Holiness of Christ

R. C. Sproul explores the profound purity and moral perfection of Jesus Christ. He emphasizes that Christ’s holiness is central to His identity and mission, contrasting human sinfulness with Christ’s flawless nature. Ash highlights how Christ’s holiness not only reveals God’s character but also calls believers to pursue holiness in their own lives through the transformative power of the Holy Spirit.

The following unedited transcript is provided by Beluga AI.

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This message by R.C. Sproul titled, The Holiness of Christ, is made available to you through Sovereign Grace Ministries. It was recorded during the second general session at our 2007 Leadership Conference. R.C. Sproul is the founder and chairman of Ligonier Ministries and serves as Senior Minister of Preaching and Teaching at St. Andrew’s Chapel in Sanford, Florida. Tonight I’d like to read from the Gospel according to St. Matthew’s account of the transfiguration of Jesus. And it reads as follows, beginning in verse 1 of chapter 17.

1 And after six days Jesus took with him Peter and James, and John his brother, and led them up a high mountain by themselves. 2 And he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became white as light. 3 And behold, there appeared to them Moses and Elijah, talking with him. 4 And Peter said to Jesus, “Lord, it is good that we are here. If you wish, I will make three tents here, one for you and one for Moses and one for Elijah.” 5 He was still speaking when, behold, a bright cloud overshadowed them, and a voice from the cloud said, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him.” 6 When the disciples heard this, they fell on their faces and were terrified. 7 But Jesus came and touched them, saying, “Rise, and have no fear.” 8 And when they lifted up their eyes, they saw no one but Jesus only. 9 And as they were coming down the mountain, Jesus commanded them, “Tell no one the vision, until the Son of Man is raised from the dead.” (Matthew 17:1-9, ESV)

Let’s pray together, shall we? Oh, how we love your Word, O God. We have sought for your power everywhere but in it: in our programs, in our skills, in our rhetoric, everywhere but in your Word. And tonight, as we give our attention once again to that Word, we call upon you for help, that you would stoop to our weakness, be merciful towards our frailty, and help us to understand these holy things. For we ask it in the name of Jesus, amen.

When I spoke at John Piper’s pastor’s conference several weeks ago, and C.J.

Was there, and we were talking about this occasion, he said, “I want you to preach these same messages exactly how you did it here, word for word.” And so tonight, I’m not going to do that. And there’s a reason for that. At that occasion, I was speaking for 45 minutes, and C.J. said I have to preach for at least an hour, so I had to find another 15 minutes. And so I’m going to work backwards from this text of Matthew’s to other passages that manifest the holiness of Jesus.

But here we have an event that takes place toward the end of Jesus’ ministry. He had retreated from Galilee, indeed crossed over the border out of Israel into what is now Jordan, and was on some type of R&R with His disciples. And there at Caesarea Philippi, the great confession of Peter’s was uttered when Jesus asked the disciples, “Who do you say that I am?” And Peter responded by saying, “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God,” at which point our Lord pronounced His benediction on Peter, saying, “Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-Jonah. Flesh and blood hath not revealed this unto you, but My Father who is in heaven. And thou art Petras, the rock. And upon this rock I will build my church.”

17 And Jesus answered him, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. 18 And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. (Matthew 16:17-18, ESV)

You all are familiar with that glorious moment where Peter expressed for the disciples their confidence that Jesus was indeed the promised one, the Messiah who was to come.

And at that point, Jesus began to explain to His disciples that it was now time to go south, to go to Jerusalem, where He would be betrayed and handed over to the Gentiles, where He would suffer and die. At which point this disciple whom Jesus had just pronounced His benediction upon, balked in protest saying, may it never be. This shall not take place. I just mentioned for my Catholic friends, this was St. Peter’s first papal encyclical. This was before he was rendered infallible.

And now, instead of seeing the rock, he looked at Simon and said, “Get behind me, Satan.” So Jesus turned them around and began the grim journey to Jerusalem. And the disciples were filled with despondency because of the dreadful news Jesus had given to them in Caesarea Philippi.

