Holy, Holy, Holy

Ethan Kang
Nov 2 · 15 min read

Preface

And the four living creatures, each of them with six wings, are full of eyes all around and within, and day and night they never cease to say,

“Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty,
who was and is and is to come!”

- Revelation 4:8

God’s holiness is an attribute often on my mind. The fact that the worship song sung by the angels to the Lord is not just “holy,” but “holy, holy, holy,” only serves to emphasize the importance of this attribute of God. However, while important, holiness is certainly a difficult concept to wrestle with. In the words of R. C. Sproul:

We tend to have mixed feelings about the holy. There is a sense in which we are at the same time attracted to it and repulsed by it. Something draws us toward it, while at the same time we want to run away from it. We can’t seem to decide which way we want it. Part of us yearns for the holy, while part of us despises it. We can’t live with it, and we can’t live without it.

- The Holiness of God, R. C. Sproul

Upon rereading and reflecting upon the angels’ praise in Revelation 4:8 recently, I came to the realization that it speaks of so much more than only God’s holiness. In just these sixteen words, three major attributes of God are clearly present: His holiness, His might, and His aseity. These attributes are not just extremely important, but they form the basis of many of God’s other attributes. Thus, in this work, I will attempt to concisely give my thoughts on each one, as well as highlight the impact that knowledge of these attributes has on our lives and attitudes.

A fair warning before we begin. As I said above, these are just my thoughts. With regards to the doctrinal aspects of this work, I have not gone to seminary, I have no formal training, and I am but an amateur enthusiast that loves theology. With regards to writing, I have not learned to write beyond a base college course requirement, I do not think I am particularly talented at writing, and I have very little practice and experience. With regards to personal credibility, I am only twenty years old, and only became a true, born-again Christian about two and a half years ago. Put simply, you will not find in this work any mind-blowing exegesis, or compelling rhetoric, but just a humble compilation of a boy’s thoughts from his own personal readings and life.

It is my prayer that even so, God, in His abounding grace, would use this to edify you in some way. And if you are in any way blessed or built up by this, then all glory be to God and God alone, because it is most evident that it was by no strength or ability of my own. Soli Deo gloria.


Holy Holiness

“Holy, holy, holy…”

For an average church-going Christian who has been in the faith long enough, holiness is not a foreign concept. If asked to provide a definition, they would most likely say something along the lines of “set apart (for God).” Those not so well-versed in Christian lingo, or those who are not Christian, may say something like “pure,” “moral,” or “righteous.” But what exactly is holiness? These definitions contain truth, but they do not encapsulate the entire truth.

I believe holiness, at its core, is the quality of being utterly different, completely foreign, totally off-the-scale. When we say things like “there is no one like God,” we speak of His holiness. To say God has a holy love is to say that His love is like no other love, and to say God has a holy power is to say that His power is unmatched. Holiness does not assert that God is the best among all things, but that He is above all things. From God’s holiness stems His attribute of incomparability, and all of God’s attributes are, by His nature, holy. Nothing can compare to God in any way because He is holy.

Most people think of holiness as a good thing. And it is certainly objectively good. But pause and take a moment to think about it for a second. Surely God’s holiness is bad news for the sinner! How can anyone contend with holy righteousness? And when holy justice comes, how can anyone dispute it? Even the smallest sin, the least of all offenses, is punishable by death because God is morally holy (after all, He is the standard of morality itself). There is no room to reason with divine and ultimate holiness, and no avenue to vouch for your scarce purity against the One who is perfect in all His ways and completely pure. Isaiah puts it this way in the famous passage from Isaiah 6:

In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and the train of his robe filled the temple. Above him stood the seraphim. Each had six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. And one called to another and said:

“Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts;
the whole earth is full of his glory!”

And the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him who called, and the house was filled with smoke. And I said: “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!”

- Isaiah 6:1–5

Isaiah’s language is emphatic here. The first thing I notice is his pronouncement upon himself: “Woe is me!” For most people today, “woe” is not a word often, if ever, used in daily life. However, for the prophets of the Old Testament, this word meant serious business. It was a curse of judgment pronounced on the wicked, an assurance of total destruction. We see this language in the New Testament as well, most famously in Matthew 23 when Jesus makes a gut-wrenching pronouncement of seven woes on the scribes and Pharisees. Isaiah pronounces this sort of destruction upon himself.

