Holiness for Tainted Souls

"The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom: and the knowledge of the holy is understanding" (Proverbs 9:10)

We come into the presence of God with tainted souls. We come with our own concept of morality, having learned it from books, from the newspaper and from school. We come to God dirty - and do nothing about it!

If we came to God dirty, but trembling and shocked and awestruck in His presence, if we knelt at His feet and cried with Isaiah, "I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips" (Isaiah 6:5), then I could understanding. But we skip into His awful presence. We're dirty, but we have a book called "Seven Steps to Salvation" that gives us seven verses to get us out of our problems. And each year we have more Christians, more people going to church, more church buildings, more money - and less spirituality and less holiness. We're forgetting "holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord" (Hebrews 12:14). I tell you this: I want God to be what God is: the impeccably holy, unapproachable Holy Thing, the All-Holy One. I want Him to be and remain The Holy.

Lay aside the garments that are tainted with sin
And we washed in the blood of the Lamb;
There's a fountain flowing for the soul unclean;
Oh, be washed in the blood of the Lamb.

~A. W. Tozer~