And so we pick it up in chapter 17, where we read, after six days, that is, it was after six days that Jesus had heard a confession of faith from Peter and had taught them of his impending suffering.

1 And after six days Jesus took with him Peter and James, and John his brother, and led them up a high mountain by themselves. 2 And he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became white as light. (Matthew 17:1-2, ESV)

You know, sometimes I like to dream a little, let my imagination roam free, and think about what it would have been like to have been alive during the earthly ministry of our Lord, to have been an eyewitness of the wedding feast at Canaan when He turned water into wine, a miracle I could have appreciated far more than my Baptist friends. Stop me if I’m lying, C.J. Or see Him raise the widow of Nain’s son. Watch Him walk on the water. Watch Him perform the many miracles.

But when I think about it, I think, what would I have liked to have seen the most? And I always come back to the same incident in Jesus’ life, it’s this one, the transfiguration, where that veil that had hidden and concealed the glory of His deity beneath. the frame of His human nature, was turned aside for a second, and before the eyes of the inner core of the disciples, Jesus experienced what the Greek says was a metamorphosis, a transfiguration, where suddenly the majesty and the glory of the Deity burst through for just a few moments.

And we are told that when that happened, His face shone like the sun. When you hear about Jesus’ face shining with that kind of magnitude, that kind of intensity, can you help but think back to the Old Testament, to the passage I even mentioned in passing last evening, where Moses on the mountain asked to see the face of God and was denied, and was only allowed to see for a moment the backward parts of Yahweh. But His face was not to be seen, and I left it there in my reference to that last night.

But what came immediately after was that after Moses saw this glimpse of the back of God, Moses was transformed. His face began to shine. His face was filled with a transcendent radiance that when He came down from the mountain, He had to cover His face because of this glow that was there.

29 When Moses came down from Mount Sinai, with the two tablets of the testimony in his hand as he came down from the mountain, Moses did not know that the skin of his face shone because he had been talking with God. 30 Aaron and all the people of Israel saw Moses, and behold, the skin of his face shone, and they were afraid to come near him. 31 But Moses called to them, and Aaron and all the leaders of the congregation returned to him, and Moses talked with them. 32 Afterward all the people of Israel came near, and he commanded them all that the Lord had spoken with him in Mount Sinai. 33 And when Moses had finished speaking with them, he put a veil over his face. 34 Whenever Moses went in before the Lord to speak with him, he would remove the veil, until he came out. And when he came out and told the people of Israel what he was commanded, 35 the people of Israel would see the face of Moses, that the skin of Moses’ face was shining. And Moses would put the veil over his face again, until he went in to speak with him. (Exodus 34:29-35, ESV)

But there is a significant difference between what Moses experienced on the mountain of God and what happened here in the Mount of Transfiguration. With Moses, the light that filled his face and beam from his countenance was a glory, dear friends, that was refracted.

It was a reflection of the glory of God that he had witnessed. It was the glory of God bouncing off the skin of Moses’ face. But here in the Transfiguration, the light that shines as bright as the sun and the countenance of Jesus is not a reflection. It’s not coming from an external source and is reflected from his face. No, the source of the light that is now shining from the face of Jesus is coming from within. The source is himself.

We are told by the author of Hebrews that Jesus was the brightness of God’s glory, the express image of his person. Think about that. That when God manifests himself in Scripture,

Logistically, He manifests Himself externally through the Shekinah, through the glory that lights up the world as the sky was illumined and the plains outside of Bethlehem heralding the nativity of Jesus. From whence comes the brightness of the Shekinah glory of God?

According to the Scriptures, it comes from Christ, from the second person of the Trinity, who not only shares the brightness of God’s glory, He is the brightness of God’s glory. And here is the breakout moment where His humanity could no longer keep it inside.

You remember when John wrote his gospel in the first chapter when he gives the prologue, and the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. (John 1:1, ESV)

He goes on down where he says, “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth, and we beheld His glory,” a reference equally made by Peter who spoke years later of having been an eyewitness on the mountain of the glory of Christ.

