Thoughts on Holiness...

God is a Holy Being.  In Leviticus 19:2 He says:
²Speak unto all the congregation of the children of Israel, and say unto them, Ye shall be holy: for I the LORD your God am holy.
Peter paraphrases this verse in 1 Peter 1:16:
¹⁶Because it is written, Be ye holy; for I am holy.

According to the dictionary holy means "exalted or worthy of complete devotion as one perfect in goodness and righteousness."  Holy is something set apart in it's perfection.  If God is a holy and a divine being, he cannot tolerate sin.  As Socractes said, It may be that Deity can forgive sins, but I don't see how. 

So where does that leave sinful man?  We can not change our sin nature.  It is born into us as genetic defect.  According to the dictionary, the word sin comes from a Latin root that means "guilty."  The definition that best fits sin as it relates to a holy God is this:  "a vitiated state of human nature in which the self is estranged from God."
I had to look up "vitiate" which means to make faulty or defective.  It also means to debase in moral or aesthetic status.  Therefore the definition of sin could be stated as a debased or defected state of human nature in which a person's innermost being is separated from God.    In other words we suffer from a defected state where we were made faulty by Adam. 
Separated from God?  Made faulty and debased from the start?  What can we do?  Fortunately The Lord had a plan.  He prophecied this in the Garden of Eden:

¹⁴And the LORD God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life:  ¹⁵And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.   Genesis 3:14-15.

This prophecy was of a virgin birth, the crushing of sin, and the death and resurrection of a savior.  This was fufilled in the most beautiful passage of Scripture - John 3:16 where it says:

For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believe on him, should not perish, but have everlasting life.

It boggles the mind that God "gave" so that I might have life. 

Msf :)