"By Way Of Remembrance" (2Pe 3:1) - Holiness in the Bible Part 1"For I am the LORD your God: ye shall therefore sanctify yourselves, and ye shall be holy; for I am holy." (Lev 11:44a) Holiness is inevitable if you strive to live a godly life, so we will discuss the topic yet again, following Peter's good example. Let's use the fancy new LOGOS software we recently got to define "holiness". The word "holy" occurs 611 times in the King James Version of the bible, in 544 verses. "Holiness" appears an additional 43 times in as many verses. The Enhanced Strong's Lexicon (which comes with the Logos software) gives you the definitions of the Hebrew and Greek words used for "holy" in the Old and New Testament: Number 6944, "qodesh" {ko’-desh}, appears most often in the OT, number 40, "hagios" {hag’-ee-os}, appears most often in the NT. "Holiness" in the OT is always the above mentioned word "qodesh", whereas in the New Testament we find different words used, but they all relate to the same concept, and that is: Separation. If you read the definitions, the general idea of holiness is apartness, sacredness, separateness, being set apart for God as exclusively His, and it is used for people, places, things, actions. It points towards being undefiled by sin, free from wickedness, pure, faithful, God's alone. Take a few moments to have a look at the notes we copied for you from Strong's Enhanced Lexicon Hebrew words translated “holy” Greek words translated “holiness”, and read the verses given as examples, or check the concordance in the back of your own bible and see where the word "holy" is used and in which context. Read on here: Jump to Parts 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7 here: |
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