The Holy One Who Came Close

Isaiah began his ministry the year King Uzziah died, and what he saw that year never left him. A throne, high and lifted up. A robe whose hem alone filled the temple. Burning creatures who covered their own faces and cried out a word three times: “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of Hosts.” The doorposts shook. The room filled with smoke. And a man who had likely preached holiness his whole life suddenly understood it for the first time, and the only thing he could say was, “Woe is me, for I am ruined.”

That vision gave Isaiah the name he would use for God more than any prophet before or after: the Holy One of Israel. He says it again and again, in oracles of judgment and oracles of comfort, until you cannot read the book without hearing it. The name carries two truths that should not be able to sit in the same breath. Holy One: utterly set apart, of another order, dangerous to approach. Of Israel: bound by covenant to a particular, failing, beloved people. The transcendent God has a return address.

What the original hearers needed to feel is the weight of that holiness before they ever heard the comfort. Isaiah’s contemporaries had grown casual about God – going through the motions of worship while their hearts and their politics ran elsewhere. So the prophet shows them the throne first. Before anyone is told God is near, they are made to understand Who it is that is drawing near. The comfort means nothing until you have stood in the smoke.

Reread chapter 6 slowly and notice the order of events, because the order is the whole point.

Isaiah sees the holiness. He breaks – “Woe is me, I am ruined, a man of unclean lips.” He does not volunteer. He does not feel qualified. He feels undone. And only then does one of the seraphim fly to him with a glowing coal taken from the altar, press it to his mouth, and say: “Now that this has touched your lips, your iniquity is removed and your sin is atoned for.”

The atonement comes from the altar – the place of sacrifice – and it is brought to Isaiah; he does not climb up to get it. He could not have. The coal finds the man on the floor. And it is only after his lips are cleansed that he hears the question, “Whom shall I send?” and can finally answer, “Here am I. Send me.”

We usually get this backwards. We think we must clean ourselves up enough to be useful, and then God might call us. Isaiah’s vision says the opposite. The Holy One does not wait at a distance for us to become approachable. He sends the coal. He closes the gap Himself. The cleansing is the beginning, not the reward.

An eighth-century BC prophet in Judah whose ministry began “in the year that King Uzziah died” with a vision of the LORD enthroned in the temple. Undone by God’s holiness and then cleansed by a coal from the altar, Isaiah answered the call to speak for God through decades of national crisis. More than any other writer of Scripture, he names God “the Holy One of Israel” – and within a few chapters announces that this Holy One will be born a child, reign in righteousness, and abolish death itself.