We’ve defined biblical theology as the study of God's plans and purposes as they are revealed progressively in his dealings with humanity. Last week Matt took us through a biblical theology of the temple, which was an example of what we’ve been calling a “snapshot biblical theology”. This week we’re going to do a biblical theology of sanctification, and it will be what we call a “cyclic biblical theology”.
The goal in a cyclic biblical theology is to notice a high-level cycle (or repetition) in the biblical story, and pay attention to how the two iterations of the cycle are similar and different. I won’t say too much about this here, because we’re going to see this work out over the next hour and a bit.
What is sanctification?
Before we can do a biblical theology of sanctification we need to understand what we’re supposed to be looking for. Sanctification is about being or becoming holy—if the English weren’t so awkward we would call it “holy-ification”.
These days we tend to think about holiness in terms of morality, something like moral perfection, growing in Christ-likeness. On this understanding, sanctification would be about moral progression—gradually becoming more moral over time. In systematic theology this way of thinking about sanctification is called progressive sanctification.
Another kind of sanctification discussed in systematic theology is called definitive sanctification. This refers to a once-off transition from slavery under sin to life with God. On this understanding, sanctification is therefore about a status transition.
I want to suggest that while both of these things are realities, neither of them properly captures the way the biblical authors think about holiness or sanctification. The best place to look for an understanding of holiness are the regulations for the Nazirite vow given in Numbers:
And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, “Speak to the people of Israel and say to them, When either a man or a woman makes a special vow, the vow of a Nazirite, to separate himself to the Lord, he shall separate himself from wine and strong drink… All the days of his vow of separation, no razor shall touch his head. Until the time is completed for which he separates himself to the Lord, he shall be holy. He shall let the locks of hair of his head grow long. (Nu 6:1–5)
Notice that the holiness here is not about morality but about a status achieved by being associated with God in a special way—in this case, by separating himself from wine and not cutting his hair. Things are associated with God in all sorts of ways in the Bible, and are holy because of this:
Israel is a holy nation because they are God’s treasured possession
The Sabbath day is holy because it’s set apart from the other days of the week to be dedicated to God
The priests were holy because they had a special job in the temple
The ground around the burning bush was holy because God had chosen to be specially present there
The regulations in Numbers continue, expanding upon the point about how the Nazirite must avoid touching dead bodies:
All the days that he separates himself to the Lord he shall not go near a dead body. Not even for his father or for his mother, for brother or sister, if they die, shall he make himself unclean, because his separation to God is on his head. All the days of his separation he is holy to the Lord.
And if any man dies very suddenly beside him and he defiles his consecrated head, then he shall shave his head on the day of his cleansing; on the seventh day he shall shave it. On the eighth day he shall bring two turtle-doves or two pigeons to the priest to the entrance of the tent of meeting, and the priest shall offer one for a sin offering and the other for a burnt offering, and make atonement for him, because he sinned by reason of the dead body. And he shall consecrate his head that same day and separate himself to the Lord for the days of his separation and bring a male lamb a year old for a guilt offering. But the previous period shall be void, because his separation was defiled. (Nu 6:6–12)
Notice here that the Nazirite doesn’t just become holy in a once-off event, but needs to maintain his holiness by avoiding uncleanness. We’ll come back to the topic of uncleanness later, but the key takeaway here is that his holiness is something he must continue in. He isn’t progressing in holiness, but he is continuing in it.
Using this as a paradigm case, we can return to the two ideas about sanctification we mentioned earlier, and see that the biblical idea is somewhere in between: It’s not about moral progress, or about status transition, but about status continuity. It often begins with a status transition, when something that’s not holy becomes holy, but the focus of sanctification is in maintaining this status. And while it isn’t directly about morality, we’ll see that it does often have moral implications. We will be discussing this connection throughout tonight.
Prologue
With this understanding of sanctification in mind, we can see it at work on the first pages of the Bible. God creates humanity and sanctifies them by living with them in the garden. They fail to maintain this holiness by disobeying God, and are banished from his presence—like the Nazirite loses his holiness when defiled.
The rest of the Genesis 1–11 shows humanity repeatedly failing to fix the problem they’ve introduced. They just can’t address the problem of sin and get back the life with God they had in the garden of Eden. So, God calls Abraham and promises to fix the situation himself.
