ENCOUNTER WITH HOLINESS.
God is integrity. He does not merely act with integrity; integrity is his character. But what about us? The biblical virtue of integrity points to a consistency between what is inside and what is outside, between belief and behavior, our words and our ways, our attitudes and our actions, our values and our practice.
The Dis-integration of Isaiah
When the prophet Isaiah had a vision of the glorious and awesome Creator of the universe, he was overwhelmed by the holiness of God.
In the year that King Uzziah died, 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 the 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.
"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.”
Then one of the seraphs flew to me with a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with tongs from the altar. With it he touched my mouth and said, "See this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for.”
Isaiah 6:1-7
R.C. Sproul comments on Isaiah's encounter with the holiness of God:
To be undone means to come apart at the seams, to be unraveled. What Isaiah was expressing is what modern psychologists describe as the experience of personal disintegration. To disintegrate means exactly what the word suggests, "dis integrate.” To integrate something is to put pieces together in a unified whole.... The word integrity...[suggests] a person whose life is whole or wholesome. In modern slang we say, "He's got it all together.”2
Isaiah says, "I'm undone. I'm torn apart,” which is just the opposite of integrity. To have integrity is to be integrated, to be whole, to have it all together in a sense, to be consistent. Isaiah finds himself torn apart, and this forces him to realize his own deficiency. When faced with the awesome holiness of God, Isaiah becomes aware of his own uncleanness. Throughout the Bible, man's encounters with God are very consistent in this way.
For example, when Peter realizes the power of Jesus he falls to his knees and says, "Go away from me, Lord; I am a sinful man!” (Luke 5:8) Peter knows that what has just happened is not natural; it is, in fact, supernatural. This is not the way things work, but instead of saying, "How did he do that?” he says, "Depart from me, I'm a sinful man.” Peter is not only aware of Jesus' power, but of holiness and his own sinfulness. An encounter with holiness is traumatic. The holiness of God becomes a standard to which we can never measure up, and this is traumatic for people who so desperately want to fool themselves into thinking they are self-sufficient.
In John 18, a cohort of 600 armed soldiers comes to arrest Jesus and have their own traumatic encounter with holiness:
Jesus, knowing all that was going to happen to him, went out and asked them, "Who is it you want?”
"Jesus of Nazareth,” they replied.
"I am he,” Jesus said. (And Judas the traitor was standing there with them.) When Jesus said, "I am he,” they drew back and fell to the ground.
John 18:4-6
Six hundred soldiers fall to the ground, and the word that is used implies that they were sort of held there, pinned to the ground. There are many speculations as to what exactly happened, but it appears as if the veil of his flesh lifted, and that pre-incarnate glory that he had before the foundation of the world was opened up for a microsecond. It was sufficient to overwhelm them. R. Kent Hughes, in his commentary Behold the Man suggests:
Jesus' answer was one of his last uses of the power by which he calmed the seas, stilled the winds, and healed the sick. The cohort didn't arrest Jesus - he arrested them. His words were a gracious warning that they were in over their heads.3
They must have known something wasn't quite right. Six hundred armed men are now more afraid than the one they came looking for.
Throughout the Bible, men discover just how traumatic an encounter with holiness is. The transfiguration scared Peter so much he didn't know what to say (Mark 9:6). John, on the isle of Patmos, sees Jesus and is so overwhelmed he "fell at his feet as though dead” (Revelation 1:17). This is the same John who had leaned on Jesus in the upper room (John 13:25). John would often sit next to Jesus. There was an intimate bond between them. But when he saw that holiness, he was overwhelmed. The conversion of Saul on the road to Damascus (Acts 9:4), Moses' reaction to the burning bush (Exodus 3:6), Joshua's interaction with the commander of the army of the Lord (Joshua 5:14), Jacob's response after his dream at Bethel (Genesis 28:17), Gideon realizing he's been interacting with the angel of the Lord (Judges 6:22). The list goes on and on of people who are absolutely terrified and overwhelmed by the awe-inspiring holiness of God.
God's holiness is truly awesome, and our natural reaction to him is one of fear. But there is another side of his nature, his closeness to us, that somehow allows us to have this relationship with him. Jesus, the mediator between God and man, makes it possible for us to avoid being consumed by his awesome holiness, and instead to be declared righteous. That is amazing. The Living God is willing to say that you are righteous. How is that possible? It's because Christ himself is in us.
When we live our entire lives before the face of God (corem deo) and practice a constant abiding in his presence, we realize that being people who do not manifest integrity is inconsistent with the dignity and destiny we've been called to. We have been called to live on a higher plane than that, to "live a life worthy of the calling [we] have received” (Ephesians 4:1), because, now, Christ is in us. He wants to live his life through us (Galatians 2:20); we are not only his representatives (2 Corinthians 5:20), as members of his church we are, in some mysterious way, his body (Ephesians 1:23; Colossians 1:24).
Now, that's impossible unless he dwells in us, but therein lies the solution. In fact, this is the genius of the Christian life. Christianity is not a religion; it's a relationship. Christianity is not about rules and regulations. Instead, it is the presence and power of a person who indwells us and promises to never leave us or forsake us (Hebrews 13:5).
