Leviticus 20:20

20. Severed you… that ye should be mine There can be no appropriation without separation. Consecration to Christ implies a death unto sin. Oehler wisely remarks that kadosh, the Hebrew for the word holy, “where it is a designation of a divine attribute, there evidently lies in it primarily a negative element, by which it designates a state of apartness, God raising himself above all others.” The connexion of thought in this verse may be thus expressed: “I am holy, and so I have separated you from among the nations to be mine.” Nothing created is in itself holy, though it is innocent. Holiness in a creature always involves an act of self-determination, and an act of the divine will in the completion of a perfection of life both inwardly and outwardly. “It is certain that in the biblical conception of society a very broad distinction is made between the people of God and all other people. This again is not arbitrary; it comes out of the very nature of the separating God himself. It is only because God is different from all other gods that his people are different from all other people. Monasticism is not taught by this text. Men are to move up and down in the world transacting all its usual business, and yet so to do the work of life as to exert a benign influence, and fill other men with encouragement to move in an upward direction.” Joseph Parker.