The structure of sanctification
This brings us to the beginning of the cycle we’re going to study here. The entire biblical story from Abraham onwards can be seen as two cycles of this three-stage pattern of sanctification:
Anticipation: a promise for future sanctification
Inauguration: the promised sanctification arrives, but in an incomplete form
Consummation: the promised sanctification is completed
We’re going to cover the whole story and show how these three stages progress throughout. At each point we’re going to consider two things:
How God sanctifies his people by living with them
How his people are called to live in light of this
Anticipation 1: Patriarchs
The first iteration of the cycle begins with God calling Abraham with a promise:
Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” (Gen 12:1–3)
This talk of “blessing” should remind us of the original state of humanity, in their life with God in Eden. And here we see that Abraham’s family will he a blessing to the nations.
God doesn't live with Abraham, but visits him regularly as he comes to terms with this promise. God repeats the promises a number of times in slightly different words, which help us get a better idea of what is involved. In one later version of the promise we see that it's connected in some way to Abraham's obedience:
When Abram was ninety-nine years old the Lord appeared to Abram and said to him, “I am God Almighty; walk before me, and be blameless, that I may make my covenant between me and you, and may multiply you greatly.” Then Abram fell on his face. And God said to him, “Behold, my covenant is with you, and you shall be the father of a multitude of nations. No longer shall your name be called Abram, but your name shall be Abraham, for I have made you the father of a multitude of nations. I will make you exceedingly fruitful, and I will make you into nations, and kings shall come from you. And I will establish my covenant between me and you and your offspring after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your offspring after you. And I will give to you and to your offspring after you the land of your sojournings, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession, and I will be their God.” (Gen 17:1–8)
Here we see God promising to associate himself with Abraham’s descendants, and all of this is prefaced with the instruction to walk before God and be blameless. Later we see these promises passed on to Isaac and Jacob, and there again we see mention of Abraham’s obedience:
Now there was a famine in the land, besides the former famine that was in the days of Abraham. And Isaac went to Gerar to Abimelech king of the Philistines. And the Lord appeared to him and said, “Do not go down to Egypt; dwell in the land of which I shall tell you. Sojourn in this land, and I will be with you and will bless you, for to you and to your offspring I will give all these lands, and I will establish the oath that I swore to Abraham your father. I will multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven and will give to your offspring all these lands. And in your offspring all the nations of the earth shall be blessed, because Abraham obeyed my voice and kept my charge, my commandments, my statutes, and my laws.” (Gen 26:1–5)
Again, we see obedience at work here, this time as the way of maintaining God’s promised sanctification. In summary, at this point we have God's people anticipating the day when he will be with them and their descendants, and somehow bless the nations through that. In the meantime they are called to live obediently to him.
Inauguration 1: Wilderness
God starts fulfilling these promises in a big way when he redeems Israel from Egypt. He saves them out of slavery in Egypt, and takes them through the wilderness to meet him on Mount Sinai. Halfway through Exodus we see their first meeting, which opens as follows:
On the third new moon after the people of Israel had gone out of the land of Egypt, on that day they came into the wilderness of Sinai. They set out from Rephidim and came into the wilderness of Sinai, and they encamped in the wilderness. There Israel encamped before the mountain, while Moses went up to God. The Lord called to him out of the mountain, saying, “Thus you shall say to the house of Jacob, and tell the people of Israel: You yourselves have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles' wings and brought you to myself. Now therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples, for all the earth is mine; and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. These are the words that you shall speak to the people of Israel.” (Ex 19:1–6)
In this short description are the two key ideas that we’re tracing through the Bible, which I’ve italicized in the above quote. Going in reverse order, God says that Israel will be a holy nation. First and foremost, they are holy because they are his treasured possession, the nation he associates with himself. But there’s more to it than that, which we can see by looking at what happens next in Exodus, at the mountain. Immediately after giving them book of the covenant, God starts giving Moses instructions on how to build the tabernacle in which he will dwell among Israel:
The Lord said to Moses, “Speak to the people of Israel, that they take for me a contribution… And let them make me a sanctuary, that I may dwell in their midst. Exactly as I show you concerning the pattern of the tabernacle, and of all its furniture, so you shall make it… (Ex 25:1–2, 8–9)
He proceeds to give detailed instructions for the construction of the tabernacle, the usage of the altars, and the consecration of the priests who will serve there. Then he appoints and enables various people to carry out all of this, to construct the tabernacle in which he will dwell. The very next thing he says is the following:
And the Lord said to Moses, “You are to speak to the people of Israel and say, ‘Above all you shall keep my Sabbaths, for this is a sign between me and you throughout your generations, that you may know that I, the Lord, sanctify you… (Ex 31:12–13)
Based on how all of this is laid out, the implication is unmissable: God has made a way to live among Israel, and then reminds them to the keep the Sabbath because he sanctifies them, because he makes them holy. So he makes them holy not only by taking them as his treasured possession, but also by living among them. He makes Israel a “holy zone” in the world by his presence among them.
