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What God wants for us is to be made holy.

Hebrews 10:10 NLT

An explanation of a shade of the word ‘holy’ that I received in Bible school has always stuck with me: “Other.” God is holy—therefore, He is “Other.” Nothing on earth is an adequate representation for His holiness. He is completely “Other.”

There seems to be an awful lot of making God out to be “Like” these days instead of “Other.” You’ve heard all the casual terms that make Him seem pretty normal—even hip, relevant, approachable, and trendy—He’s just one of us. It’s easy to do that—to make God into a safe and likeable kind of next door deity.

But He’s so “Other” than that. People who encountered God in Christ—God made flesh—immediately recognized the difference. Fear, confusion, awe, terror—these were all responses—basically saying, “Does not compute!” There was no way to adequately process Him because He was outside the human frame of reference.

The amazing thing from this verse is that it’s His will to transform us into something “Other” as well—something beyond anything we could ever dream of becoming. We can’t even begin to do the transforming ourselves—but He can.

Frankly, the world doesn’t need a God—or followers—that simply fit in. It needs Christians that stand out as being touched and transformed into His likeness.

Beware: there will be head-scratching and dazed looks when this verse overtakes you. But there will be an encounter with the holy. And that’s when we come to the end of ourselves so that the reality of who God truly is can ignite our faith and then light the world.

Matt Anderson
Writer/Editor

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