Isaiah 6:1-13

English Standard Version Chapter 6

Isaiah’s Vision of the Lord

6 In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and the train of his robe filled the temple. 2 Above him stood the seraphim. Each had six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. 3 And one called to another and said:

“Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts;

the whole earth is full of his glory!”

4 And the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him who called, and the house was filled with smoke. 5 And I said: “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!”

6 Then one of the seraphim flew to me, having in his hand a burning coal that he had taken with tongs from the altar. 7 And he touched my mouth and said: “Behold, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away, and your sin atoned for.”

Isaiah’s Commission from the Lord

8 And I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” Then I said, “Here I am! Send me.” 9 And he said, “Go, and say to this people:

“ ‘Keep on hearing, but do not understand;

keep on seeing, but do not perceive.’

10  Make the heart of this people dull,

and their ears heavy,

and blind their eyes;

lest they see with their eyes,

and hear with their ears,

and understand with their hearts,

and turn and be healed.”

11  Then I said, “How long, O Lord?”

And he said:

“Until cities lie waste

without inhabitant,

and houses without people,

and the land is a desolate waste,

12  and the LORD removes people far away,

and the forsaken places are many in the midst of the land.

13  And though a tenth remain in it,

it will be burned again,

like a terebinth or an oak,

whose stump remains

when it is felled.”

The holy seed is its stump.

Uzziah - a good king, a prosperous kingdom

King Uzziah’s reign is documented in both 2 Kings 15:1-7, and in 2 Chronicles 26 and both Historians report that for the most part, Uzziah was a good king.

He restored the port of Eloth from the Edomites, which was a port on the Gulf of Aqaba, a vital port that gave him access to the Red Sea. You understand, don’t you? He was a good King.

He did the things that a wise governor should do, and the LORD blessed Uzziah with military victory. Economic prosperity, and personal fame.

He was a city builder, a city taker. He pushed west into the territory of the Philistines. Took tributes from neighbouring states Ammon and Edom.

Beat up Egyptians and Arabians.

There are even surviving inscriptions from Assyria mentioning how “this and this many districts of Hamath, together with the cities and their surrounding environs, on the shore of the Mediterranean, had gone over to Uzziah, in contempt of Tiglath Pilesar III.”

He reigned 52 years! People lived, worked and died during his reign. As far as the Covenant Historians are concerned, King Uzziah was one of the best. 2 Chronicles 26 also talks about how he made machines (or rather, commissioned inventors to make them) which he employed in the defense of his cities. Which shot arrows and hurled great stones. This is hundreds of years before we typically hear of ballistae and catapults. God blessed Uzziah’s reign over the Kingdom of Judah in such a special way.

But sadly, as is typical in the history of Israel. (Psalm 78, Neh 10, etc.) When things are bad, they grumble against God and blaspheme Him. and when things are good, they forget all about Him! And by the time Isaiah comes around, during the reign of King Uzziah, under his almost unprecedented prosperity, something was rotten in the state of Judah and Israel.

Isaiah 5 sets the scene for Isaiah’s wonderful call to ministry, and it is painful reading. The LORD is grieved. It shares a strong likeness to Genesis 6, where God looked down upon His created earth and saw that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. The text says it grieved the LORD to His heart, and he regretted even making mankind to begin with.

Now God’s grief is being caused by Israel! God’s own chosen people, His beloved children. The people of Judah, in Jerusalem where He himself dwells in David’s temple, the connecting point where He makes His blessings flow, so that the whole world may bear witness to His wisdom, and His beauty - exhibited through His people, who love each other, with a pure heart. Who serve each other, with a clean conscience and who proclaim His Majesty, with a sincere faith.

Six woes against the people of Judah

“Woe.” Says Isaiah. (Isaiah 5:8) These people. They join house to house and field to field. And buy, and buy, and expand their portfolios. Buying people’s homes! and then their neighbours’ home, and then their neighbour’s home. Becoming wealthy by dehumanizing their brothers and sisters, and turning what ought to be their inheritance into your passive income.

It’s greed! Plain and simple. During the day, they work in the field making money for the master, then at night they go home and make money for the master, in rents, and overpriced repairs, and withheld bonds.

