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In Isaiah 6 we read about Isaiah seeing the Lord (Isa 6:1-7). According to Isaiah, the defining characteristic of God in this event was "holy, holy, holy." That is, not merely "holy" and not even just "holy, holy," but three times "holy." It's a Hebraism that expresses our "-er" and "-est" suffixes, as if it was "holy, holier, holiest." It's like underlining and bold print and italics all at once. He's really, really, really holy. But ... just what is this thing called "holy"?

The Hebrew word is qâdôsh. We translate it to "holy," and rightly so, but the minute we do we start the removal process. What do we mean by "holy"? We mean "sacred" or "specified for religious purposes" or "saintly." Well, now, I'm not sure any of those quite work here. So perhaps "consecrated" would work better. "Consecrate" means "to set apart." And, in fact, in its basic definition, qâdôsh means "set apart; other." We think of "saintly" as "other than sin" and "specified for religious purposes" as "other than secular" and "sacred" as "set apart for God," so perhaps you get the idea. The basic concept of the Hebrew "holy" is "other." In that, God is "Other, other, other" -- "other" to the highest degree. He is not us.

It should come as a surprise, then, to hear of the doctrine of adoption. We, who are not God (because He is OTHER) but merely made by God, are redeemed (paid for; ransomed) by God's Son "so that we might receive adoption as sons" (Gal 4:4-5). God sent His Son to die on our behalf so that He could save us, sure, but, much, much more, that He could adopt us. If you belong to Him, "you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God" (Gal 4:7). We were predestined for adoption through Jesus Christ (Eph 1:5). We received the "Spirit of adoption" (Rom 8:15). In that Spirit, we cry, "Abba, Father."

The Holiness of God is a central aspect of God that encompasses all of His attributes. With that in view, the magnitude of His adoption of sinful humans becomes bigger than we could imagine. We are being conformed to the image of His Son so the He might be the firstborn among many brothers (Rom 8:29) ... us! We can have peace with God (Rom 5:1), but far beyond that we can be God's children, joint heirs with Christ, welcome in the arms of our Heavenly Father. We -- dead sinners, hostile to God, but raised now to newness of life -- can be related to ... the Holy God.