14 And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. (John 1:14, ESV)

In this radiance, the garments of Jesus were also changed, and they became pure white.

Another gospel writer says, “whiter than any fuller can make them.” A fuller in antiquity was a professional launderer who had his special lyes and soap and formulae that he used to get the grime and the stains out of people’s dirty clothes and to make them white again. When I was a boy, they didn’t have television. We listened to the radio, and every afternoon we listened to the soap operas. And they were called soap operas because they were sponsored by a soap company.

There may be a few people here with hoary heads who might recall some of those. You might remember Oxydol’s Own Ma Perkins. Or you might remember Duz, the wonder soap. It went like this, D-U-Z, D-U-Z, put Duz in your washing machine, see your clothes come out so clean, D-U-Z does everything. Rinse-o-white, rinse-o-white, right Vesta? Every little… She didn’t want to sing with me. I guess you don’t want to do L-A-V-A-L-A, or Ivory Soap, all right. But the best one was Tide, Tide’s in, dirt’s out, T-I-D-E, Tide.

And back in 1946, they would talk about the new and improved…

tide. And ever since 1946, every year, I’ve heard the same slogan, new and improved tide. Do you realize how bad it had to be in 1946 to go through so many iterations of improvement? But I lost it when they started advertising that they make our clothes come out whiter than white. I don’t believe that. Because there is no whiteness that is whiter than white.

Sometimes when I speak on the Transfiguration and have children there, I’ll hold up an orange and I’ll say, what color is this orange? And they’ll say, orange. I said, no. Color is a secondary quality, not a primary quality. The color orange is not in the orange. It’s in the spectrum of the light. And the other colors are absorbed except orange, and orange is reflected, and that’s what you see. Because all colors are found in light. And the sum of all of the color is perfect whiteness.

And so all of beauty that is concealed in the light is found in pure whiteness. And that’s what happened to the garments of Jesus when His glory broke through, that not only does His face shine as the sun, but His garments become white, whiter than any laundry, and make them white as light. And then, behold, there appeared to them Moses and Elijah, the Law and the Prophets, if you will, talking with Jesus. Wouldn’t you have loved to have been able to eavesdrop on that conversation?

Every Jew had heard the story of the Exodus, the wilderness wanderings, and how, when finally the people of Israel come to the Promised Land, God says to Moses, “This far and no further, you may not enter the Promised Land because you struck water from the rock.” And so, the thought is that Moses never gets to the Promised Land, and here he makes it, along with Elijah, and they’re talking with Jesus. I don’t know what they’re talking about, but I do know what they were talking about.

They could only be talking about one thing: where Jesus was going, the cup that He would have to drink, the purpose for which He came into this world. The Law and the Prophets bear witness to Him, and the Mediator of the Old Covenant, the One through whom God gave the Law to His people, Moses. Moses encourages the Son of God. The head of the long line of prophets endowed by God, by His Holy Spirit, to speak His Word, Elijah, who was translated into heaven, speaks tenderly to our Savior.

The Law and the Prophets say, this is what your hour is about, Jesus. And Jesus sets His flint, His jaws aflint towards Jerusalem. And when Peter sees this happening before his eyes, he’s so excited he can hardly stand it, and he says, Lord, it’s good that we’re here. This is fantastic. You know, I like this place. I don’t like that idea about going down to Jerusalem. Let’s stop here for a while. I’ll tell you what, I’ll make you three tents.

One for you, one for Moses, one for Elijah, and we can stay here on the mountain and have a bless-me party for the rest of our lives. What a spiritual high this is going to be. But while he was still speaking, behold, a bright cloud, Shekinah, overshadowed them. It engulfed them. It hovered and covered them. Where do you hear this kind of language except back in creation? But as yet, the earth is without form, void, and darkness is upon the face of the deep until God the Holy Spirit broods, overshadows the water.

And God says, let there be light. The same language that was used when Gabriel was sent to the peasant girl Mary and announced to her that she would be the mother of the Messiah. How can this be? Since I know not a man. And Gabriel said to her, Mary, the power of the Holy Ghost will overshadow you. And that which should be born from your womb will be the Son of God. The glory of God now hovers, broods, looms, engulfs Jesus and Moses and Elijah. And out of the cloud comes a voice.