For their greed, God says their houses will be made desolate, all their tenants will disappear, killed in battle or carted off to Babylon, there’ll be no one to work their fields there’ll be no one to pay their rents.

“Woe.” Says Isaiah (Isaiah 5:11) These people. They feast, and drink and eat, and enjoy the music of the lyre and harp. But they don’t regard the deeds of the LORD. Or see the works of His hands.

Ephesians 5:15 says to God’s people not to be foolish, but seek to understand the LORD’s will! Not to be drunk on wine, but filled with the Spirit. Music speaks to our souls! It’s to be used to encourage one another, to thank the LORD by making melody to Him.

Instead we push Him away. We keep the food! Of course! We keep the abundance! We keep the music! But we use them for our own pleasures, in service to our own desires. Well, God says that Death is loosening the top button of his pants, because he is planning to have a feast of his own. Everyone in Judah is going to die, Hell is going to feast on the inhabitants of Jerusalem.

It goes on, and on, and on. “Woe” These people! They are wise in their own eyes.

“Woe!” These people who call evil good and good evil. Those who justify sin, basically. Whether from a simple “Yeah, but..” or a whole, thought out and planned excuse. Sin is sin! It ought to be confessed! and turned from! Not explained! Like God doesn’t know your reasoning, like He can’t see every cog in your dark soul. Though your sins are like scarlet! They will be as white as snow! If you turn! If you turn!

“Woe, woe, woe, woe, woe, woe!” Six times in Isaiah 5, Isaiah declares shame and outrage against Judah, against God’s own covenant people. Remember? Out of Egypt, God calls His own beloved son! God redeemed them out of bondage to be His special treasured possession, His kingdom of priests! His holy nation! It says in Exodus 19. Blind, and willfully blind. Unclean in their hearts, and for their sin, God is preparing an unstoppable army. In Isaiah 5:26-30. God will whistle, and the armies will come like dogs. The soldiers don’t sleep, they don’t slumber, their arrows are sharp and their appetite for destruction is insatiable. This isn’t a threat! This isn’t a warning, like the one Jonah brought to Nineveh. The time for warnings is long passed. This is a promise. God’s treasured vineyard has grown bitter fruit, and now God is raising up the armies of Tiglath Pilesar III, King of Assyria, in the case of the Northern Kingdom. And for Judah, King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon. The wheels are already in motion, and will not be stopped.

King Uzziah - He is a leper

And as for King Uzziah himself, it would have been merciful of God to destroy him outright for his pride. Instead, what happened to him was arguably a fate worse than death. 2 Chronicles 26:16-23 records his downfall. Citybuilder, City-taker, Tony Stark, Archimedes.

His reign was undisputed politically. He grew so strong that his vassals even risked the wrath of Tiglath Pilesar III just to be a his ally.

But there was something more that he sought - religious authority. Seeking to become a priest-king like his chief political rivals, King Uzziah entered the temple of the LORD and forcing his way through the priests, and burnt incense to the LORD. It was a grasp for religious power over his subjects, that his rule over Judah would be absolute. That he would be high and lifted up!

In that moment, when he transgressed that boundary, the LORD struck him down with leprosy. Or some sort of disfiguring disease that marred his face. Well, after that it was all finished. He was made unclean, and was cut off from the house of the LORD.

In Israel, the lepers were pushed far to the very fringes of society, and then a little further. They had to yell out, “TAME!” as people passed, to warn them, “I am unclean! and if you come any closer to me, you will be unclean too!” It’s no life.

It’s exclusion from any sort of religious life, or civic life, any participation in the true religion. To rule as King over God’s covenant people? It’s out of the question, “TAME!” Unclean. He disappeared from public life, eventually died, and written on his gravestone was, “He is a leper.”

I wonder if you have ever thought about what you would like written on your gravestone. Or how you would like to be spoken of, once you’re gone. Leprosy is such a disgusting, heartbreaking, deforming affliction. Of course, we know that it is not sinful to suffer from leprosy, but at the very core of our experience it ruins our peace like a scream in the depths of our soul. It’s not how people made in the image of God are supposed to look and it revolts us to our core. We look at the leper and we are filled with disgust, and pity. And we dread the thought of it being passed on to us. It’s a picture of sin. It’s what sin does to us. It makes us unclean, and wretched with an inescapable wretchedness that undermines even our greatest achievements, our kindest moments, and not even physical death can cure. Remember great King Uzziah’s grave said “He is a leper.” and not “He was a leper.”

