"The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom: and the knowledge of the holy is understanding." Proverbs 9:10

There are two particular words for holy in the Hebrew Bible. One word is used almost exclusively of God the Holy One and rarely used of anything or person except God the Holy One. In Proverbs 9:10 it says: "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom: and the knowledge of the holy is understanding." I am greatly fascinated by the fact that the King James Bible refers to it in the abstract - "the holy" rather than "the Holy One." And yet the Jewish Bible says "the knowledge of the Holy One."

Proverbs 30:3 also uses this phrase: "I neither learned wisdom, nor have the knowledge of the holy." Again, the Jewish Bible translates it "the knowledge of the Holy One" or "the All-Holy." The Jewish translators encountered exactly the same word more than forty times and translated it "the Holy One." So obviously this is God! And yet there is enough vagueness about it that the King James translators felt free to make it abstract and call it "the holy."

In the New Testament, we have a Greek word about God being holy. "Be ye holy; for I am holy" (1 Peter 1:16). I notice that the definition of that Greek word is "Awful (full of awe) Thing." Now think of that. The Awful Thing - that's one meaning of the word holy - the Holy One!

Let's think a little about the Holy One and His creatures. We see that this Holy One allows only holy beings into His Presence. Yet in our humanistic day - our day of a watered-down, sentimental Christianity that blows its nose loudly and makes God into a poor, weak, weeping old man - in this awful day, that sense of the holy isn't upon the Church........We have lost the sense of the Holy One almost altogether.

There are people in the presence of God, but they're there only by a technical redemption. I worry in this hour that we're "technically" Christians. We can prove that we are - anybody can flip open a Greek lexicon and show you that you are a saint. But I'm afraid of that kind of Christianity. If I haven't felt the sense of vileness by contrast with that sense of unapproachable and indescribable holiness, I wonder if I have ever been hit hard enough to really repent. And if I don't repent, I wonder if I can believe.

Nowadays we're given a quick fix and we're told just to believe it, and then we give our names and addresses and we're all right. But I'm afraid our fathers knew God in a different manner than that.......It isn't enough for somebody to mark a New Testament and rub my nose in it and try to comfort me. I don't want to be comforted! I want to know what it will be like in that hour when I leave my wife, my children, my grandchildren and all my good friends. There's not one of them that can help me in that awful hour when I appear before the Ineffable, and the uncreated beam impinges on my naked spirit.

There is a way. It is through the "offering and the sacrifice" of "the Advocate with God." But don't take that lightly. Conversion used to be a revolutionary, radical, wondrous, terrible, glorious thing. But there's not much of it left. We've forgotten that God is the Holy One of Israel.

A. W. Tozer (1897 - 1963) from The Attributes of God

The Spirit of God never heals (except) He wounds; and if those seeking Christ have not peace, it is because there is still in them some remnant of fancied goodness......There is a counterfeit Confession of Sin; let us beware of this counterfeit. We may be sure the sorrow is not deep if the sin be not subdued......God kills to make alive. He smites men's consciences to make them judge themselves. The first great step when a man desires to be saved is unqualified self-condemnation. Sin unconfessed is imputed; but sin confessed is blotted out by God. The sinner, coming in the name of Jesus, has a title to life; the ground of that title is the very name and justice of God.

R. C. Chapman (1803-1902)