'were to stand _in a special
relation to God as His property_.' So with the entire nation; when God
declares that they shall be holy, He means 'that they shall render to
Him the devotion He requires.' 'All holy objects stand in a special
relation to God as His property.' The priests are said to sanctify
themselves; they did this 'by formally placing themselves at God's
disposal, or by separating themselves from whatever was inconsistent
with the service of God.' 'When God declares He is holy, the word must
represent the same idea in the hundreds of passages in which it is
predicated of men and things.' 'Holiness is _God's claim to the
ownership_ of men and things; and the objects claimed were called holy.
Now, _God's claim_ was a new and wondrous revelation of His nature. To
Aaron God was now the Great Being who had claimed from him a lifelong
and exclusive service. _This claim_ was a new era, not only in his
everyday life, but in his conception of God. Consequently the word
_holy_, which expressed _Aaron's relation to God_, was suitably used to
express _God's relation to Aaron_. In other words, to Aaron and Israel
God was holy in the sense that He claimed the exclusive ownership of the
entire nation. When men yielded to God the devotion He claimed, they
were said to sanctify God.' 'Jehovah and Israel stood in special
relation to each other; therefore Jehovah was _the Holy One of Israel_,
and Israel was _Holy to Jehovah_. This mutual relation rested upon God's
claim that Israel should specially be His; and this claim implied that
in a special manner He would belong to Israel. This claim was a
manifestation of the nature of God.' 'The peculiar relation arises from
God's own claim, in consequence of which they stand in a new and solemn
relation to Him. This may be called objective holiness. This is the most
common sense of the word. In this sense God sanctified these objects for
Himself. But since some of these objects were intelligent beings, and
the others were in control of such, the word sanctify denotes these
ones' formal surrender of themselves and their possessions to God. This
may be called subjective holiness. From the word holy predicated of God,
we learn that God's claim was not merely occasional, but an outflow of
His Essence. As the one Being who claims unlimited and absolute
ownership and supreme devotion, God is the Holy One.'

In the New Testament the Spirit of God claims the epithet holy 'as being
in a ve