(Update: As the city expanded during the period of the Roman occupation. Apparently His bones were moved, and a new marker was added which said, “Do not open.”)

The Holiness of the LORD

Now, it was in the year that King Uzziah died. The year when his disfigured, marred corpse was placed in the tomb that read “He is a leper.” that Isaiah received his call to prophetic ministry from the LORD. He sees a vision from God.

English Standard Version Chapter 6

saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and the train of his robe filled the temple. 2 Above him stood the seraphim. Each had six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. 3 And one called to another and said:

“Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts;

the whole earth is full of his glory!”

4 And the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him who called, and the house was filled with smoke.

Isaiah was transported - in the spirit - to the very throne room of the True and Living God. Not the earthly temple, not the place down here. Not the place where corrupt officials lie and scam and cheat, and use uneven scales at the currency exchange to fleece pilgrims and tourists. And the candles and the censers are lit by men with dirty hands, and sinful hearts. Not that temple, that earthly replica, that representation. Isaiah is shown a vision of the glory of God simply as He is - in ultimate reality.

Textually, the song of the seraphim reveals to us the crux of Isaiah’s vision. I think it’s in R.C. Sproul’s video series on the holiness of God that he says this: “In Hebrew, when you want to say that something is holy, you say, “Holy.” and when you want to say that something is very holy, you might say, “Holy, Holy.” (Remember Jesus does this often, he says “Truly, Truly, I say to you..”) But when you want to say that something is very, very, very, very holy. You say “Holy! Holy! Holy!” What Isaiah is seeing, and what we are reading is a vision of God’s holiness. His complete majesty. His perfect untouchable goodness, unbroken authority and power. Incorruptible! Not like Uzziah, who was corruptible, “This is Yahweh of Hosts! and the whole earth is full of His glory!”

God’s glory is a Person

Imagine, for a moment you are playing Pictionary, or Charades. And it’s your turn. And you pick up the card and it reads perfect untouchable goodness unbroken authority and power. And your partner gives you a whiteboard marker, and flips over the little 2 minute sand-timer, aaand.. What do you draw? What vision can convey such a proposition?

Only a person. Not a power or a force, not a mighty act, but the person of God! A rational, volitional, emotional, ethical, person. In John 12:41 The Apostle says that the glory which Isaiah is looking at, is the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ Himself, the 2nd Person of the Trinity. This is the glory of Christ! The glory which He had with the Father before the world existed. The glory which He lay aside when He took on flesh, and became the Servant. We know Him! We recognize Him! Those are His arms the ones that took the nails, filling out that robe, whose train fills the temple.

This is the reality! Isaiah recognizes the brilliance of the person of the LORD. And He recognizes, and remembers all the whole point of Jerusalem! The Temple Complex, the Torah, The Institutes of the Covenant. (What we would call the Old Covenant) They weren’t instituted for God’s benefit! (They were instituted for His glory, yes!) But they didn’t add a single mote of majesty to His Person. The laws, and the sacrifices, and the blood, and the curtain which only one man may pass through, they were all put in place to allow a holy, holy, holy God and sinful, unclean, leprous man to co-inhabit. To live together without suffering His wrath. As Amos says, “Seek the LORD and live, lest he break out like a fire in the house of Joseph, and devour, with no one to quench it! O you who turn justice into bitter fruit.” (Amos 5:6) For who can behold the face of God and live?

Isaiah before God - He is a leper

And Isaiah is done. Six times in the previous chapter, he declared “woe.” The LORD sees everything from His throne, every sin. Every lie, Every selfish thought and dead, every missed opportunity. God is light and in Him is no darkness at all. There was nowhere left for Isaiah to hide his sin, no excuse he could make, because he was standing before the inescapable gaze of God who sits on the eternal throne. What can Isaiah do? What can Isaiah say? “TAME!” “TAME!” Unclean.

