Robert Kolb (PhD, University of Wisconsin) is mission professor of systematic theology emeritus at Concordia Seminary in St. Louis. He is the author or coauthor of numerous books and articles.
The words “holy,” pleasing,” “good” are big words, not in terms of the number of letters they contain, but in terms of the size of the ideas they represent. They crack the boundaries of our imaginations and dribble—or rush—into the darkness beyond. There is more to each of them that meets the eye, or ear, for that matter. We grasp for their form and shape, but they elude us.
Holy in Hebrew means literally “set apart” or “standing apart” or “something over there that is moving in potentially threatening ways.” Holy means “perfection” and “power,” and human beings tend to feel very small when they contemplate the holy. The German theologian Rudolf Otto published a study of “the Holy” a century ago. He labeled it a power that human beings sense above and beyond themselves that makes them shake in their boots and at the same time fascinates and charms us. We often say, “Perfect!” simply because something meets our expectations, but we know that our expectations can be rather modest, and that true perfection far exceeds them. Good seems easier to define, but that which is truly good shares with “perfect” a fullness, a completeness, a delightfulness that also exceeds not just our expectations from ourselves or others but even our imaginations of the potential of the term “good.”
“Holy, perfect, good” we sing—implicitly about God, but explicitly about the reflections of who he is in our experience of his actions in creating the world, in restoring his wandering and revolting human creatures, and in taking us as instruments of restoring at least a bit of a foretaste of what holy, perfect, and good really mean.
“Holy, perfect, good” we sing about this world that God fashioned with his own words. Our Creator had a plan from before our way of telling time started ticking off the days. Dietrich Bonhoeffer commented that the most offensive words in Scripture are Genesis 1:1’s “in the beginning.” For those three words tell us that he, the Holy One, the Creator set apart from his creatures, existed before we did. With his creative Word as his instrument of choice, he placed one part of creation after another in a perfect order together, in the harmony and serenity that the Hebrews labeled “schalom.” Each day he observed that the way it was fitting together was good—just the way he wanted it to be. It pleased the holy Creator of all that is. At the end of that week he found it “very good”—as good as it gets in Hebrew, perfect!
For reasons far beyond our ability to comprehend, this good and perfect creation did not remain holy, set apart for its Creator. God was not content with that state of affairs. Paul tells us that before time, also a mysterious expression, our Creator designed a plan to reclaim the human creatures who turned their back on him and trashed what he had crafted (Eph. 1:3-11). God came out of his holy realm beyond our grasp to be grasped by us and nailed to a cross. He poured his second person into the flesh and bone of a Jew named Jesus. He trod well-worn paths of Palestine, well-worn paths of human experience, right on up to and into death itself. He took upon himself every burden that threatens to crush each one of his human creatures, burdens that forced him to cry out “my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” but in the end utter one last word, “it is finished.” He had completed the deliverance of us who turned against him; he had accomplished the restoration. His effort ended up with holiness nailed to the cross.
Well, that was not the end of the effort. Jesus’ sacrifice was pleasing to his Father. His death in our place meant only good for us. His death was so perfect and good that the Holy Crucified One rose from the dead, and that liberated his people so that they could receive creation back along with the gift of freedom to act in truly human fashion once again. That begins with loving the world that God made, the world that he so loved that he gave his only-begotten Son, the world that the Holy Spirit visits in its farthest corner to find a new place to fashion and abide with Christ’s people. The Holy Spirit gets there by sending us and blessing all that we do as we go about the holy work of God in giving witness to our holy, perfect, good God by loving both those who please us and those who displease us because our God finds this kind of love pleasing and good.
So we are on the march, through the doors of the church into the fellowship and communion of fellow believers. For it is not good that the people for whom Christ died and rose to be his holy, good, and pleasing people be lone rangers. The Holy Spirit has gathered us together to lead us, sometimes as individuals but often as groups, into the world that is reached only over some narrow and difficult paths. He sends us on a mission to make the world look like it should in the new experiences of those within our reach who have not seen the least little inkling of the good. For they have experienced little in life that has been pleasing and have not even the ability or strength to imagine what the “holy” could be. They are the objects of God’s vision of those whom he wants to be served by those whose lives he has, through Christ’s blood and awakened corpse, made holy, pleasing, good.
Our own experiences of the daily grind are not always so holy, often not very pleasing to God or ourselves, not really what either he or we would call good. But he thinks of us in spite of that as his holy, pleasing, and good people.
When we cross the finished line and receive eternal peace, we will then know what we have not yet known, the full meaning of holy and pleasing and good.