The second thing I notice is his following phrase: “For I am lost…for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!” I want to focus especially on the word nidmeti. The ESV translation renders it as “lost,” but this doesn’t capture the full effect. Nidmeti implies that Isaiah is utterly ruined, completely undone. The root of this word, damah, means to perish, to be destroyed, or to be cut off. Isaiah is saying that every fiber of his being would much like to cease to exist in that moment, simply as a reaction to gazing upon God’s holiness.

The feeling expressed here goes far beyond mere shame and beyond even the worst humiliation. Isaiah feels an overwhelming wretchedness, a complete and degrading sense of creatureliness. He realizes his rightful standing in comparison to God: the scum of the earth, a disgusting worm, nothing more than trash — you get the idea. This might sound harsh, and even offensive, to many of you. Our society and generation today place so much value in self-esteem and how you perceive yourself that it’s almost a crime to degrade yourself, much less degrade other people. However, every human is fundamentally wicked and debased, and a perfectly holy God is an offense to the wicked. It’s important to mention here that by wicked, I don’t necessarily mean absolutely terrible and immoral people. What I mean is that every human is in some sense wicked, as even the “best” of us fall short of perfect love and self-sacrifice. Surely, Isaiah was a decent and faithful man; he was a prophet after all. But even he realized how truly wicked and lacking he was against the backdrop of God’s holiness.

Now, if the story ended here, I honestly would want to walk away and never touch this Christianity business ever again. All this talk about a holy God and me being a worm sounds depressing, self-deprecating, and downright distasteful. But the good news is that there’s more to the story, and that what happens next is nothing short of absolutely mind-blowing.

Then one of the seraphim flew to me, having in his hand a burning coal that he had taken with tongs from the altar. And he touched my mouth and said: “Behold, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away, and your sin atoned for.”

- Isaiah 6:6–7

Grace. Here we see a picture of an amazing, astounding, incomprehensible grace. Isaiah prophetically predicts the work of Jesus here; the burning coal is an allusion to Jesus, in whom we see the ultimate demonstration of divine grace. By sending His son to die in our place, God doesn’t just spare us and leave us as we are, but He forgives our sins and gives us His holiness and righteousness in His son. Jesus took all our sin unto himself, and suffered in our place, receiving the full measure of punishment that we deserve. In doing so, God has given us a new standing, not as wicked worms squirming beneath Him, but as His beloved children — children whom He loves, nurtures, and sanctifies, and with whom He wants a personal and intimate relationship. What joy it brings me to know, accept, and believe in this good news.

And thus, I believe that the natural fruit of knowing God’s holiness is not despondent wretchedness or unbearable shame, but exactly the opposite: uncontainable joy. As we more accurately acknowledge and perceive God’s holiness, we more clearly see the magnitude and seriousness of our own depravity. This right view of the true extent of our wickedness produces a humble recognition of God’s abounding grace, resulting in the sweetest joy.


Holy Might

“…is the Lord God Almighty…”

The Almighty. A common name for God, and one I hear Christians use quite often. It certainly sounds very cool, but what are we professing when we call Him the Almighty? We speak of His omnipotence and His complete dominion. “Almighty” in Revelation 4 is a translation of the Greek word Pantokrator. It’s a combination of two root words: pas, which means all, and kratos, which means strength or power. The idea here is not just that God is stronger than everyone, but that He is the All-Strength, the One who has a holy might. I love the way Jehoshaphat puts it in his prayer from 2 Chronicles 20:

And Jehoshaphat stood in the assembly of Judah and Jerusalem, in the house of the Lord, before the new court, and said, “O Lord, God of our fathers, are you not God in heaven? You rule over all the kingdoms of the nations. In your hand are power and might, so that none is able to withstand you…”

- 2 Chronicles 20:5–6

God holds power and might in His hand. In other words, He owns them. Strength is not just something He has, it’s something that belongs to Him alone. Thus, all created things with power, strength, or authority only have those things because God gave them to them. We see this motif all over the Bible, but especially in the Old Testament. People, whether they be God’s people or the enemies, are only able to succeed when God says so. The clearest examples that come to my mind are Joshua 6–7, the history books, and Job 1–2. We see in Joshua and the history books that the objective strength of human armies played no role in determining the outcome of their battles. Rather, Israel’s victories and defeats were determined by their obedience to God, who gave strength accordingly. Moreover, Job 1–2 shows us that God has dominion over Satan, who needs to ask God for permission to attack Job; Satan has no power that God didn’t give him. And so we see that God’s omnipotence means that He is all-powerful, but also even more — God owns all the power.

