agrogersA recurring theme in the bible is that God is light. This is stated explicitly in 1 John 1:5.
I think that light is an excellent illustration for the holiness of God. God is holy. In fact, God is ‘holy, holy, holy‘. This is the only character trait of God in the Bible that is repeated in this way.
Imagine then that the holiness of God is the white light that enters a glass prism. What emerges from the other side is a rainbow of colors. These colors represent God’s love, justice, mercy, wrath, longsuffering, jealousy and so on. Or put differently, the white light is God’s holiness and the colors are God’s holy love, holy justice, holy wrath and so on.
It is common today for this white light to be understood as God’s love. Thus, there is a tendency to misunderstand God’s true character because the ‘holy, holy, holy’ God has been replaced by a God of ‘love, love, love’. This view of God makes it almost impossible to reconcile many of the things God does both in the Old Testament and the New. It is hard to reconcile a God of love drowning every man, woman and child. It is less difficult to imagine a Holy God doing the same. It is hard to reconcile a God of loving killing a husband and wife for lying about how much they donated to the church. But a holy God who detests lying may well execute such justice. There are dozens if not hundreds of examples of this nature.
