The Beauty of Holiness

"Worship the LORD in the beauty of holiness,
fear before Him, all the earth!" -Psalm 96:9

We are a people who are obsessed with beauty.  We (at least we in the US) spend millions each year on things to make us more beautiful, be they clothes or make-up or gyms.  We have entire temples - call them malls if you would like - that are dedicated to the proposition that beauty is something that can be purchased and arranged, if only we have the right things.  Our entertainment is also possessed by an insatiable thirst for beauty.  Stars are ranked on beauty; people watch the arrival of stars to award ceremonies purely for seeing how beautiful they appear.

This obsession with beauty has its dark side, of course.  For every beautiful person, there are many who are not.  Husbands will leave wives and wives husbands because they have found someone more beautiful.  And for those that are beautiful, there is a huge pressure to remain on top of the beauty curve, sometimes leading to destructive behaviors such as anorexia or drug addiction- or even worse.

So what do we make of a comment such as above, where we are commanded to worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness? 

What is the beauty of holiness anyway?  It surely cannot be something physical or corporeal - although we see the workings of such beauty in the world around us.  And it is surely not something which is widely recognized - for if it was, I am sure that our commercial society would find a way to market it.

It must be something beyond our ability to see, although not beyond our ability to comprehend as we are commanded to worship the Lord because of it. 

What is holiness? Ultimately it is the absence of sin.  It is what God is - pure, undefiled, without sin.

Can I imagine someone without sin?  Without a single attitude or action that does not honor God? Who never, ever does anything against the will of God?  Can I imagine myself even for 10 seconds being that way - not just by the absence of sinning (if I stand in a dark room and think nothing, I can do that) but by a total removal of the sin nature?

Imagine a being so pure that, like the beauty of an unspoiled natural setting, our hearts are lifted up simply because of the existence of such a thing.  Imagine the most beautiful natural scene that you have ever seen and how you felt - and then imagine that this existed in a Personality that interacted with you.

This, I think, is the beauty of holiness.

Holiness is not always attractive in our world, of course.  We do not see God on a daily basis - we see His people. And they are not only holy - no, let us personalize it: I am not always holy.  To the extent that I am not is the extent to which I fail to allow God to shine through me.  The extent to which I mar the beauty of holiness with the ugly of sin.  I am - as undoubtedly we all are - a marred imago Dei.  To look at any of us probably serves to not recommend holiness to anyone.

Which is why the psalmist directs us as he does.  Ultimately our hope and our source is not ourselves but rather the God who is perfect in all His ways.  Who is holy.  And Who through His holiness is beautiful, like the beauty of a red-gold sunset or the rugged beauty of the coast or the harsh cry of the hawk flying over the pines.

Worship the LORD in the beauty of holiness,
fear before Him, all the earth.