And the voice repeats almost verbatim what God spoke audibly from heaven at the time of the baptism of Jesus: “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased. Listen to Him.”

1 And after six days Jesus took with him Peter and James, and John his brother, and led them up a high mountain by themselves. 2 And he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became white as light. 3 And behold, there appeared to them Moses and Elijah, talking with him. 4 And Peter said to Jesus, “Lord, it is good that we are here. If you wish, I will make three tents here, one for you and one for Moses and one for Elijah.” 5 He was still speaking when, behold, a bright cloud overshadowed them, and a voice from the cloud said, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him.” (Matthew 17:1-5, ESV)

Now the demeanor of the disciples changes completely. When they see this cloud engulf Jesus, Moses, and Elijah, and they hear God speaking audibly, we read, when the disciples heard this, they fell on their faces and were terrified. That’s what the glory of God does. The glory of God strikes terror into the hearts of all who would approach Him.

And now when Peter, James, and John understand that they are in the presence of unveiled deity, they’re on their faces and they’re shaking in terror. You would think that by now they were over that because they had had experiences like that earlier in Jesus’ ministry. Think back, if you will, to the ministry in Galilee rounded about Capernaum, the Decapolis, and the Sea of Galilee. And we remember the occasion where Jesus with His disciples was going across to the other side at night.

And without warning, this vicious storm arose, turning that placid lake there at Galilee into a frothing tumult as the wind came down the wind tunnel off of the Mediterranean and through the mountains and turned that lake into a churning, vicious storm. And these disciples who were veteran fishermen, who had been on that sea a thousand times, were scared to death from the force of nature that threatened to destroy them. And they looked to Jesus, who was in the back of the boat, sound asleep, out of care in the world.

And they were upset, and they came, and they shook Him awake, and they said, “Master, don’t you care that we are perishing?” They couldn’t relate to the calm spirit of Jesus. I was once on an airplane with Jim Boyce. We were sitting together, and we hit very strong turbulence. And I was gripping my seat, and my knuckles were turning white. And Jim leaned back in his chair, and he says, “R.C., isn’t this great? Don’t you love it?” I said, “Is there something wrong with you?” I said, “I hate it.”

And he said, “What’s the matter, don’t you believe in the sovereignty of God?” I said, “That’s what I’m afraid of.” I wanted to run to the captain and say, “Isn’t there anything you can do to calm this flight down?” And that’s what the disciples do, of course, they’re scared, and they look to Jesus, “Lord, do something or we perish.” Well, you know what He did. He gave a sermon to the sea and to the wind. With a loud voice, He cried into the tempest, “Peace, be still.” And into the wind.

Instantly, the water was like glass, and the wind ceased. There wasn’t a zephyr to be felt in the air. Now, what do you suppose was the reaction of the disciples now? You would think they would throw their sou’westers up in the air and say, thank you, Jesus, we knew you could do it. But the incredible thing that the Scriptures tell us is that now their fear was intensified. When the storm came, the Scriptures say they became afraid. After Jesus calmed the storm, the Scriptures say they became exceedingly afraid.

You know, Sigmund Freud argued in the 19th century that the origin of religion is provoked by psychological needs of people who can’t face the frightening threats of nature. And so they invent a God to protect them from nature. And he’s right. People do get afraid of earthquakes and storms, tornadoes, and fire, but in this case, there was something far more threatening, far more terrifying than the tempest. It was the presence of the Holy.

If we’re going to invent gods to free us from our fear, why would we invent a God who’s more terrifying than the fears we have of nature? They became exceedingly afraid, and listen to what they said: “What kind of man is this that even the winds and the sea obey him?”