The seventh woe, he calls down for judgement on himself. He’s caught! In seeing God as He truly is, the source and standard of right and wrong, he now sees himself as he truly is. Unclean, and wretched with an inescapable wretchedness that undermines even his greatest achievements, his kindest moments, and not even physical death will separate him from it. “Woe is me, I am undone! for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, Yahweh of hosts.” Isaiah, leprous Uzziah, and all the people of Israel and Judah, “Tame.” Unclean.

If you have never in your mind considered God’s holiness. And compared your life to His divine standard, I beg you to do it now. Stop comparing yourself to your neighbours. Stop comparing yourself to the murderers and drug addicts you see on TV. You’ll always walk away feeling confident in yourself, your sin ignored, undealt with. It doesn’t matter if you’ve been a sinner, or if you’ve been part of the Church community for years. There is no shame in coming to repentance late in life, outing yourself as a hypocrite. Only Godly guilt which leads to redemption, and transformation in the love of Christ.

For God never leaves a repentant sinner alone. What the does God delight in? Asks the Psalmist in Psalm 51:17, a broken and contrite heart. Not the Pharisee at the front of the congregation, “THANK GOD THAT I AM NOT LIKE THESE OTHER SO-AND-SOs” but the tax-collector who can’t even look up. Like the humble servants of God, the angels he hides his face, and beats his chest and begs, “Have mercy of me, a sinner!” If you humble yourself, God will never abandon you to judgement.

See immediately in Isaiah 6:6, “Then one of the seraphim flew to me, having in his hand a burning coal that he had taken with tongs from the altar. And he touched my mouth and said, “Behold, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for.” Could you imagine the relief that would have swept through Isaiah’s being? There he goes from complete disintegration, to restoration. From knowing that he was doomed to judgement and Sheol (Hell) for dirtying the name of the LORD, to being forgiven, knowing that the King who sits on the throne has made atonement and taken away his guilt.

Rewired, Redeemed, Called, Commissioned.

The text barely allows us any time to stop and process. Verse 5. He repents, Verse 7. He is redeemed, Verse 8. He is commissioned and sent out to preach to the people.

English Standard Version Chapter 6

“ ‘Keep on hearing, but do not understand;

keep on seeing, but do not perceive.’

10  Make the heart of this people dull,

and their ears heavy,

and blind their eyes;

lest they see with their eyes,

and hear with their ears,

and understand with their hearts,

and turn and be healed.”

What? God is giving Isaiah a message of judgement. He is to take the word forth and tell the people of Judah the gospel. The LORD of Hosts reigns supreme! Turn from your sin and be healed! You who ally yourselves to the old serpent. He’s a deceiver and your alliance with him is making you “Tame!” unclean, and wretched with an inescapable wretchedness that undermines even your greatest achievements, and your kindest moments, and not even physical death will spare you from sharing in his eternal defeat. Remember God has promised a seed! A seed of the woman, a Lion from the tribe of Judah, a Prophet like Moses, a perfect spotless lamb without blemish, a righteous King from the line of David! He’s a person and I’ve seen Him! He is perfect untouchable goodness unbroken authority and power! His heart is so sweet that his every breath is Torah and will restore your soul!

But as is so often the case, the good news of Jesus Christ only serves to harden. It hardened Cain, when the LORD spoke to him regarding his inadequate offering in Genesis 4. In Jesus Christ’s earthly ministry too! Jesus healed Lazarus as he lay tame in his grave. He rose to new life, half of the people who witnessed it believed in Christ, half of them went and plotted to kill Him.

How long, O Lord?” Isaiah asks in verse 11.

English Standard Version Chapter 6

And he said:

“Until cities lie waste

without inhabitant,

and houses without people,

and the land is a desolate waste,

12  and the LORD removes people far away,

and the forsaken places are many in the midst of the land.

13  And though a tenth remain in it,

it will be burned again,

like a terebinth or an oak,

whose stump remains

when it is felled.”

The holy seed is its stump.

In Isaiah 5, God vowed to destroy the vineyard He planted in Israel. You will be holy, because I am Holy! He says as he constituted them. But instead of holiness, uncleanness. Instead of poorness of spirit, pride and blasphemy. And now already wheels are turning that will lead to the nation of Israel’s final destruction. Cities destroyed, her people carried away into the unclean lands. Reduced to a tenth of it’s population. And then burned again. A tenth of a tenth, until all that is left of the great tree of Israel is a stump.

