Santidade

Have you ever heard the word "holy" or sung the word "holy" in a song in church? For almost everyone, the idea has to do with being a morally good person. So God is holy because he is morally perfect. That's one part. In the Bible, the idea of holiness is bigger and richer. In fact, what she describes is how God is the creative force behind the whole universe. He is the only one who has the power to create a world full of life and beauty.

All this capacity makes God unique, which is the meaning of the word "holy". A good way to understand the holiness of God is to use the sun as a metaphor. The sun is unique, at least in our solar system, and it is very powerful. He is the source of all this wonderful life on the planet. So, we could say that the sun is holy. And we could go even further and say that everything that comes close to the sun is also holy. Yes, because the closer you get to the sun, the more intense it gets.

That is, that same power and goodness that created all this life is also very dangerous. It means that if we get close to the sun, it destroys us. In the same way, there is the paradox of the holiness of God, because if you are impure, His presence becomes dangerous for you. Not because it is bad, but because it is too good.

The first time we see the paradox of the holiness of God is in the story of Moses and the burning fire. God tells Moses to take off his sandals because he is in a sacred place. Moses covers his face with fear and God says, Hey, don't come near. It's intense.

In fact, the intensity of the holiness of God is even more evident in the stories of the Temple of Israel, which was the main place of the holy presence of God. In the middle of the Temple was a room called the Holy Place. It was the epicenter of the presence of God.

If you were an Israelite who lived near the Temple or a priest who works at the Temple, you were very close to the Holy Presence of God, which was dangerous. Yeah, that's a problem. So, how does it work? In the Bible, the solution is that you need to become pure. Like moral purity? Yes, that's easy to understand, but the Bible spends a lot of time talking about another type of purity: ceremonial purity.

It's a state where you move away from anything related to death, such as touching sick skin, a dead person, or even bodily fluids. All of this leaves you impure.

The book of Leviticus says that.

The idea develops. Later in the Scriptures, we read a story told by the prophet Isaiah. He has a strange vision, in which he is in the temple and in the presence of God. He gets terrified. He knows the rules and shouldn't have entered. And he is afraid of being destroyed. So this strange creature, called Seraphim... Very strange indeed.

This is extraordinary, because normally when we touch something impure, it transfers its impurity to us.

But now we have a totally new idea. This ember, a very holy and pure object, touches Isaiah and transfers its purity to him. He is not destroyed by the holiness of God, but is transformed by it, and the consequences of this are enormous. Another thing happens, but with another prophet, Ezekiel. He is in the temple and has this vision of water dripping out of him.

"Then this water becomes a stream, which grows and becomes a deep river, which flows through the desert, leaving everything green wherever it passes. Then it gives water in the dead sea, giving life to everything." So instead of first becoming pure and then entering the temple, the holiness of God leaves the temple and makes things pure, generating life. What does that mean?

We don't know until we find this man, Jesus. He claims to be fulfilling these old visions, but in new and surprising ways. Jesus was walking around, touching impure people, people with skin diseases, a woman with chronic bleeding, dead people. When he touches them, their impurity should contaminate Jesus, but instead, Jesus' purity transfers to them.

Jesus is like the Holy Bracelet in Isaiah's vision. Right. And Jesus said that He was the human personification of God's own holiness, and that He and His followers were now His temple, so that through them the holy presence of God could come out into the world, bringing life, healing and hope. So that's why Jesus said that "the rivers of living water would flow from His followers,

And this is the part of the story where we are now. But where is it going? The last pages of the Bible end with a final vision about the holiness of God, told by a man named John. In his vision, we see the whole world completely renewed, and the whole earth has become the temple of God. And the river of Ezekiel is there, flowing from the presence of God, flooding the creation, removing all impurity and bringing everything back to life.