Our “Concept of God”
Any understanding of the meaning of sin must begin with an understanding of the holiness of God. God is the benchmark in which we gain an understanding of what sin really is. “Every culture differentiates the sacred from the secular and has terminology to make that distinction. Canaan already had such terms when Israel adopted its language. The problem was that what was holy to the Canaanite was abominable to Jehovah. In Canaan the temple prostitute was a holy woman and the homosexual priest was a holy man (cf. Gen. 38:21-23; Deut. 23:17-18). You see, sin is defined by any person’s concept of “God.” If God is a loving, easygoing pushover whose love for man overrides His own holiness, then they will live and respond in conjunction with that belief. If one believes that a loving God would not send anyone to an eternal torment in hell for sin, then their life and actions will most likely reflect that. Some believe that the way to heaven is determined by God weighing their good and bad in the balance, and if the good outweighs the bad, then they will go to heaven. Our concept of God determines our response to that “God.” What one considers holy determines how they will live. No person lives beyond his or her concept of God.
- By Jeff Paton “The Holiness of God”
January 4, 2010 at 10:24 pm
Yes, but with all respect due Sproul, I think that he is quite wrong.
He asserts that “holiness” has two separate meanings: one is equivalent to righteousness and applies to us, and the other is a “transcendent otherness” which applies to God alone. But there is no scriptural indication of this word having two non-overlapping meanings of this sort, and in the ancient world this was not how holiness would be understood. Indeed if you think it through, this is not a workable idea. And I think that a key problem is that the modern church ignores the fact that it doesn’t really have much of a sense for what “holiness” really means, but when it does contemplate it comes to the same sort of incorrect idea the Sproul voices here.
If we rather define “holiness” to be “the polar inverse of idolatry” then we don’t need two different definitions of this word and we realize that a great deal of Christian doctrine can be rederived from this single premise.
December 30, 2009 at 10:46 am
But what exactly is “holiness”?
(http://nuallan.livejournal.com/49222.html)
December 30, 2009 at 7:17 pm
Thank you for commenting. Here is R.C. Sproul on what holiness is:
What It Means to Be Holy