27 And the men marveled, saying, “What sort of man is this, that even winds and sea obey him?” (Matthew 8:27, ESV)

35 On that day, when evening had come, he said to them, “Let us go across to the other side.” 36 And leaving the crowd, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was. And other boats were with him. 37 And a great windstorm arose, and the waves were breaking into the boat, so that the boat was already filling. 38 But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion. And they woke him and said to him, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” 39 And he awoke and rebuked the wind and said to the sea, “Peace! Be still!” And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm. 40 He said to them, “Why are you so afraid? Have you still no faith?” 41 And they were filled with great fear and said to one another, “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?” (Mark 4:35-41, ESV)

They were looking for a category in which they could pigeonhole Jesus. Did you know that unconsciously we are masters of pigeonholing all kinds of people? Go to New York City and walk down the sidewalks, Fifth Avenue.

This thronging multitude is pressing towards you, coming at you, and you don’t know whether that fellow coming down the sidewalk is a serial killer, a terrorist, a mugger, friend or foe, safe or dangerous. But you have your antennae out there all the time, and you’re analyzing, you’re watching how he’s walking, you’re watching his face. Does he seem friendly? Does he seem threatening? And we put people into categories based on how they look, based on whether they smile or don’t smile, and we determine their threat quotient by that analysis.

Just too long ago I saw in the paper, I believe it was USA Today, a list of the ten most common phobias that people in America experience. Agoraphobia is something that provokes a sense of dread in our souls. It makes us quake with fear. And the top ten were listed including agoraphobia, hydrophobia, acrophobia. Number one on the list, of course, was the fear of speaking in front of a group. Can you imagine that? But in the top ten was a fear called xenophobia, X-E-N-O-P-H-O-B-I-A, xenophobia, which means the fear of strangers, the fear of aliens.

In a pluralistic culture, we say that ornithological specimens of the same and similar plumage tend to habitually congregate in the closest possible proximity. Or more simply, birds of a feather flock together. Sort seeks sort. We like to associate with people like ourselves. There is segregation in the land. The main thing that drives segregation, dear friends, is xenophobia, the fear of somebody who’s different from us. Whites fear blacks, blacks fear whites, whites fear orientals, and on and on it goes. And so they keep to themselves in ghettos, to overcome this fear.

Well, the disciples met the ultimate alien. You know how Hollywood uses the fear of the alien to scare you for your entertainment. People that come from other planets or the creature from the black lagoon. All these scary things that are different. And so the disciples express the ultimate xenophobia as they experience the presence of the ultimate alien. The one who was most strange. What manner of man, what kind of man is this? There is no kind. He’s sui generis. He’s in a class by himself. A category of one.

So they don’t know what to do about it. You see, what they’re experiencing here is the holiness of God. What I haven’t done since last night is to take any time to even define what the term holy means. And I find that most Christians, if you ask them to define the holy, will say that the term holy refers to purity. And that’s true.

If you look up a biblical dictionary and look for the definition of the term holy, the idea of purity will be listed there, but that is the secondary meaning of holiness, not the primary meaning. The primary meaning of the concept of holy is otherness, transcendence. The holiness of God refers to the way in which He is different from everything else in the universe, His exalted, pure being that none of us can be compared with. He is the ultimate other, and it is His otherness that is being demonstrated here in that boat.

In the turn of the century, a German scholar, Rudolf Otto, wrote a book published under the simple German title Das Heilige, or The Holy. The English translation was simply The Idea of the Holy. And what he did was he examined cultures and saw how people responded to whatever it was they considered holy. And he said, there is a certain fascination with the other, with the transcendent, but if we come too close to it, it causes us to tremble. He called it The Holy, the Mysterium Tremendum.

The presence of that which is so mysterious, that it causes tremors in our heart and in our soul. Again, if I can refer back to the wonderful age of radio, where we not only listened to the soap operas, but we also listened to the adventure programs like Superman and The Lone Ranger and things like that, and crime stories like Mr. Kane, Tracer of Lost Persons, and Gangbusters and all the rest.

The scariest program on the radio was on Sunday nights, and the opening of the program was the sound of a door squeaking that was a vault opening. And you hear this squeaking door, and then the lead in the announcer says the name of the program, Inner Sanctum, which means within the holy. You see, even those in the entertainment industry understood that the scariest thing that anybody can ever encounter is the holy. One more incident that took place between Jesus and His disciples, again on the Sea of Galilee.