But, says God. That stump is the holy seed. That tenth-of-a-tenth, that one. The unclean nation will be destroyed, obliterated, to the point where it is unrecognizable. To the point where just like leprous King Uzziah, it’s face will bear proper witness to its inner spiritual life. Dead. But in that death in that desolation, the tenth of a tenth, will be God’s people. God’s spiritual army, of redeemed, cleansed, purified, commissioned people. The seed of the woman, Eve’s spiritual children who like her, share a hatred of sin and a love for God’s holy righteous ways.

Tensions within Isaiah 6

As Christians we are said to carry treasure in jars of clay. Our bodies are weak, our vision is short. But in our hearts, and as the Church of Christ we carry the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. (Says Paul in 2 Corinthians 4:6) And nowhere is that knowledge of God a more glorious comfort and encouragement than in how we relate to, and exalt in, the seeming paradox of God’s Sovereignty and Human Sin. Because that’s the great tension in the text, isn’t it? God’s on the throne, his train fills the temple! So what? What does that mean to us when it’s New Years’ Weekend, and some idiot can just get into his car, drunk, and take someone’s life? Or we, in a small unguarded moment of weakness, can destroy our own family, or our own career?

Our sin pollutes this world, just as the sin of Jerusalem polluted Isaiah’s.

How can the seraphim hide their faces in humble adoration, and call out to one another, “The whole earth is full of His glory!” When the whole earth is in fact in allegiance with Satan. And God’s chosen nation, His treasured possession is the worst of the lot. On King Uzziah’s grave was written “He is a leper.” and although the people of Israel didn’t have leprosy, it would have been just as fitting to erect over the ruins of Jerusalem, “Here lie the people of Zion, they are lepers.”

How can God be on the throne in holy majesty when men are so depraved, that His own Holy Scriptures can not wake them up from their depravity? But on the contrary - only serve to cement them in their spiritual blindness.

And most paradoxical of all is this: How can such a great, rotten, corrupt, tree, like the nation of Israel - be chopped down, be laid siege to, be mutilated by sword, and famine, and burned again, and still produce the fruit of holiness?

How can any remnant from such a nation as this, ever be called holy?

The treasure we keep

Well there’s no such things as paradox, that’s not how this universe operates. The answer, of course, is in Christ. The tension is resolved in the supreme Lordship of our Christ Jesus and His atoning work on the cross where He bore the sins of the world on His shoulders. The disciple John in John 12:41 identified the one sitting high and exalted on the throne as the one Lord and God, Jesus Christ. For context. Jesus is on the eve of His death. He’s been walking, and teaching, and healing, and bringing in the Kingdom of God, all the while walking south towards Jerusalem, where he knows, the plan for the ages, the will of God His Father, is to die as a sacrifice for sin. He’s walking to His death. And tonight, in John 12:20-43, some visitors wanted to speak with him. Jesus says to the assembled crowd,

English Standard Version Chapter 12

The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.

English Standard Version Chapter 12

27 “Now is my soul troubled. And what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? But for this purpose I have come to this hour. 28 Father, glorify your name.” Then a voice came from heaven: “I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.” 29 The crowd that stood there and heard it said that it had thundered. Others said, “An angel has spoken to him.” 30 Jesus answered, “This voice has come for your sake, not mine. 31 Now is the judgment of this world; now will the ruler of this world be cast out. 32 And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.”

Christ is the King who sits on the throne in glory. When the time was right, according to God’s eternal plan. God the Son, put aside the glory which He had with the Father and took on all the weakness, all the infirmity of humankind. He put on flesh, and entered into this Isaiah 5 world, this sinful, unclean, leprous world. Where Adam failed, Where Israel failed, Christ was victorious. In times of poverty, Christ never grumbled against the LORD, in times of prosperity, Jesus never once forgot about God the Father of Lights. He never abused man, never turned him into a commodity, never tarnished the Image of God in Himself or anyone He spoke to. His lips were clean, His whole being radiated inexhaustible ethical volitional, relational cleanliness.

