Holiness 1

Holiness does not necessarily mean doing good works (it produces good works though).

To be holy simply means to be "set APART", to be DIFFERENT, from others. To be sanctified simply means to be made holy, that is, set apart.

Whoever sets apart is the determinant of holiness. May be God, may be man.

Holiness is not primarily about the object, but ALL ABOUT the subject. How the holy object looks, does or conducts is NOT what determines whether it is holy or not. It's ALL ABOUT what the subject says. However if a thing is holy, it can affect conduct.

That's why the opposite of "holy" in the Bible is "common".

Eze 22:26 Her priests have violated my Law and profaned my sacred things. They didn't differentiate between what's sacred and what's common. They didn't instruct others to discern clean from unclean things. They refused to keep my Sabbaths. "'I'm constantly being profaned among them.

The first mention of the word "holy" in the Bible is in Exodus.

*[[Exo 3:5]] KJV* And he said, Draw not nigh hither: put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is HOLY GROUND.

What makes the ground holy? Is it that ground is always doing good works? In fact, the mountain must have previously been stained by footprints and dungs of animals in the jungle. So how did the ground suddenly become holy?
Because God is now on it, and He has set it apart FOR HIMSELF.

You get the idea?

We pick a book believed to contain the word of God, we set it apart. It becomes HOLY BIBLE.

Some other people set theirs apart too and call it HOLY QURAN.

Does it mean that the Quran is good? Does it mean it doesn't contain blasphemous words? Does it mean Quran or Bible is rapturable? It is holy because we set it apart.

Similarly, a man becomes HOLY the day God by His Spirit steps in into Him to dwell. He is set apart by God. Therefore God tells him to remove stains because he is ALREADY holy, (and NOT IN ORDER TO BE HOLY).

*[[Act 10:15]] ISV* Again the voice came to him a second time, "You must stop calling unclean what God has made clean."