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Pastor Jay's Blog

Sin in a Holy God’s Presence

 

One of the constant proofs that we are more sinful than we dare dream is that we don’t ask the questions that matter.  People ask, “Why isn’t God blessing me” when they should be asking “why isn’t God destroying me?”  People ask, “Where is God in this trial” when they should be asking “Why would God be in this trial.”  Most of the time we are comfortable with a sin-cursed world and we can’t imagine why God wouldn’t be as well.  But if you ask the right questions, you are on a grace-laden path to the right answers, and the right answers not only explain everything, but will change your life.

The main question for this article is this: how can God abide in the presence of sin?  Isn’t he too holy to even look upon it?  The prophet Habakkuk asked this very question.  It is found in Habakkuk 1:13

“You who are of purer eyes than to see evil and cannot look at wrong, why do you idly look at traitors and remain silent when the wicked swallows up the man more righteous than he?” (Habakkuk 1:13)

This is the main question.  If God cannot even look at evil, then how can he be looking at evil people for the accomplishing of his plans?  And the question goes even deeper.  What about God’s omnipresence and the presence of sin?  How can God continue to be holy and yet he sustains the sinner? 

I would like to deal with this question in three parts.  The first part will bring the question to full strength.  The second part will give us half of the answer.  The third part will round the answer out in a glorious plot twist. 

Sin and God’s Omnipresence

God’s omnipresence gets us to the industrial strength version of our question.  To paint it in the starkest way, God’s omnipresence means that God is in Hell right now.  God is there doling out perfect justice upon the unfiltered hate and rebellion of man and angel.  The Scripture even tells us that the Lamb is active in this as well.

Revelation 14:10 [sinful man] also will drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is mixed in full strength in the cup of His anger; and he will be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb.

Perhaps we can see this as only God’s wrathful presence.  But we have another problem because hell goes to heaven as well.  At least twice in the book of Job, Satan goes to God’s presence in the angelic counsel (Job 1:6; 2:1).  This happens several other times in Scripture (2 Chronicles 18:18-21; 1 Samuel 16:14; Luke 22:31).

On top of these dramatic cases we have the more typical stories of the Bible: God’s shekinah glory in the temple in the midst of stiff-necked Israel, sinful Moses speaking “face to face” with God (Exodus 33:11), deceitful Jacob wrestling with God (Genesis 32:28-30), Jesus dwelling with man during his 33 years, the Holy Spirit bringing special filling and power on many people in the book of Acts, and God sustaining evil people in the very midst of their sin (Acts 17:28)

God seems to be very present among sinful men and angels.  What kind of holiness is this that interacts so regularly and continually with sin? 

God’s Unapproachable Presence

The first part of the answer is that God is not everywhere in the same way.  And this Holy God does dwell in a holy fellowship with the Trinity such that no one or nothing can approach.  This glory is infinitely distant from any taint of sin.  Consider the following verses.  There is a holy light of God’s presence that is unapproachable.  1 Timothy 6:16 “[God] alone possesses immortality and dwells in unapproachable light, whom no man has seen or can see. To Him be honor and eternal dominion! Amen.”  In Isaiah 6:2 there are angels, who are holy themselves, created with three sets of wings, two sets of which are used to cover eyes and feet.  These extra two sets of wings indicate that these angels, though still holy, are also still creaturely and have to keep a creaturely-appropriate distance from this blazing glory of total otherness.  One last indication is an explanation of Moses speaking “face to face” with God.  Whatever that entailed, it was not a full disclosure of God’s holy glory.  Why?  Because when Moses asked to see that in Exodus 33:18 God said in verse 20 “You cannot see my face, for no man can see Me and live.”

God’s Provisional Presence

Getting to the answer to this question means understanding the middle ground between the two previous sections.  On one side we see God’s dwelling with all sin in some way that is a part of his omnipresence.  On the other side we see that God is so separate from sin and all things created that not even holy angels can approach.  In between them is what I am calling God’s provisional presence.  Ever since the Garden of Eden, God has been coming into the presence of man and bringing man into his presence.  What is going on here?

I think the best way to explain this is by looking at the temple.  The temple was the concrete visual display of God’s desire to dwell with man.  Once a year on the day of atonement God’s special holy presence did dwell in the very presence of man.  But something still needed to be done.  The way was not fully accessible yet (Hebrews 9:8).  This inaccessibility was seen in the continual sacrifices.  The blood of lambs and goats was a provision (and a pointer) that made a covering for sin and allowed God and man to dwell together, if only momentarily.  But that moment was pointing to the ultimate moment.  The precious blood of the Lamb of God was shed for sin and it covered sin once for all.  Not only did it do it once for all in a temporal way (not ever needing repetition), but it also once for all in a totally sufficient way for all creation. 

Here is where the plot twist comes, and it is more than we often think about.  Jesus blood dealt with sin in every way that God wanted.  Nothing was wasted or left uncertain.  Not only did Jesus’ death deal with the sin of his saints, it also dealt with the sin of Satan, demons, unbelieving people, and a sin-cursed world.  What do I mean “dealt with” all of that sin?  Well, I don’t mean the atonement dealt with all of it in the exact same way but in the precise way God intended.  Believers are reconciled to God in a total and intimate way through Christ.  Satan, demons, unbelievers, and the physical universe are reconciled to God in a provisional and non-intimate way.  Consider this shocking verse:

Colossians 1:20 (NASB95) — 20 and through Him to reconcile all things to Himself, having made peace through the blood of His cross; through Him, I say, whether things on earth or things in heaven.

“All things” is not a generic statement, but is specifically defined as everything on earth or in heaven.  That is totality.  Jesus’ death purchased a kind of “reconciliation” that allows Satan to come into God’s presence at this time.  It is a reconciliation that allows unbelievers to enjoy God’s merciful presence as experienced in rain and sunshine (Matthew 5:45) and a million other delights instead of being immediately cast into hell.   It is not intimate and it is not eternal, but it is something that allows God to be in the presence of sinners at this time.  The whole world is reconciled to God (2 Cor. 5:19) and there is a kind of propitiation for them (1 John 2:2; 1 Timothy 2:5).  This comes through Christ’s death and allows them to experience God’s presence and mercy for a while, but it is not total, intimate, or eternal. 

So how can a holy God bear being in the presence of sinful people and sinful angels?  He can do it because the precious blood of his Son has born the wrath that holiness demands.  Those demands are met in a provisional way right now (temporarily for the unelect and completely for the elect).  But as a believer in Christ, saved completely through faith in Christ, we now can walk into the Holy of Holies.  The veil of the temple is torn in two.  The only separation from God that a believer has to deal with now is a physical separation.  Right now he has “seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ”. (Ephesians 2:6)  And our physical separation will be soon be ended.  We are the blessed pure in heart who will one day “see God” (Matthew 5:8) in whatever overwhelming way a creature united to Christ can see Him.    

 

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