Be Holy...

I read Leviticus today (it was assigned for class), and I have to say that if one thing pops out about that book, it is the holiness of God. Through and through we are reminded that God is holy and requires holiness of His people. Here is what's interesting to me. It seems to me that God requires holiness of His people so that they may fellowship with Him. He reminds them that He is their God, and they are His people. God takes great delight in His people, and wants His people to love and glorify Him. If God had no desire to be in relationship with His people, He would not command holiness from them. He would have nothing to say to them. He would require nothing of them. He would simply leave them to their destructive selves. But that is not the God of the Bible. The God of the Bible loves and pursues. And the kind of relationship that God desires is a perfect relationship, a relationship untainted by any sin or defect. The problem is that we are sinful, and He is holy, and those things cannot mix, for sin would corrupt the Holy. Knowing that we cannot be holy on our own right, God provides means of atonement, that we may be united to Him. In those times, it was through a sacrificial system. Now we have union with God through the perfect atoning work of Jesus. Does it not seem a little incredible that a perfectly holy God would want relationship with prideful, insignificant people that have continuously rebelled against Him, and would even desire this relationship to the point of becoming like them and dying by their hand so that they may become holy like Him? We have a very good and holy God, who has done all the work, that we may be holy, that we may overcome sin and death, that we may know Him.