What Does It Mean to Be Holy? (Be Holy, for I Am Holy)

Hebrews 12:14 says, “Pursue peace with all people, and holiness, without which no one will see the Lord.”

So what does it mean to be holy?

To be holy means to be set apart for God. The moment you’re saved, God declares you holy because of what Jesus did on the cross. Then He calls you to live in a way that matches that position. And holiness isn’t an end in itself. It’s the doorway into intimacy with God.

Say that word out loud: holiness. Did you cringe a little? Most of us do.

We rarely hear holiness talked about in the American church today. Yet it’s a major subject in the New Testament. And the word “pursue” in Hebrews 12:14 means to chase after with the intent to catch.

What does it mean to be holy?

The New Testament describes two sides of holiness. The first is positional: what God has already done for you in Christ. The second is behavioral: how you live. Before we look at each one, it helps to see why holiness matters so much.

Why holiness matters so much

Isaiah and the apostle John both saw the throne of God. Around it, massive beings called seraphim cry out to one another, “Holy, holy, holy” (Isaiah 6:3; Revelation 4:8). Their cry is so powerful that the doorposts of the throne room shake.

Notice what they’re not crying. They aren’t crying, “Love, love, love.” Is God love? Absolutely. He doesn’t just have love; He is love. They aren’t crying, “Faithful, faithful, faithful.” Is He faithful? You’d better believe it. But the characteristic of God that Scripture emphasizes above all is His holiness.

Now look at the church Jesus is coming back for. Scripture doesn’t describe it as relevant, well-led, or well-connected. Those things are important. We won’t reach people if we’re not relevant, and we won’t accomplish much without leadership. But the one description of the church Jesus returns for is this: a glorious church “not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and without blemish” (Ephesians 5:27).

The primary description of God is holy. The only description of the church He’s returning for is holy. That’s why the enemy works so hard to keep us from understanding it.

Why we stopped talking about holiness

Put yourself in the enemy’s shoes for a moment. He’s read the New Testament more times than you have. He knows God is holy, and he knows Jesus is coming back for a holy bride. So what would you do?

First, he raised up mean-spirited preachers who didn’t even like people. They beat believers up with a legalistic view of holiness and made it an end in itself.

There’s a Chinese proverb that says a cat scalded by boiling water will fear even cool water. Pour boiling water on a cat, and afterward it will run from the cool water that could give it life. That’s what happened to many of us. Mention holiness, and people say, “I’ve been scalded by that. I don’t want to hear it.”

Then came the opposite error. Some teachers said, “Don’t worry about holiness. Jesus is your holiness. You don’t have to think about how you live.” They took the two sides of holiness the New Testament describes and lumped them together.

Positional holiness: what God has already done

The first side is our position. Paul writes that God “chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him” (Ephesians 1:4).

The moment you were saved, God declared you holy because of what Jesus did on the cross. And you will never be more holy, positionally, than you were the day you were saved.

Think about marriage. The day Lisa married me, she became my wife. She isn’t more my wife today, decades later, than she was on our wedding day. That’s her position with me, and it always will be.

“Be holy, for I am holy”: living out your position

The second side is our behavior.

Before I married Lisa, I flirted with girls, got their phone numbers, and dated. After we married, I stopped. I didn’t start avoiding women; I work alongside them all the time, and there are more women than men on our ministry team. But my behavior changed to match the position I held as her husband.

Peter says the same about our relationship with God: “As obedient children, not conforming yourselves to the former lusts, as in your ignorance; but as He who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, because it is written, ‘Be holy, for I am holy'” (1 Peter 1:14–16).

In all your conduct. Peter isn’t talking about our position here. He’s talking about how we live.

The same is true in Hebrews 12:14. You can’t pursue something you already have, so “pursue holiness” can’t refer to our position. It’s about our behavior.

Holiness means living by God’s standard of good

This raises a question: whose standard do we live by? Many people assume that if something seems good, it must be of God. But good and God aren’t the same.

Years ago, praying in a hotel room in Stockholm before a conference, I judged a certain situation to be good. The Holy Spirit firmly told me it wasn’t, and I argued with Him. “But look at all the good that’s come out of it,” I said. He answered, “Son, it wasn’t the evil side of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil that Eve was attracted to. It was the good side.”

I turned to Genesis 3:6 and read it: “The woman saw that the tree was good for food.” Then the Lord said, “There is a good that will lead people away from Me.”

Solomon warned, “There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death” (Proverbs 14:12). That’s why God’s written Word is our reference point for what is truly good. “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness” (2 Timothy 3:16).

Our hearts are like gas detectors in a chemical plant. Manufacturers recommend recalibrating them daily, because the air in the plant gradually corrupts their sensors. We live in a corrupt atmosphere too. Coming back to God’s Word every day recalibrates our hearts, so we can recognize what’s truly good.