The disciples had been all night fishing, casting their nets all over the sea, and couldn’t find any of the schools of fish, and they come back frustrated with their empty nets. And as they approach the shore, Jesus analyzes the situation, sees that they’re frustrated with their failure, and He makes a suggestion to them: why don’t you cast your net over that side of the boat? Can you hear Peter? Can you sense what Peter’s thinking at this point? As impetuous as Peter was, I can only imagine what he was thinking. He said, “Look, we’re tired.”

We’ve had our nets over that side of the boat all night. There aren’t any fish. If you want to teach us theology, Jesus, you’re our rabbi. But give us some credit, for heaven’s sakes, we know something about fishing. But he doesn’t say that, instead he says, do what he says, let’s humor him. And they throw the net into the water, and you know what happened? Every fish in the Sea of Galilee jumped in the net.

So they have to throw the other net over, and pretty soon both nets are so filled to capacity that the boats are going to sink. Now what’s Peter’s response? Now keep in mind that Peter was a Jewish businessman. He knew a good thing when he saw it. If I’m Peter, I say to Jesus, look, Lord, that was incredible. I’ll tell you what, I just want you to come down here one night a month, that’s all. And do this shtick, you know, one time.

And I’ll give you, I’ll make you a full partner, 50% of the proceeds are yours. But that’s not what he did. What did he do when he saw that? He looked at Jesus, and he said, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man.”

8 But when Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord.” (Luke 5:8, ESV)

Jesus, you’re making me uncomfortable. I can’t stand it. Please leave!” Why? What made Peter so acutely conscious of his sin just because Jesus filled the nets with fish? The same thing that made Isaiah cry, “Woe is me.” The holiness of Jesus broke upon the conscience of Peter.

Several years ago, when I was still involved in golf, I had a friend who had just recently retired from the PGA Tour. We spent a lot of time together, and one day he told me the story of an incident that he had observed when he was on the tour, where one of his friends had had a fantastic season in golf and won the Golfer of the Year award.

And then the following year, the tournament arose where he was the defending champion and also the reigning Golfer of the Year, and so in the pro-am, before this championship took place, he was paired with Jack Nicklaus, Billy Graham, and the President of the United States. A pretty intimidating foursome. Well, my buddy was there but didn’t play in the foursome and was waiting for his friend when he came off the 18th tee, and he walked up to him and he said, hey, he said, what was it like playing with Billy Graham?

And the golfer about bit his head off. He says, it was terrible. He said, I don’t need to have Billy Graham trying to shove religion down my throat in the middle of a golf game. And he went storming off, went over to the practice tee, got a bucket of balls, grabbed his driver out of the bag, and just started pounding one drive after another. You notice that? Still there. Just checking. So, until finally, he got all his anger out and my friend just sat there in the bleachers behind him and waited until he was finished.

And when he was done, he put the driver back in the bag and turned around and approached my friend. And my friend said to him, he said, did Billy really come on strong to you today? He said, no. He said, actually, Billy Graham never said a word about religion. He said, I just had a bad day. But why would he accuse Billy Graham of trying to shove religion down his throat when Billy never said a mumbling word? Because Billy didn’t have to say anything.

His mere presence was enough to communicate to this pagan golfer the holiness of God, and he hated it. By nature, we hate God’s holiness. One of the finest sermons that Jonathan Edwards ever preached was entitled, “Man, Naturally God’s Enemy.” And in that sermon, Edwards was asking this question: what is it that makes us feel a sense of enmity towards God? Why is it that we don’t want God in our thinking by nature? And Edwards said there are four things about the character of God that make us, by nature, hate Him.

First and foremost is His holiness. God is holy and we are not. And so we dislike Him for that. And let me tell you what, that natural antipathy towards the holiness of God is not instantly cured at conversion. Edwards went on and said the second thing that man by nature hates about God is His omnipotence. That God makes commands to us and we seek to disobey Him, to escape His authority, but we are no match for Him. He has all the power and our strength fades to insignificance in the presence of that omnipotence.

