live and move and have our being," surrounding us, omnipresent in every conceivable way, He is "other" from us. Our existence relies on His for its foundation, but His existence relies on Himself alone. We cannot exist without Him, but He can and has existed without us prior to the creation event. He is, in fact, completely separate from us even as He is so very intimate with us. This is one way He is "qadosh."
Another way He is "qadosh" is that, unlike us, He is not malfunctioning. He cannot malfunction like we can and have. That is a strange thing to say of a God who is omnipotent, but this involves what He is as much as who He is. God the Father is static and does not change, as change requires motion and all motion of time and space occurs through and within Him. To malfunction would require that He change, and that does not happen ("I am YHWH, I do not change, therefore you are not consumed, O sons of Jacob"). He has not changed from who He was at the beginning of creation, and He is no different now than He will be at the end of creation.
Another way He is "qadosh," is that, unlike us, He is love, and the depth of His love is without measure. His love drives Him to take every measure possible to heal us and cure us of our malfunction without destroying our free choice and who we are as unique persons. His love, the very foundation of His personality, drives His justice, in that He knows the harm each one of us causes one another due to the malfunctioning behaviors produced by our malfunctioning brains. His love drives Him to correct and discipline us to change our behavior, and change our hearts and minds, with an eye to making us feel and recognize the pain we cause others in a similar way to how He feels the pain we cause to others. Thus you had in the Torah the "eye for an eye" principle of justice. His goal in this is always that the offender come to their senses, turn it around, and try to repair what they've damaged. But His goal is never to destroy the offender, but to redeem them. It's their choice to willfully continue in the harm they cause and to reap the consequences of it up to and including damning themselves to torment for eternity. He doesn't want that, but He won't stop it either if that's what they choose.
Still another way He is "qadosh" from us is that holding onto wrongs committed is alien to Him. For malfunctioning human beings, we hold onto and are tormented by the wrongs others commit against us, and the wrongs we do to others. It can create mental illness within us. We have a need to forgive and be forgiven. But because of who and what He is, even letting those wrongs go isn't quite the right term, because He never held onto them to begin with. He recognizes when we're causing harm, and the effect it's having on us, and pushes us to recognize what we're doing and how we're hurting others as well as ourselves. But He Himself is not holding onto those hurts and wrongs and never has. He just doesn't want us to keep doing them. Forgiveness comes more naturally to Him than breathing does to us.
Jesus Christ was and remains the living incarnation of God's "qadoshness." As he said, those who saw and experienced Him, saw and experienced the Father's own personality. And yet this Person who did not act or speak unless the Father acted and spoke through Him forgave as easily as saying the words, ate with sinners, went homeless and kept company with the poor, and yet had extremely harsh words for the religious who believed themselves holy and condemned all of the above believing that God was just like themselves. And yet His harsh words were also meant to snap them to their senses and bring them to a change of heart and mind if at all possible. "If you have seen Me, you have seen the Father."
Jesus Christ demonstrated that God's main purpose was never to punish our malfunction, but to provide a cure for it. Not to destroy us for our malfunctioning behaviors, but to rescue us from them through inclusion into His death, burial, and resurrection. Those who don't understand that, don't understand God at all.
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