Sanctified by Justice

Leclerc challenges Young and Motyer’s resort to systematic theological categories in their interpretation of Isaiah 5:16: “the holy God will sanctify Himself in righteousness.” Bringing in notions of holy-as-separate or holy-as-transcendent or even holy-as-divine-attribute misses the point.

Rather, “God’s holiness is honored as he himself is exalted by justice in the human realm . . . . The exaltation and sanctification of God are accomplished through the enactment of a just social order, the precise remedy to the conditions described throughout 5:8-24 . . . . God who has been aggrieved and dishonored by injustice will find exaltation and will be sanctified by justice.” Far from emphasizing God’s aloofness, Isaiah says that God “does not shy away from immersing [Himself] in the realia of social life.”

Injustice might escape the notice of a utterly transcendent God. That the holy God is present in human societies in all His searing holiness, that is the real dread of the wicked.