“What God’s Holiness Demanded His Grace Provided”
The mind’s musing upon this adage provokes worship. I’m currently reading a book where this line is penned. I thought to myself “This is the perfect motto for Christmas.” What God’s holiness demanded—absolute righteousness—His grace provided—The Righteous Redeemer.
The holiness of God demanded that if anyone were to come before Him they must be absolutely, perfectly, entirely, and utterly spotless. I’m thinking of the biblical term of clean when I speak of spotless. Every human being must be clean—morally, spiritually, ceremonially—to come before Almighty God. This defines the purpose for the OT sacrificial system. The OT sacrificial system and purification practices delineate how impure persons may come before an eternally perfect God. And the answer rested upon God Himself taking the initiate and ordaining certain rights, practices, rules, sacrifices, cleansings and such. No human being could have ever imagined such a way of approaching God. Rather, no human could have attempted to do this because every human being is a sinner and cannot approach God in his own will (Isa 59:2).
But as our adage so clearly reveals that what God’s holiness demanded, His grace provided. His grace provided access to Him in the OT through animal sacrifices offered in place of the sinful worshipper. Transitioning to the NT, we find that Jesus Christ was offered in place of the sinner who believes. What God’s holiness demanded, His grace provided in Jesus Christ, the sacrificial sin-bearer. What God required of sinful human beings, God, in his infinite and eternal grace, supplied for us needy and dead sinners.
Again, it intrigues me that what God’s holiness demanded no human being could have provided. There’s not a human being on the face of the earth who could have ever approached God because of the inherent dead and defiled nature attached to the fabric of human beings. I couldn’t have done it. You couldn’t have done it. Paul couldn’t have done it. Moses couldn’t have done it. Only God could do it. And He did do it—in sending His Son—the one and only unique Son of God to this earth to live the perfect life we could never live and to die the death that you and I deserve to die. God supplied the necessary requirement to meet his holiness in the perfect, righteous, holy, undefiled Lamb of God who died for the sins of those who would believe upon Him for eternal life.
This Christmas, don’t disregard what God in His grace has provided to meet the demand of His perfect holiness.
Hebrews 9:11-15 11 But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things to come, He entered through the greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is to say, not of this creation; 12 and not through the blood of goats and calves, but through His own blood, He entered the holy place once for all, having obtained eternal redemption. 13 For if the blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer sprinkling those who have been defiled sanctify for the cleansing of the flesh, 14 how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without blemish to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God? 15 For this reason He is the mediator of a new covenant, so that, since a death has taken place for the redemption of the transgressions that were committed under the first covenant, those who have been called may receive the promise of the eternal inheritance.
Many blessings to you this Christmas season,
pastor Geoff