That’s Israel as a holy nation. The second key idea is the obedience that God calls them to, just like he had called Abraham to obedience. This time, however, he gives a lot more detail about what that obedience looks like, and we’re going to spend some time unpacking it. In Leviticus we are introduced to the main categories of the law in the form of two pairs of ideas:
You are to distinguish between the holy and the common, and between the unclean and the clean, and you are to teach the people of Israel all the statutes that the Lord has spoken to them by Moses. (Lev 10:10–11)
We’ve already discussed holiness: something is holy when it is set apart to God in some way, and the things left behind are common. When someone becomes holy as a Nazirite everyone else is common relative to him. Israel are holy relative to the other nations. Priests are holy relative to common people. Clean and unclean have to do with our individual condition, our purity. Many of the individual laws deal with the different ways you can be come clean or unclean.
The key thing to realize is this: we can be either clean or unclean when we’re common, but only cleanness is compatible with holiness. So, when we’re holy, or coming near to something holy, we need to ensure that we are not unclean.
We saw something like this with the Nazirite: when they were defiled (made unclean) then they stopped being holy. This is fine when it’s just a Nazirite’s holiness. But when it’s God’s holiness, the consequences get more serious:
Thus you shall keep the people of Israel separate from their uncleanness, lest they die in their uncleanness by defiling my tabernacle that is in their midst. (Lev 15:31)
So, the consequence of defiling God’s holiness is death. God living among Israel is something like a nuclear power plant—it brings good things, but is extremely dangerous and should be treated with care.
The purity laws (clean and unclean) are divided into two sections in Leviticus. There are the laws of approach in chapters 11–15, which contain many of the weird Old Testament laws you may have heard of, like the ones about clean and unclean animals, leprosy, and bodily discharges. For each of these laws, we are told what will make someone unclean, as well as the process of how to become clean again, so that we know when we can safely approach God at the tabernacle.
Then there are the laws of life in chapters 18–20. These contain laws about sexual purity, social justice, idolatry, the protection of foreigners, and the command to love your neighbor as yourself:
You shall not hate your brother in your heart, but you shall reason frankly with your neighbor, lest you incur sin because of him. You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord. (Lev 19:17–18)
With the laws of life there is no process for getting clean again. Rather, when someone makes themselves unclean in one of these ways they are “cut off from the people” (Lev 18:29, 19:8, 20:3).
The reason for this difference between the two sets of laws comes down which holy zone is in view. For the laws of approach, the tabernacle is the holy zone, and so you could be unclean as long as you didn’t go near it. But for the laws of life, the entire nation is the holy zone, and so as soon as you become unclean in these ways you profane God’s name.
A common phrase that comes up in the laws of life is the one that says, “You shall be holy, because God is holy”:
And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, “Speak to all the congregation of the people of Israel and say to them, You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy... (Lev 19:1–2)
Now, we shouldn’t read this as though holiness is about moral progress. Rather, God is saying that he makes Isrel holy by living among them, and that they must therefore live in response to that by not becoming unclean like the surrounding nations. We can see this, actually, by looking at how some laws of life get repeated in slightly different ways. Consider the following repeated law about mediums and necromancers:
Do not turn to mediums or necromancers; do not seek them out, and so make yourselves unclean by them: I am the Lord your God. (Lev 19:31)
If a person turns to mediums and necromancers, whoring after them, I will set my face against that person and will cut him off from among his people. Consecrate yourselves, therefore, and be holy, for I am the Lord your God. Keep my statutes and do them; I am the Lord who sanctifies you. (Lev 20:6–8)
We see here that keeping themselves clean is the same as consecrating themselves. Since uncleanessness is incompatible with holiness, if Israel are to continue in the holiness from God’s presence, they need to maintain their clean state before him.
