God's Holiness Demands a Perfect Creation
by Henry M. Morris III, D.Min. *
Holy, holy, holy, LORD God Almighty.... Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour and power: for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created. (Revelation 4:8, 11)
The holiness of God is what drives and limits His revelation of Himself to His creation. Scripture is consistent. Holiness is God's fundamental nature, and that unique nature so permeates what God is and does that no action or thought from the Godhead can override it. The majestic seraphs so tantalizingly described in Isaiah 6 and Ezekiel 1--those four unique "living creatures" standing in the presence of the Creator (Revelation 4)--continually speak of the thrice-holy nature of God as they breathe.
Humanity will never know holiness until the new heavens and the new earth. We may well experience righteousness in our lifetimes as our hearts long for the presence of the holy God, but God's holiness--God's perfection--can only be believed.
God's holiness demands that only God can be the source of truth.
Because of His holiness, God cannot lie (Hebrews 6:18), and whenever God reveals anything, He must reveal the truth about Himself and His nature. The Creator God is "Truth" (John 14:6) and the originator of "Lie" is the Archenemy, Lucifer (John 8:44). The opposite of truth, even though it may contain partial truth, is the active agent that opposes God’s truth as it is revealed to His creation.
This, of course, is the crux of all rebellion against God.
- Lie opposes the revelation of truth in the created things (universe).
- Lie opposes the revelation of truth in the written Word (Scripture).
- Lie opposes the revelation of truth in the new creation (salvation).
Whenever partial truth is presented as the truth, even if it is mixed with truth or just merely incomplete, that partial presentation is a lie. The Bible is very clear in this message: "God is light [truth], and in him is no darkness [lie, untruth] at all" (1 John 1:5). That biblical axiom is true whether applied to scientific research, educational philosophy, theological speculation, or heretical doctrine. Jesus Himself laid claim to that absolute when He said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life" (John 14:6).
God's holiness demands that he "be" and "do" truth.
Therefore, the Creator God must reveal truth and cannot "be" untruth. When God speaks, He must speak truth. When God acts, God must act without "doing" error. One of the titles by which Jesus Christ is eternally known is "Faithful and True" (Revelation 19:11). God's holiness demands that the creation not distort anything about God--or about the creation itself.
God could not create a lie--He could not make anything that would inexorably lead us to a wrong conclusion. Nor could He create processes that would counter His own nature--or that would lead us to conclude something untrue about Him.
Evolutionary mechanisms are, by their very nature, both random and nonfunctional. Nothing in naturalist theory "directs" evolution. Vast eons of time, in which chaos "works" and during which death "weeds out" the ineffective, are thought to somehow produce processes and systems of apparent design. No god in this system exists to create anything.
Christians who seek to harmonize the biblical revelation of a holy God with the antithetical evolutionary theories are constructing dangerous hybrids that blaspheme the very God they insist they believe in. May God protect us from such thinking.
* Dr. Morris is Chief Executive Officer of the Institute for Creation Research.
Cite this article: Morris III, H. 2009. God's Holiness Demands a Perfect Creation. Acts & Facts. 38 (10): 22.