How to be holy: grace is God’s empowerment

Right after “pursue holiness,” Hebrews adds, “looking carefully lest anyone fall short of the grace of God” (Hebrews 12:15).

Fall short of grace? The way grace is often taught today, that would sound impossible. So maybe we haven’t understood grace fully.

A nationwide survey once asked thousands of Christians to describe the grace of God. Most said it was salvation, a free and unearned gift, the forgiveness of sins, and God’s love. All of that is true. We are saved by grace alone, and we could never earn it. But only a tiny fraction described grace as God’s empowerment.

Yet that’s exactly how God describes His grace. He told Paul, “My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9). And Peter writes, “Grace and peace be multiplied to you… as His divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness” (2 Peter 1:2–3).

Grace is God’s divine influence on the heart, and it shows up in the way we live. When Barnabas visited the church in Antioch, Scripture says he “saw the grace of God” (Acts 11:23). He didn’t just hear about it. He saw it reflected in their lives.

How grace set me free

When Lisa and I married, I was bound to pornography. I thought marrying a beautiful woman would fix it. It didn’t. I went into ministry still bound. Why? Because I was trying to get free in my own strength.

Then I discovered that God’s grace isn’t only forgiveness. It’s His power, giving me the ability I didn’t have on my own. I got free on May 6, 1985, and I’ve been free ever since. (I’ve shared more of that story in Why I Just Couldn’t Get Free.)

Don’t fall short of the grace you’ve been given

Suppose I gave you a car and said, “It’s yours.” If all you ever did was sit in it, play the stereo, and run the air conditioning, you’d have fallen short of my gift. That’s what it means to fall short of God’s grace: to have it, but never use the power it gives.

Hebrews continues, “Let us have grace, by which we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear” (Hebrews 12:28). Grace is what enables holy living.

If you try to live a godly life in your own ability, one of two things happens. You become a hypocritical legalist, or you swing the other way and decide grace covers everything, so how you live doesn’t matter. But when you understand that grace is God’s empowerment, holiness is no longer about your ability.

We receive this grace the same way we receive everything from God: by faith. “Through whom also we have access by faith into this grace in which we stand” (Romans 5:2).

Remember the disciples straining at their oars all night against the wind? When Jesus got into the boat, they were immediately at the other side (John 6:16–21). You may be doing what God told you to do and still be straining. Cry out to Him. Let grace get in your boat.

“Without holiness no one will see the Lord”

Now back to the end of Hebrews 12:14: “without which no one will see the Lord.”

What does that mean? Scripture says every eye will see Him when He returns, and every knee will bow. So it can’t simply mean that unholy people will never lay eyes on Him.

Think of it this way. As an American, I’ve lived under many presidents. Their decisions have affected my life. But I’ve never been in the presence of one. Other Americans work with the president every day. They know him personally.

Many Christians are under Jesus’ rule. His decisions affect their lives. But they aren’t experiencing His presence. They don’t know Him intimately.

Jesus Himself explains: “He who has My commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves Me. And he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and manifest Myself to him” (John 14:21). Manifest means to make Himself clearly seen and real.

So holiness isn’t an end in itself. Holiness is the doorway into intimacy with God. And every true Christian’s deepest cry is to know Him intimately.

Imagine me walking up to Lisa, holding our marriage certificate, and saying, “See? We’re legally married,” while sleeping with other women. I might technically still be married. But she would never share the secrets, desires, and intentions of her heart with me. I’d have cut myself off from intimacy with her.

James says the same to believers: “Adulterers and adulteresses! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God?” (James 4:4).

Why have I never been unfaithful to Lisa? First, I fear God. But the deepest reason is that I never want to lose the intimacy I have with that amazing woman. That’s the heart of holiness, too.

Give God your whole heart

Would you marry someone who said, “I love you more than anyone else, but I still want to see other people on the side”? Of course not. She hasn’t given you her whole heart.

Then what makes us think Jesus is coming back for a bride like that? He’s coming for a bride who has given herself completely to Him, the way He gave Himself completely for us. That’s why Jesus said, “If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me” (Matthew 16:24).

You can know all about Jesus, attend church, and belong to a small group, and still not have given Him your whole heart. If that’s you, or if you’ve given Him your life but haven’t been pursuing holiness, pray this:

Father, thank You for loving me so much that You sent Jesus when I deserved to die. I give You my spirit, soul, and body, everything I am and everything I have. Jesus, You are my Lord and my King. Thank You for the grace that saved me. Now I come boldly to Your throne of grace and ask for the grace that empowers me to walk free from sin and pursue holiness, so that the way I live reflects who You say I am. In Jesus’ name, amen.

“Draw near to God and He will draw near to you” (James 4:8). He’s waiting to meet you.

Frequently asked questions

Scripture quotations are from the New King James Version (NKJV).

Go deeper

• Watch the full message: Pursuing Holiness
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