In summary, then, in the wilderness Israel’s obedience is the means by which they maintain the holiness they have from God living among them in the tabernacle. This involves keeping their uncleanness separated from God’s holiness, by following the laws of approach and the laws of life.
Consummation 1: Promised land
Even though they had the tabernacle and the law, Israel’s sanctification in the wilderness was still incomplete, because without a fixed land and borders they were not yet fully-fledged nation. The law itself is actually cognizant of this fact. In the beginning of the laws of life, God highlights the fact that Israel are on the move from one place to another:
And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, “Speak to the people of Israel and say to them, I am the Lord your God. You shall not do as they do in the land of Egypt, where you lived, and you shall not do as they do in the land of Canaan, to which I am bringing you. You shall not walk in their statutes. You shall follow my rules and keep my statutes and walk in them. I am the Lord your God. You shall therefore keep my statutes and my rules; if a person does them, he shall live by them: I am the Lord. (Lev 18:1–5)
Throughout the wandering the wilderness for 40 years, Israel were looking forward to the day when their life with God would find its culmination in the promised land that he was going to give them. Under Joshua they finally made their way into the land, and eventually king Solomon built the temple—which is understood as the permanent house of God. Consider, for example, Solomon’s words at the dedication of the temple:
Then Solomon said, “The Lord has said that he would dwell in thick darkness. I have indeed built you an exalted house, a place for you to dwell in for ever.” Then the king turned round and blessed all the assembly of Israel, while all the assembly of Israel stood. And he said, “Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel, who with his hand has fulfilled what he promised with his mouth to David my father… For I have risen in the place of David my father, and sit on the throne of Israel, as the Lord promised, and I have built the house for the name of the Lord, the God of Israel. And there I have provided a place for the ark, in which is the covenant of the Lord that he made with our fathers, when he brought them out of the land of Egypt.” (1 Kings 8:12–15, 20–21)
The ark of the covenant was in the tabernacle that travelled with Israel in the wilderness, but this was never in a fixed place. In building the temple, Solomon gaveGod a permanent house, and fixed the place of his nation Israel so that their sanctification was complete. As for obedience, they are still expected to maintain their sanctification by following the laws of approach and life from Sinai.
So far, we’ve seen Israel’s sanctification progress from the anticipation of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to the inauguration of God’s presence among Israel in their wanderings in the wilderness, and to its consummation in the promised land with his permanent house. This ends the part of the cycle of sanctification that covers the biblical story.
Anticipation 2: Exile and return
Unfortunately, Israel spiraled into disobedience. Even in Solomon’s own lifetime, he went after foreign gods and caused a division in the two kingdoms of Israel. The rest of the book of Kings recounts for us the decline of Israel, their rejection of God, and his judgement of them with exile. Ezekiel, being a good priest, describes this judgement in terms of the categories we were looking at earlier:
Behold, I strike my hand at the dishonest gain that you have made, and at the blood that has been in your midst. Can your courage endure, or can your hands be strong, in the days that I shall deal with you? I the Lord have spoken, and I will do it. I will scatter you among the nations and disperse you through the countries, and I will consume your uncleanness out of you. And you shall be profaned by your own doing in the sight of the nations, and you shall know that I am the Lord. (Ezk 22:13–16)
[Israel’s] priests have done violence to my law and have profaned my holy things. They have made no distinction between the holy and the common, neither have they taught the difference between the unclean and the clean, and they have disregarded my Sabbaths, so that I am profaned among them. (Ezk 22:26)
The nation as a whole had profaned God’s holiness, and so they were going to lose their holy status. Just as Adam and Eve had lost their life with God in the garden, so too Israel through their rejection of God by their disobedience had lost their life with him in the promised land and temple.
Eventually Jerusalem and the temple were destroyed, and the Southern Kingdom was taken into exile throughout the empire of Babylon. With the destruction of the temple, the basis for Israel’s holiness was gone. But they weren’t left without hope: God had promised through the prophet Jeremiah that Israel would be brought back from exile after seventy years:
For thus says the Lord: When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will visit you, and I will fulfil to you my promise and bring you back to this place. For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will hear you. You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart. (Jer 29:10–13)
Thus, in exile Israel were much like Abraham was back in the day: they were looking forward to the day when God would live among them again. And when they returned to God with obedient hearts, then he would welcome them back.
