The Dangerous Beauty of Holiness

Wholeness in the Fire: How God's Purity Restores, Not Restricts

Jun 18, 2025

They say fire is beautiful when you’re not the one being burned. Holiness is like that too.

Isaiah saw it with his own eyes. The vision cracked open the heavens. The temple trembled. Smoke filled the space and seraphim cried out with voices that shook the thresholds: "Holy, holy, holy is Jehovah of hosts: the whole earth is full of his glory" (Isaiah 6:3).

And there stood Isaiah, unraveling. "Woe is me! I am undone," he cried, not because he broke a rule, but because he had come face to face with unfiltered perfection. That’s what holiness does. It reveals. It purifies. It exposes what doesn’t belong.

We often think of holiness as rules stacked high, as moral striving that smothers joy. But real holiness has heat and gravity. It doesn’t crush; it calls. Holiness is beauty so intense it reorders your soul.

Peter, the same man who once fell at Jesus’ knees and said, "Depart from me; for I am a sinful man, O Lord" (Luke 5:8), would later write,

"Like as he who called you is holy, be ye yourselves also holy in all manner of living; because it is written, Ye shall be holy; for I am holy" (1 Peter 1:15-16).

Not because holiness is a demand, but because it is our design.

The call to holiness isn’t about gritting your teeth through temptation. It’s about seeing clearly. When your eyes are opened to the blazing goodness of God, sin starts to look like a poor substitute for glory. You don’t abstain out of duty. You walk away because you’ve tasted something better.

Holiness doesn’t make you smaller. It makes you whole. It’s about becoming fully His, your desires, your thoughts, your affections. You were always meant to shine like Him, reflect Him, carry His presence like priests of Eden.

And yes, it’s dangerous. It will burn away what can’t stay. But joy is found on the other side of that fire. Purity, not as a burden, but as the only way your heart can breathe free.

He is holy. And He has made you new. So live like it. Run toward the flame. Let it make you beautiful.