Holiness

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What is Holiness?  The first instance of holy in the Bible is this:

And he said, Draw not nigh hither: put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground.  (Exo 3:5)

And all the variations of Holy in the Old Testament derive from this Hebrew word.

H6942
????
qa?dash
kaw-dash’
A primitive root; to be (causatively make, pronounce or observe as) clean (ceremonially or morally): – appoint, bid, consecrate, dedicate, defile, hallow, (be, keep) holy (-er, place), keep, prepare, proclaim, purify, sanctify (-ied one, self), X wholly.

In the New Testament they are derived from:

G40
???????
hagios
hag’-ee-os
From ?????? hagos (an awful thing) compare G53, [H2282]; sacred (physically pure, morally blameless or religious, ceremonially consecrated): – (most) holy (one, thing), saint.

So, like I said when I started this, what exactly is it to be Holy or to model Holiness?  Some people would think that to dedicate themselves to their church – to go when the doors are open and to volunteer in the nursery and sing in the choir and do whatever else their church needs puts them on a road to holiness.  But I don’t think this makes them holy – the Pharisees were at least as dedicated as that and there was something in them that with all the rules and dedication and ceremony still kept them from being holy.

Some people would say that to separate themselves from the world will make them holy.  They can be separated from the world with all appearance of holiness while having none.  Jesus was holy, yet he had a lot of interaction with the world.

What I get from the Hebrew and Greek words from the Bible is that we are to be “clean” and morally blameless.  That sounds all well and good and we are probably a bit further along in figuring this out than we were when we started but now we need to figure out what it means to be “clean” and morally blameless.

…to be continued…