The problem is that unlike Abraham they didn’t turn to God in obedience. So, when Daniel was reading the scroll of Jeremiah one day toward the end of the seventy years in Babylon, he asked God to fulfill his promises (Dan 9). An angel responded to him that they would return and rebuild the temple as promised, but God would not on account of their continued sin.
And sure enough, when they returned to rebuild the temple, Israel had to grapple with the fact that God had not returned. They had to figure out what it meant to live as his people in light of the fact that there was now a temple without God’s presence in it. Are they holy? Are they supposed to keep clean still?
It’s this situation that the prophet Malachi came and spoke into. He criticized Israel for the disregard that their priests had for the temple offerings, for their lack of devotion to God, for their widespread divorce, and for thinking that serving God was a waste of time (Mal 1–3). Malachi called Israel to hold on to God’s promises, calling them to obedience in anticipation of his return:
For I the Lord do not change; therefore you, O children of Jacob, are not consumed. From the days of your fathers you have turned aside from my statutes and have not kept them. Return to me, and I will return to you, says the Lord of hosts. (Mal 3:6–7)
For behold, the day is coming, burning like an oven, when all the arrogant and all evildoers will be stubble. The day that is coming shall set them ablaze, says the Lord of hosts, so that it will leave them neither root nor branch. But for you who fear my name, the sun of righteousness shall rise with healing in its wings. You shall go out leaping like calves from the stall. And you shall tread down the wicked, for they will be ashes under the soles of your feet, on the day when I act, says the Lord of hosts. Remember the law of my servant Moses, the statutes and rules that I commanded him at Horeb for all Israel. (Mal 4:1–4)
In summary, then, the exile put Israel in a situation much like their father Abraham. They were once again anticipating God coming to dwell among them and their descendants, and they were called lo live obediently in light of those promises.
Inauguration 2: Jesus and Spirit
God eventually did return as promised, although not in the way that Israel was expecting. Rather than come to dwell in his temple as before, he came as the man Jesus. He was given the title Immanuel, which means “God with us”, and we saw last week that in Jesus was “tabernacled” among us, as it was in the wilderness. But the way Jesus interacted with people showed everyone that this time God’s presence would be among his people differently than before.
Consider the incident when the woman who had a bodily discharge approached Jesus, in Mark 7. Bodily discharges were explicitly discussed in the laws of approach (Lev 15), where we are told that as long as you were unclean because of them that you couldn’t approach the tabernacle without dying. But this woman touches Jesus, the tabernacle, and instead of dying she is healed:
And a great crowd followed him and thronged about him. And there was a woman who had had a discharge of blood for twelve years, and who had suffered much under many physicians, and had spent all that she had, and was no better but rather grew worse. She had heard the reports about Jesus and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his garment. For she said, “If I touch even his garments, I will be made well.” And immediately the flow of blood dried up, and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease. And Jesus, perceiving in himself that power had gone out from him, immediately turned about in the crowd and said, “Who touched my garments?” And his disciples said to him, “You see the crowd pressing around you, and yet you say, ‘Who touched me?’” And he looked round to see who had done it. But the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came in fear and trembling and fell down before him and told him the whole truth. And he said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease.” (Mark 5:24–34)
This is radically different from how it was with the first tabernacle. It indicated that this time God’s presence among his people would work quite differently to how it was before. Ultimately, we see that it did. When Jesus defeated sin on the cross, he made it possible for God to dwell in his own people by his Holy Spirit, so that we are ourselves become the temple of God rather than having it merely exist near us. This has the same implication for us today that it had for the Israelites in the wilderness: we must avoid uncleanness because of our sanctification by God’s presence within us. Consider, for instance, what Paul says to the Corinthians:
Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with darkness? What accord has Christ with Belial? Or what portion does a believer share with an unbeliever? What agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God; as God said,
“I will make my dwelling among them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Therefore go out from their midst, and be separate from them, says the Lord, and touch no unclean thing; then I will welcome you, and I will be a father to you, and you shall be sons and daughters to me, says the Lord Almighty.”
