NOTES for Heb 12:14

So Paul has said it. And we so wanted to pass somewhere along the edge, more or less decently... To fit within the bounds of "acceptable behavior"... But he speaks sharply: "Holiness, without which no one will see the Lord." That is how it is. We keep saying one thing is saints, another thing is us, ordinary people... The apostle Paul knocks the ground out from under our feet. Maybe they really are wiser, more righteous, maybe it really is easier for them than for us. But none of that will help us at all. Without holiness it is impossible to see the Lord.

But the essence of holiness is not "not doing this, that, the fifth thing, and the twentieth." The Hebrew word "kadosh," translated as "holy," literally means "set apart." A saint is one who belongs wholly to God and not to the world. And without this being set apart from the world and given over to God, to see Him... is impossible.