This kind of holy might forms the backbone of one of God’s most definitive traits: divine sovereignty. A lot of people get iffy around this attribute of God, but all it means is that God does whatever He wants, and nothing happens unless God allows. From a logical standpoint, I think God’s sovereignty is readily deducible from His omnipotence; if God is all-powerful, He has the power to do anything He desires, and if God owns all power, nothing in the universe can even move unless He gives that permission. The psalmist recognizes this in Psalm 135:

For I know that the Lord is great,
and that our Lord is above all gods.
Whatever the Lord pleases, he does,
in heaven and on earth,
in the seas and all deeps.
He it is who makes the clouds rise at the end of the earth,
who makes lightnings for the rain
and brings forth the wind from his storehouses.

- Psalm 135:5–7

When God introduces Himself to Abraham in Genesis 17, He introduces Himself as El Shaddai — God Almighty. Why choose that specific name in that moment? He could have introduced Himself as God the Faithful, to assure Abraham that He would keep His promises. He could have introduced Himself as God the Provider, to remind Abraham that He would surely provide the promised son. However, He calls Himself El Shaddai. In the previous chapter, I concluded with asserting that knowledge of the Holy One produces joy. So what does knowledge of the Mighty One produce? I would say that it produces hope. God reminds Abraham that He is the Almighty to fill him with hope for the future, and He does the same with us. Knowing that the One who holds holy might in His hand, the One who fashioned the universe and rules it sovereignly, is the same One who holds my life and works all things together for good (Romans 8:28) — that fills me with real hope, a hope that has an unshakeable assurance. It allows me to hope with expectation and without uncertainty, because I know that God is omnipotent; He is unable to fail, and things will never not go His way.

To wrap up this chapter, I want to end with one of my favorite illustrations of God’s raw power in one of my favorite psalms, Psalm 18:

Then the earth reeled and rocked;
the foundations also of the mountains trembled
and quaked, because he was angry.
Smoke went up from his nostrils,
and devouring fire from his mouth;
glowing coals flamed forth from him.
He bowed the heavens and came down;
thick darkness was under his feet.
He rode on a cherub and flew;
he came swiftly on the wings of the wind.
He made darkness his covering, his canopy around him,
thick clouds dark with water.
Out of the brightness before him
hailstones and coals of fire broke through his clouds.
The Lord also thundered in the heavens,
and the Most High uttered his voice,
hailstones and coals of fire.
And he sent out his arrows and scattered them;
he flashed forth lightnings and routed them.
Then the channels of the sea were seen,
and the foundations of the world were laid bare
at your rebuke, O Lord,
at the blast of the breath of your nostrils.

- Psalm 18:7–15

Now that’s certainly a fearful image of a Mighty God. But for me, the punchline is in verse 16: “He sent from on high, he took me; he drew me out of many waters.” The God described in verses 7–15, with the coals and hail and lightning and arrows, bows the heavens as He comes down to hold my hand and draw me out of many waters. What a beautiful image that fills me with the firmest hope.


Holy Aseity

“…who was, and is, and is to come!”

Now, holiness and might are common vernacular for the Christian, and even non-Christians know what they mean. But aseity is not a word even Christians will encounter often. Aseity is God’s aspect of being, and God is the only One that has it. Thus, calling it “holy aseity” is a tad redundant on my part (but forgive me for the sake of the parallelism). Aseity is completely and wholly unique to God, and nothing else has even a shred of it. Created things can be holy and powerful, as God gives His holiness and might to His creatures as He pleases, but aseity cannot be imparted.