Since we have these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and spirit, bringing holiness to completion in the fear of God. (2 Cor 6:14–7:1)
As before, we must avoid the trap of reading this last sentence as though it were talking about moral progression. The promises he quotes are referring to continuing in the holiness we have by avoiding touching unclean things, just like the Nazirite at the beginning. Paul isn’t saying that we should grow in morality, but that we should continue in our holiness until the last day, when it will be completed by the perfect life we will have with God in the new creation. In his first letter to the Thessalonians, Paul makes this same point in different words:
… may the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all, as we do for you, so that he may establish your hearts blameless in holiness before our God and Father, at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints. (1 Thess 2:12–13)
This shows us that there is progression somewhere in the picture, but holiness is not the thing that we’re progressing in: we increase in love for one another as we continue in holiness. It’s no accident that Paul mentions love in this context. You’ll recall that love was part of the laws of life in Leviticus:
You shall not hate your brother in your heart, but you shall reason frankly with your neighbor, lest you incur sin because of him. You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord. (Lev 19:17–18)
Now, if we recall the two sets of laws from Mount Sinai, we can see that it doesn’t make sense for the laws of approach to still apply to us in the same way. This is because we no longer need to approach a temple that is outside of us, since Jesus lives in us by his Spirit. But when it comes to the laws of life, we are living more intimately with God now than the nation of Israel ever did, and so something like the laws of life will still be relevant to us.
Thus, it should come as no surprise that throughout the New Testament we are encouraged to love one another as the fulfillment of the law. Consider a few examples:
Jesus answered, “The most important is, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.” (Mark 12:29–31)
For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” (Gal 5:14)
And this is his commandment, that we believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he has commanded us. Whoever keeps his commandments abides in God, and God in him. And by this we know that he abides in us, by the Spirit whom he has given us. (1 John 3:23–24)
Thus, right now we are at once similar to and different from Israel wandering in the wilderness. As before, God lives with us, but in an incomplete way. Right now, we are still weak and mortal and prone to sin, which has been part of the problem the entire time. So we are to continue in our sanctification until the day when Jesus returns, when our holiness will be completed, and our sanctification consummated. But unlike before, God doesn’t just live among us, but in us. This is possible because our sin has really been dealt with. So the completed holiness we look forward to must be something extraordinary.
Consummation 2: The new heavens and earth
We get a glimpse of this future that awaits us in the final chapters of Revelation, where John sees God come to dwell with humanity in fulfillment of his promises to Abraham:
Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain any more, for the former things have passed away.” (Revelation 21:1–4)
The city of Jerusalem is where the temple once was, and is called holy because it is where God and his people live together forever. A little later in the same chapter it says:
And I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb. And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and its lamp is the Lamb. By its light will the nations walk, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it, and its gates will never be shut by day—and there will be no night there. They will bring into it the glory and the honor of the nations. But nothing unclean will ever enter it, nor anyone who does what is detestable or false, but only those who are written in the Lamb's book of life. (Revelation 21:23–27)
Just as with the first consummation, one of the key things with this stage of our sanctification is its permanence. But here it is much greater than before: we will be with God forever, in a place where no uncleanness can ever ruin our holiness.
Appendix: Short answers to anticipated questions
Why is obedience important if we’re saved by faith?
God has always desired obedience in his presence, but by grace he turns imperfect obedience into perfect obedience through faith. Both Old and New Testaments teach that we are God’s people by his gracious acts to be accepted by trusting in him, and that the proper response involves obedience.
If we are made holy by God’s presence, how is God made holy?
God is the center of holiness. As the supreme and powerful creator of everything, God is fundamentally distinct (separate, set apart) from everything else that exists. Things are made holy by being specially associated with the Creator.
Exodus 31 said the purpose of the Sabbath was to remind Israel about God sanctifying them, but I thought it was about imitating the days of creation?
Exodus 31 actually mentions both rationales (cf. 31:12, 17), and the literature I’ve read so far doesn’t seem to discuss the difference in much detail. My best theory is this: Israel are the keep the Sabbath holy to remind themselves that God sanctifies them, and the work-then-rest pattern is the appropriate way to keep a day holy because that’s how God did it in creation.
What does it mean to profane something?
A holy thing is profaned when it is treated like a common thing. Sometimes this means the holy thing stops being holy and becomes unclean (Lev 20:3, 21:4), But other a thing can be profaned without being made unclean, as with God’s name (Lev 19:12).