“Only A Holy God”

There was a controversial, yet well intentioned commercial that ran in the first quarter of this year’s “Super Bowl”. It was a one-minute string of 12 dramatized photos, depicting various types of people washing the feet of others, with related background music (John 13:1-17).  At the end of it are flashed the words: “Jesus Didn’t Teach Hate. He Washed Feet. He Gets Us. All of Us.” A second, shorter ad ran later in the game titled “Who is My Neighbor” showing pictures of people from all walks of life and at the end asking “Who is my neighbor? The one you don’t notice, value, welcome.” (Luke 10:25-37)

Now I need to confess that I did not watch these commercials in the course of the game, as I lost any interest I would have had in doing so when my hometown team, the Detroit Lions, lost in the conference championship game. However, I learned about and watched these ads as a result of the media controversy that followed.

These commercials are a part of a multimillion-dollar, multimedia advertising campaign, titled He Gets Us, aimed at exposing our culture to Jesus Christ in a non-threatening manner.  One campaign spokesman noted, “We’re trying to unify the American people around the confounding love and forgiveness of Jesus.” “Our goal is to really show that Jesus loved and cared for anyone and everyone.”  Another campaign spokesman noted, “The campaign exists to remind us of the example that Jesus set while inviting all to explore his teachings so we can all follow his example of confounding, unconditional love.”

The ads direct viewers to HeGetsUs.com, where I was able to view many of the previous commercials. It appears that they are focused primarily on Jesus as a friend of sinners, who as a man experienced much of what we struggle with in this world, noting in one ad “Whatever you are facing, Jesus faced it too.”

Now there is no doubt that Jesus, as a man, befriended sinners while in this world, who else did He have (Ecclesiastes 7:20) (Luke 7:31-34).  It is also true that Jesus experienced, as a man, the struggles and afflictions of life in a sin-cursed world, likely more so than any other man, though He Himself was without sin, which He had to be if He were to save us from ours (Hebrews 4:15) (Isaiah 53:3) (1 Timothy 1:15).

But just what does it mean that He (Jesus) Gets Us?  Well, as I investigated the typical usage of the phrase he/she gets me, I found that it typically refers to having a sense or belief that the person referred to, in this case Jesus, knows and understands me, what I am like, what I am all about, what I value most, what motivates and defines me, why I am the way I am, and then  accepts – values me as such, not just superficially, but at a soul or heart level.

Does Jesus get us in this way?  Well, yes and no.  As our omniscient creator He certainly knowns and understands who and what we presently are at the deepest level of our being – our hearts, which He tells us in His word are deceitful and desperately wicked, wherein our thoughts and imaginations are only evil continually, and from which proceed all that is destructive to man and hateful to God, and thus worthy of His wrath and judgement (John 1:1-3) (Psalm 139:1-6) (Jeremiah 17:9-10) (Genesis 6:5) (Mark 7:20-23) (Romans 1:18-31).  Does he value and accept us as such? Well, not exactly.

Although Jesus comes and calls us to Him while we are still in our sin – in our sexual perversion, our greed and covetousness, our self-righteousness and hypocrisy, in our bigotry and racism; he comes not to affirm or make us comfortable in it but to convict us of it (John 16:8).  He does so that we may acknowledge our sin and its worthiness of His judgement, repent of it  and put our faith in Him as our all sufficient savior from God’s judgement and then pursue holiness, conformity to His person and purposes, without which we will not see God (Matthew 11:28-30) (1 John 1:8-9) (Acts 17:30-31) (1 John 4:14) (Hebrews 12:14).

The Bible tells us that God created mankind in His likeness, holy and upright, with ultimate dignity, to image and display His glory (Isaiah 43:7) (Genesis 1:26) (Psalm 8:4-5). God’s glory is the outshining of His holiness, a term God uses throughout His Bible to represent the infinite value and infinite perfections of His eternal being, all that makes Him worthy of being know intimately, trusted explicitly, obeyed perfectly, worshiped exclusively and pursued passionately as the object of our deepest love and the source of our eternal joy (Exodus 15:11) (Psalm 99:1-9).

Yet, all of mankind has despised God’s holiness, rejecting His glorious purpose for and rule over our lives as our creator – what the Bible refers to as sin (Romans 3:23).  Each of us have gone our own way, suppressing the knowledge of God, opposing His design and order for human flourishing and individual happiness, while wickedly replacing it with our own, and thus subjecting ourselves to divine judgement in Hell (Ecclesiastes 7:29) (Isaiah 53:6) (Psalm 9:17).

The ultimate issue for sinful men and women in escaping the judgement we deserve for our sin, is not that He – Jesus, God the Son, Gets Us, but that we get Him (Jeremiah 9:23-24), humbly recognizing first and foremost that He is holy, and only approachable on His terms (Leviticus 10:3) (Psalm 51:16-17).

Thus, our coming to Jesus by faith, faith that saves us from God’s just judgment, must be faith in the God who is Holy, Holy, Holy (Mark 11:22) (Hebrews 11:6) (Isaiah 6:1-3).

For, only a holy God could have designed and spoken into existence a spectacular, majestic, ordered universe of awesome wonders, and a world within that universe of great beauty and splendor that was filled from the beginning with fruitful trees, delightful plants and vegetation, amazing animals, birds, fish, and insects, majestic mountains, great oceans and flowing rivers, all for His glory and thus all for the enjoyment of men and women He would create for His glory (Psalm 104:1-25) (Genesis 1:31) (Isaiah 43:7).

Only a holy God, who exists in three distinct persons in an eternal love relationship of unimaginable joy, could and would have made beings in His image and likeness capable of sharing in that relationship, not as divine equals but as beloved children, finding their greatest joy, their greatest pleasure, their greatest satisfaction in knowing, loving and being loved by God and one another under His fatherly rule and authority (Genesis 1:26) (Psalm 65:4).

Only a holy God would exercise His rule and authority in a manner that promotes human flourishing and our individual happiness in Him, and lovingly warns men and women of the severe, but just consequences for opposing that authority (Genesis 1:31) (Genesis 2:16-17).

Only a holy God could have established a means of displaying the richness of His mercy and the abundance of His grace in justly forgiving and restoring to right relationship with Himself those who would oppose His authority, by taking that punishment upon Himself (1 Peter 2:24) (2 Corinthians 5:21) (Ephesians 2:4-10).

And thus, it is only those who come to know and embrace this holy God, as He has revealed Himself in the person and work of Jesus Christ, who can truly know that He Gets Us, but more importantly that We Get Him (John 6:68-69).

I invite you to join in praise and adoration of our Holy God through this link, Only A Holy God

Grace and Peace ×