What the World Needs Now

by Carl Palmer

In the 60's Jackie DeShannon sang, "What the world needs now is love." The songwriter believed that we had plenty of everything else: meadows and hillsides and mountains. But love was in short supply.

Though the song was enormously popular, it didn't take us long to discover that the world needed much more than love to survive. Its rapid slide into immorality and humanism and relativism points to the need for something pure and simple.

The same is true of God. How many times have you heard "God is love"? True, love is perhaps what we appreciate most about God, because without God's love, where would we be? If God did not love us, He would not have sent His Son, Jesus Christ, to free us from the grip of sin and guilt and hopelessness. But the world needs much more than God's love to survive: It needs His holiness.

Glimpses of holiness

When referring to God, the word holy means "unpolluted, completely right." There is no spot or blemish on God. He has no moral failures, no fluttering between truth and lie, no leaning toward deception. What exactly does a holy God look like?

A prophet named Isaiah saw a vision of God in His holiness and wrote these words:

I saw the Lord seated on a throne, high and exalted, and the train of his robe filled the temple. Above him were seraphs, each with six wings: With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying. And they were calling to one another: "Holy, holy, holy is the LORD Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory." At the sound of their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke (Isaiah 6:1-4).

Human response

What is so significant about this vision is not just what Isaiah saw, but how he reacted:

"Woe to me!" I cried. "I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the LORD Almighty" (v. 5).

Throughout the Bible, whenever men and women encountered God, they were filled with an awe and fear of God's holiness. Have you heard of Moses and the burning bush? God spoke to Moses from the bush: "Do not come any closer. . . . Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground" (Exodus 3:5).

As God spoke, "Moses hid his face, because he was afraid to look at God" (v. 6).

Perfection and purity

Let's take a closer look at God's holiness.

First, it is perfect and pure. Nothing about God defiles or contaminates. He is 100% -- not just 99 and 44/100's -- perfect and pure in character. Deuteronomy 32:4 says of God, "His works are perfect, and all his ways are just. A faithful God who does no wrong, upright and just is he."

Why are God's perfection and purity so important? Because all standards of right and wrong are based on them. Often someone will ask, "Why is this right and that wrong?" In the eyes of many, there is no right and wrong -- only a choice between alternatives. But if we keep to an "anything goes" philosophy, the world will ultimately self-destruct. We must have a straight line to follow for the good for the human race.

How a holy God, perfect and pure, love sinners? Through the sacrificial death of Jesus Christ. God no longer sees the sin of the sinner but the sinlessness of Christ in its place. In offering His Son, God not only satisfied His love by demonstrating His compassion through this ultimate act of redemption, He also satisfied His holiness by accounting the righteousness of Christ to those who believe.

Faithfulness

A third aspect of God's holiness is faithfulness. What He says, He will do. When He gives His word, He carries through. In Malachi 3:6 God asserts, "I the LORD do not change. So you, O descendants of Jacob, are not destroyed."

During the days of the prophet Malachi, God was disappointed in the people of Israel. They disobeyed Him and were entrenched in sin. They were neglecting worship. To paraphrase Malachi's message, the Lord declared to Israel, "The only thing that stands between you and destruction is that I gave My word to your forefathers that you were going to be My chosen people. The reason you continue to exist is not because you're righteous, not because you're better than anyone else, but because I have committed Myself and will not go against what I have said." It is because of holiness that God could and would make such a statement.

Our response

Knowing that we have such a holy God, what should be our response?

First Peter 1:15, 16, says, "Just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do; for it is written: 'Be holy, because I am holy.'"

Unfortunately, we haven't obeyed this command. I believe that because Christianity has not placed the proper emphasis on the holiness of God, choosing to focus more on His love, an imbalance exists in the gospel message. Unless we balance God's love with His holiness, and reflect His holiness in our lives, we are in danger of viewing God simply as a big person in the sky, there at our beck and whim to give us anything we want, whether or not it is for our good.

Hebrews 12:14 says, "Make every effort to live in peace with all men and to be holy; without holiness no one will see the Lord." Therefore, we must maintain equal emphasis on holiness with the other aspects of the gospel message.

This means calling sin, sin. It means recognizing in our lives what is ungodly. It means not trying to convince ourselves that, because God loves us, somehow He will simply overlook sin.

Isn't it strange that what we view as sin in the lives of others we see as just a minor flaw in our own? Certainly there are weaknesses in our lives that we're sincerely trying to overcome and for which we need more time, maturity, and instruction. Of greater concern is the attitude of "It doesn't matter. God loves me regardless of what I do. So it's really unnecessary to strive toward holiness and Christian maturity." With this attitude we excuse our lack of holiness. We treat lightly what a holy God takes seriously.

We believe in and count on the love and forgiveness of God. But we must not presume on His graciousness. The righteousness of Christ that has been imputed to us does not give us a license to sin. Instead, God calls on us, through His love and act of redemption in Christ, to live holy lives, patterning our behavior after the example of Christ.

Consider the words of 2 Peter 3:11-14:

Since everything will be destroyed in this way, what kind of people ought you to be? You ought to live holy and godly lives as you look forward to the day of God and speed its coming. That day will bring about the destruction of the heavens by fire, and the elements will melt in the heat. But in keeping with his promise we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, the home of righteousness. So then, dear friends, since you are looking forward to this, make every effort to be found spotless, blameless and at peace with him.

God has promised "a new heaven and a new earth, the home of righteousness." In that perfect world there will be no sin, no suffering, no pain, no death, no sorrow. It will be a world conceived in God's love, but made possible by His holiness.

A version of this article appeared in a past issue of the Bible Advocate magazine. For a free subscription by regular mail, contact us at bibleadvocate@cog7.org

Carl Palmer pastors the Church of God (Seventh Day) in Spokane, WA. Scripture quotations are from the New International Version.

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