And when He was lifted up, nailed to a cross. In Jesus’ own words, “When He is glorified.” He drew all people to himself. People who are unclean, and cursed. The sinners within the nation of Israel, who were unclean in their sin. Jesus Christ bore their sin, and in doing so became unclean for them, redeeming them from their debt and washing away their uncleanness. Isaiah later goes on to say in his sublime 52nd and 53rd chapters,

English Standard Version Chapter 52

13  Behold, my servant shall act wisely;

he shall be high and lifted up,

and shall be exalted.

The Suffering Servant of the later part of Isaiah, is lifted up and glorified. Jesus would add, “lifted up on a cross.”

English Standard Version Chapter 52

14  As many were astonished at you—

his appearance was so marred, beyond human semblance,

and his form beyond that of the children of mankind—

Just as King Uzziah’s face was struck with leprosy, The King Jesus Christ is struck (not for His own sin, He had none! For the sin and pride of man!) and His face is marred and deformed from the violence and malice inflicted upon Him. God made Him the most despised, despicable vermin who ever lived, for those hours on the cross when he bore the Father’s wrath. “TAME!” Unclean. A worm. Cut off from the living. They made the Lord Jesus Christ’s grave with the wicked. “He is a Leper!” “Do not touch!”

The sinfulness of man and the Sovereign majesty of God in perfect blood-red harmony. Jesus Christ was despised and rejected by men (Isaiah 53:2), the herald of the Year of the LORD’s Favour! And all the while, him teaching, him weeping over the dead body of his loved ones. Him showing compassion beyond compare. His own people were plotting to kill Him, or pretending to be disciples - asking Him questions in the sick hope that He’d say something wrong and get Himself killed by the Romans, or the mob.

In His throne-room it was the seraphim who hid their faces from Christ’s glory, now it’s everyone. Jesus is beaten and bloodied so bad, bearing our sicknesses and our sorrows, now it’s us who can’t bear to look at his deformed face. But see now why Christ so willingly walked all those miles from Capernaum to Jerusalem, and then that awful path from Jerusalem to Calvary. It was to do His Father’s will! To walk every step of the via dolorosa with satisfaction! Because He knows (See Isaiah 53:11) that by His untouchable personal holiness, he will make many to be accounted righteous! No matter how unclean the tree, no matter how badly afflicted, or torn down, or condemned, If your faith is Him who is Holy, Holy Holy, then your sin is forgiven! You are counted righteous and sanctified in the Spirit - a holy stump! In Him! Not by your own effort! But by grace, through faith in what He has accomplished.

This is the solution to the paradox within Isaiah 6. How can the angels sing that the whole earth is full of God’s glory, when the whole earth is so marred by sin?

God’s glory is the glory of Christ! God’s glory is Christ! The One who lays down His life to save His beloved people from their sin!

The One who bends and dominates history according to His purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to reconcile to God all things in Him. (Ephesians 1:9) Things in heaven and things on earth, making peace by the blood of His cross.

But only if you turn! It’s not enough to declare woe to the landlords, and woe to the abortionists, and woe to the drunk-drivers. If you do not turn from your sin, and declare as Isaiah did, “Woe is me!” Then Isaiah 6 will always remain paradoxical to you, as will the ways of the LORD God Almighty and your place within His universe. You will never recieve peace, and you will be a Mr. Bean in this world (not quite getting it), until your body dies and you learn of God’s holiness in Christ to your own detriment.

The angels later sing a new song in Revelation 5.

“Worthy is the Lamb who was slain,

to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might

and honor and glory and blessing!”

13 And I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea, and all that is in them, saying,

“To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb

be blessing and honor and glory and might forever and ever!”

Christ’s perfect untouchable goodness unbroken authority and power isn’t damaged by human sinfulness - rather it is predicated on it! The LORD Jesus Christ is holy, holy, holy! because He is willing to enter into this unclean world and through the eternal Spirit offer Himself unblemished to God! (Hebrews 9:14) And if you are in Him, (and you are if you believe) then you are His seed! Your sins are washed clean by His blood! Your life is hidden in Christ, And His victory is your victory, and God’s love for Him becomes God’s love for you! And you, beholding the glory of the Lord with unveiled face, will be transformed into His image, from one degree of glory to another. For the Spirit that dwells in you, is the same Spirit which dwells in Him and raised Him up from the grave.

You will be holy! and the world will be set aright. Because He is holy, holy, holy!