“You are to make the robe of the ephod entirely of blue yarn. There should be an opening at its top in the center of it. Around the opening, there should be a woven collar with an opening like that of body armor so that it does not tear. Make pomegranates of blue, purple, and scarlet yarn on its lower hem and all around it. Put gold bells between them all the way around, so that gold bells and pomegranates alternate around the lower hem of the robe. The robe will be worn by Aaron whenever he ministers, and its sound will be heard when he enters the sanctuary before the Lord and when he exists, so that he does not die.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

We often speak of God as holy, but through the lens of Jesus, we also tend to think of Him as friendly. I don’t mean that to say God isn’t interested in a personal relationship with us – He most emphatically is – but to attempt to describe the very familiar way we tend to think about HIm. Again, we’re fine with holy. We like holy. But we also like familiar. If we’re not careful, though, we can get so familiar that in spite of regularly reminding ourselves of it, we forget about His holiness and just what that means. This is not a good thing. The next part of the priestly garments described here – the robe – reminds us some of why that is.

Israel grasped the idea of holiness much more fully than we often do. At least their Scriptures point to it in a way we don’t often consider. We have talked multiple times before about what it means that God is holy. It means that He is set apart and totally different from creation. He exists independently of it. His existence does not in any way depend on creation. He is a necessary being, not a contingent one. The truth is exactly the other way around. Creation depends on His existence. As the apostle Paul put it when quoting from what was probably an ancient hymn glorifying Christ, “”For everything was created by him, in heaven and on earth, the visible and the invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities – all things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and by him all things hold together.” God is other.

At the same time, God’s holiness encompasses His moral perfection. God is not just different than we are, He is morally superior to us. He is greater than us in every moral capacity. He is by nature good. It’s not, as the old philosophical dilemma tries to binarily frame it, that He does things merely because they are good (as if good were an external-to-Him standard to which He was somehow held), nor is it that things are good because He does them (as if goodness in this sense were utterly arbitrary). Rather, He is ontologically good. His nature is good. It is in His nature to do things that are good. All goodness flows out of who He is.

It is the combination of this utter goodness and total otherness that makes God holy. And while those two sound like they wouldn’t be so impressive on their own, the reality is that they would be overwhelming to actually behold. You’ve perhaps been around someone who was such a good person in everything she did that you felt a little guilty just being in her presence. You weren’t comfortable there even as you simultaneously desired to be there. God is like that to an infinite degree.

The combination contributes to His glory, and from what we see again and again in the Scriptures, His glory is both intensely desirable and also utterly terrifying to behold. Isaiah was transported to God’s throne room in a vision and was immediately certain of His imminent demise because He was not clean to be able to exist before such a vision of holiness and glory. Moses asked to see God’s glory, and God told him such a thing wasn’t possible without ending his existence. When He gave him the barest glimpse, Moses face shone so brightly that the people made him wear a veil until the brightness turned down to a level they could tolerate. Jesus transfigured before His trio of closest followers and the result was more than they knew how to process. John saw a glimpse of Jesus in His glory toward the end of His life and feared He would be undone because of it.

Think of a bright light first thing in the morning. When you first open your eyes while it’s still dark outside, if you walk into the bathroom and immediately turn on the lights, what do you do? You squint your eyes or even close them because they can’t handle the brightness. God’s holiness is a little bit like that. We need it just like we need the light in the morning, but if we try to get too close without getting adjusted to it properly, it’s going to be pretty overwhelming.

For the Israelites, the sacrificial system was how they were able to get adjusted enough to be able to experience a taste of it. For the priests, and especially the high priest who would enter into the holy place where God’s presence dwelled, they went through even more adjustment rituals to make sure they were as fully prepared as they could be. They also included some safeguards just in case they missed something. One of those, according to later rabbinical tradition, was that they would tie a rope around the ankle of the high priest when he went into the holy place. This was so the other priests waiting anxiously outside for him to emerge safely from the Lord’s presence with a word from Him could fish him out without endangering themselves if he was not properly prepared and God struck him down for appearing before Him unworthily.

Another of those safeguards we see right here in the description of the robe the high priest was to wear. It was to have a decorative hem around its bottom. This hem was to be composed of an alternating pattern of colorful balls (pomegranates) and bells. The bells were to jingle and jangle to remind God that he was there. Of course, God didn’t need this reminder. This was actually about reminding the high priest to never forget that he was in the presence of the Lord the whole time he was in there. The bells were to jingle and jangle as well, though, to give the priests waiting outside in the outer sanctuary the assurance that their leader was still alive and moving in the holy place. As long as they could hear the bells, they knew things were okay.

Now, all of this seems silly to us. And, to a certain extent, it is. At least it is through the lens of the new covenant and the ministry of Jesus. It’s not silly in the sense that they were properly estimating the magnitude and seriousness of God’s holiness. It is silly in the sense that they were having to do all of these things to protect themselves from it, from Him. They had to do this, though, because of sin. Sin stood in the way. It made them unfit to draw near to God. That’s the thing about His holiness. It is so great and overwhelming that sin cannot exist in His presence. This is what all the layers of protection around God’s presence and the pieces and parts of the tabernacle complex that enable them to experience it were about.

The sacrifices also helped to mitigate some of the danger by providing a covering for their sins. God graciously accepted the animals life in place of theirs. But this only ever did so much. Genuine forgiveness never came because the thing that was taken from God (namely, their lives) was never returned to Him. A human life was taken from the one who ultimately owned it. Just reconciliation demanded that a human life be returned in order for the relationship between them and Him to be right again. If a human life was returned, though, it’s previous owner wouldn’t have it anymore, and that’s not what God wanted either. So, He received the sacrifices instead. As the author of Hebrews makes abundantly clear, though, this was always intended to be a temporary, holdover solution until the time for the ultimate solution to be put in place.

This ultimate solution came in the person and ministry of Jesus. After perfectly fulfilling every single part of the Law, meaning that He was not ever separated from God, He willingly lay down His life as a substitute for ours. All of ours. God in His mercy and grace took the wildly unfair (to Him, not us) step of declaring Jesus’ one perfect life to be an acceptable substitute for the lives of the rest of humanity. All of it. Across all time past, present, and future. With a human life returned to the one who is the ultimate owner of all human life by virtue of creating it in the first place, the relationship was properly reconciled and His holiness became a thing we could enjoy rather than fearing like the Israelites did. The only catch here is that this reconciliation is only possible in Christ. His was the life that was returned to God, not ours. As long as we are willing to go through Him – something that first requires our putting our faith in Him and accepting Him for who He was and is – we can get to God, which is what He wanted and we were designed for in the first place. In other words, in Christ, everything can be made right like it was always intended to be.

Thanks be to God that we don’t need bells to remind us that we are near Him and to help protect us from Him any longer. We can simply go to Him in Christ and receive the blessings of His holiness in and to be shared through our lives into the lives of the people around us. This is our invitation in Christ. This is our command from Christ. If you haven’t experienced it yet, all you have to do is accept it, accept Him, and you’ll be on your way. As Paul again put it, “If you confess with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” I hope that today you will.