Like the second Psalm declares, when the kings of the earth set themselves, take counsel together against the Lord and against his anointed, saying, “Let us cast their bonds asunder,” and they collectively aim all of their weapons towards heaven, the Lord sits in his heaven, laughs. He looks at the accumulated strength of the human race. That’s it. He has them in derision. Their pop guns against his power, and Edward said, “They can’t stand that.” What else is it that they hate? He said the third thing they hate is God’s omniscience because he knows everything about us. We can hide our secrets in our closets from our fellow human beings, but where can we flee from his spirit if we ascend into heaven? He is there if we make our bed, and sheol behold.

7 Where shall I go from your Spirit? Or where shall I flee from your presence? 8 If I ascend to heaven, you are there! If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there! 9 If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, 10 even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me. 11 If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light about me be night,” 12 even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is bright as the day, for darkness is as light with you. 13 For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. 14 I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well. 15 My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. 16 Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them. (Psalms 139:7-16, ESV)

He is there before a word is even formed on our lips. He knows it all together. He knows when we stand up; he knows when we sit down. He’s omniscient. Every word that we’ve ever spoken will be brought into the judgment. There is nothing secret that will not be made manifest.

We are told, “Huh, if you ever have the time to chew on something heavy, read John Saul, John Paul Sartre’s magnum opus, ‘Being and Nothingness.’ And see how the French existentialists responded to the omniscience of God in that terrifying, couldn’t stand the idea that God knew everything about him.” Then you get to the fourth thing that we hate about God, and that’s His immutability.

And the first time I read that sermon, you know, the thought that went through my mind is, I can understand why people would hate God’s holiness, I can understand why they would hate His omnipotence, I can understand why they’d hate His omniscience, but what’s wrong, what about His immutability? What’s so great about that? And Edwards says, maybe you’re wondering why I’ve chosen immutability. I said, took the words right out of my mouth. He said, think of it.

You find a human being who’s righteous, who’s holy, who makes you uncomfortable, who you say is holier than thou, you at least have the hope that that person may fall, and how the world loves it when the mighty fall. How they love it when Uzziah expresses his blemish and is visited with leprosy. How juicy is the scandal when a righteous person is corrupted. But, says Edwards, the holiness of God is an immutable holiness. It is a holiness that will never be corrupted. It is a holiness that never will be negotiated.

Even when He redeems, He requires that sin be punished. And even in His grace, He does not negotiate His own righteousness. And what of His omnipotence? Well, we see powerful people who, when they age, they lose a step. They lose their strength. There was a day when my grandsons would never challenge me; that day is long gone. I present no clear and present danger to them. But the strength of God is forever. His power will never diminish because it’s immutable. What about His knowledge?

You may say, well, you may know something bad about me, but sooner or later you’re liable to forget it, and if not, maybe you’ll get Alzheimer’s and you won’t have any choice but to forget it. But God’s omniscience is immutable. You know, we use the language that He forgets our sins, but that’s metaphor, folks. All that means is that He remembers them against us no longer. But God will never forget any sin that I’ve ever committed. He will know it eternally, which only accents the wonder of His grace.

He erases it from the indictment against us. But His omniscience is immutable from everlasting to everlasting. He is God. But you know what? This is the great marvel of conversion. That when that heart of stone is melted by the power of the Holy Ghost and that which you formerly despised, you now embrace with love and adoration. These things about the character of God are no longer a burden to us. They are our delight. Who wants a God who isn’t altogether holy? Who wants a God who is impotent? Who wants a God who’s ignorant?

But thanks be to God. He is holy, omnipotent, omniscient, and immutably so. Jesus came and touched them. In the midst of their fear, in the midst of their terror, while they’re on their faces, He put His hand down, helped them up, and said, don’t be afraid. That’s the gospel.

Let’s pray. Amen. Please, let me pray, okay? Let’s pray. Father and our God, there is none like Jesus, no, not one. He is the sole mediator between you and us, the only name under heaven through which men might be saved. He alone is the brightness of your glory, and He has bid us to come into His presence.