To help understand this concept, I’ll adapt an explanation I heard from R. C. Sproul. Everything can be described by one of these three states: being, becoming, and non-being. Non-being is simply nothing. If something doesn’t exist, it is in the state of non-being. All created things are in a perpetual state of becoming; every millisecond, you change whether you want to or not, becoming something you were not a millisecond ago. However, God is not like this. God is the only true Being; He just is. This attribute of just being is aseity.

Aseity is the attribute that God professes and names Himself to have when He introduces Himself to Moses in Exodus 3, as well as when Jesus answers the Jews in John 8:

Then Moses said to God, “If I come to the people of Israel and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?” God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM.” And he said, “Say this to the people of Israel: ‘I AM has sent me to you.’”

- Exodus 3:13–14

Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.”

- John 8:58

As a kid, I never understood why this was God’s name. Isn’t it obvious that God is who He is? It was more redundant to me than holy aseity. But the claim that God makes in Exodus 3, when understood properly, is truly astounding. God claims to be. Period. Jesus’ claim is equally astounding. Jesus doesn’t claim that he existed before Abraham did. He claims that He is before Abraham even entered the world. This is certainly a brain-twisting concept to consider, but an extremely important one to grasp. While I mentioned in the first chapter that holiness captures the nature of all God’s attributes, I would assert that aseity surely captures their foundation.

Perhaps the easiest attribute to grasp out of aseity is immutability. Immutability states that God never changes. This attribute should be evident from the definition of aseity, as God is never becoming anything (like creation is), but He just is. Yesterday, today, and tomorrow, He will always be, and He will always be the same.

God’s self-sufficiency is also implied in His aseity, and it is especially clear in the account of the burning bush. As God proclaims His aseity, we see an image of a fire that sustains itself, not consuming the bush for energy to burn as a normal fire would, but instead preserving the bush. Since God is pure being, it is naturally evident that He is not dependent on anything that is becoming, and so finds full sufficiency in Himself.

Aseity also professes God as the Creator. An aseitous being could not have been created, as then it would have had the aspect of becoming, and the true Creator must be aseitous, as without pure being, there can be no becoming. As a possibly more confusing but snappier way to say it, if God isn’t, then nothing could be. I’ll let you riddle that one out for yourself.

God’s authority is also founded on His aseity. The Greek word for authority, as it is often used in the New Testament, is exousia. Broken down, this word has two parts: ex, which means out of, and ousia. Ousia is a feminine noun derived from the root verb on, which is the present participle of the word eimi. All the grammar aside, eimi means “to be.” Thus, altogether exousia simply means out of being; your authority is based on who you are, and comes from your being. And since God is the only One who truly is, He possesses the highest and only true authority.

The last attribute I want to touch on is His atemporality. Previously, I stated that yesterday, today, and tomorrow, God will always be the same. However, this is a human way of comprehending God. God exists outside of time, as time itself is one of God’s creations. Aseity implies atemporality, as a being within time must change with time. Even if the nature of the being remains the same, as time passes, they are now further in time than they previously were (thus becoming a different being than they were, say, three seconds ago, simply because they have progressed in time).

I could continue for eternity tracing God’s attributes back to His aseity, but I’ll stop here and wrap up the chapter with one last remark. I’ve mentioned that knowledge of the Holy God gives joy, and knowledge of the Mighty God gives hope. So what does knowledge of the Aseitous God give? I think it gives peace. Nothing fills me with more peace than knowing that the God that I worship just is. And He will never stop being. What that means to me, is that He will never stop being the Holy One. He will never stop being the Mighty One. He will never stop being the Faithful One, the Gracious One, the Merciful One, the Loving One, the Sovereign One, the Just One; my Father, my Friend, my King, my Rock, my All. He will never stop being. He can’t stop being. He is Being. What have I to worry about if my God will always be? What can trouble me if the God that is working all things together for His will can’t stop being who He is? And so, all my anxieties fade away as God’s aseity brings me the most freeing peace.

Ethan Kang

Written by

20-year-old theology nerd that’s just trying to love God more every day.

Welcome to a place where words matter. On Medium, smart voices and original ideas take center stage - with no ads in sight. Watch
Follow all the topics you care about, and we’ll deliver the best stories for you to your homepage and inbox. Explore
Get unlimited access to the best stories on Medium — and support writers while you’re at it. Just $5/month. Upgrade