Other Holiness

But as He who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, because it is written, “Be holy, for I am holy.”

I Peter 1:15-16 NKJV

One of my seminary professors once described holiness simply as  “other,” meaning that if you took the sum total of all your past experiences and drew a circle around them… Holiness would be in an entirely separate circle. Except for a few very rare, precious instances throughout all of human history… Nothing we have ever touched has touched holy. Holiness is in a different category all its own. My professor went on to say that even though sometimes we think we catch glimpses of holy… they are only shadows of the real thing, and not holiness itself.

So what can Peter possibly mean when he calls us to be holy as God is holy? This verse used to plague me because I thought of holy as “perfect.” Which of course it is, but holiness is so much more than that. It means to be sacred, set apart, consecrated… Other. Even though we are as common as it gets… God calls us to behave as if we are not. When we forgive the unforgivable, or love the unlovable… The people around us recognize our behavior as “other:” not natural. Not of ourselves. In this way, we honor our holy Redeemer by ushering in His coming kingdom through our other-worldly conduct.

Hannah