Dangerous Beauty: Encountering God’s Holiness
Isaiah 6 is one of those passages many of us know well. We’ve heard it in sermons, sung parts of it in worship songs, and maybe even memorized a few verses. But let me challenge you—don’t let the familiarity dull your sense of awe. This chapter is meant to shake us.
To help us grasp what Isaiah saw, let’s picture a nuclear reactor. Now, don’t worry—this isn’t about God exploding in destruction. More often than not, nuclear power is used for good. But still, no one enters a reactor room casually. If something goes wrong, the results are devastating. At the same time, there’s a mesmerizing beauty at the reactor’s core—an otherworldly blue glow that is both captivating and dangerous.
That’s a picture of God’s holiness.
When Isaiah encountered the Lord in chapter 6, he experienced the blazing, dangerous beauty of God’s holiness. Even the mighty seraphim, heavenly beings far beyond us, cried out:
“Holy, holy, holy is the LORD Almighty;
the whole earth is full of his glory.” (Isaiah 6:3, NIV)
The Hebrew word for glory is kabod—meaning weight, heaviness, significance. God’s glory carries a weight so great that it fills the earth. Just as no one would approach a reactor casually, we cannot come before the Holy God with indifference. His presence is powerful, weighty, and beyond compare.
But here’s the tension: while God is a holy King of dangerous beauty, we live in a world of casual spirituality.
Casual spirituality says, “I believe in God, but He has no say in how I date, spend money, or live my daily life.” It shows up when we treat worship as entertainment, prayer as a last resort, or church as just another consumer choice. If we’re honest, most of us fall into these patterns without even noticing.
But imagine if we viewed worship prayer and devotion as walking into the reactor room of God’s holiness. Would we scroll through our phones? Would we mumble half-hearted lyrics? Or would we fall to our knees in awe, realizing we are in the presence of the Living God?
This truth struck me during a conversation with my oldest daughter. She looked me in the eye and said, “I don’t want you to be my friend … I want you to be my dad.” In that moment, I caught a glimpse of what it means to relate to God. Yes, He is near and loving, but He is not our “buddy.” He is our holy Father, our King.
Dr. R.C. Sproul once wrote:
“The holiness of God affects every aspect of our lives—economics, politics, athletics, romance—everything with which we are involved. We cannot understand sin until we understand what holiness is. Holiness is the centerpiece of God’s attributes.”
Holiness is what makes God, God. And like Isaiah, sometimes we must be undone by it before we can be remade.
So here’s the question for today: Have we grown too casual with the dangerous beauty of God’s holiness?
4-Day Reading Plan:
- Isaiah 6:1-4
- Isaiah 6:5-8
- Isaiah 6:9-13
- Isaiah 7
