Some have seen that holiness is “a coordinating relationship between other qualities” within the divine person. In Dutch this is Verhältnissbegriff, the coordination of the divine attributes within the divine person, working together for a common purpose: The glory of God.

Each of the attributes of God coordinates with one another, never competing, limiting, or hindering the ultimate outcome of each individual attribute, but each attribute of God propounding and protecting aspects of the divine person relevant to each, accomplishing together and ultimately all that is within the divine will. Holiness is the means by which this coordination of every divine attribute within the attributes of the divine person is established and expressed.

Wrath and love might be first thought to be competing qualities seeking different ends, just as grace might be viewed as waging war against justice. These qualities are coordinated by means of God’s overarching, holy intention to work all things together for his own glory in everything he does and says (cf. Romans 8:28, “we know that God causes everything to work together for the good …” NLT), satisfying the demands that every quality within the divine person be glorified because they are God’s.

This coordination and purposefulness within the divine person, especially seen in his holiness and glory, is most definitively displayed in the Cross of Christ. No quality within the Godhead is usurped. No aspect of God’s nature is diminished. God is wrathful toward sin and yet he loves his elect people. Certainly the most glorious aspect of the Cross is that every attribute of God is displayed without confusion, competition, or diminution; all are displayed gloriously, yet the redemption of Christ fulfilled God’s intention to save the sinful and to punish sin, thus God honored his own nature as the Holy God while magnificently displaying his love and electing grace. God acted as One to redeem (Deuteronomy 6:4; Mark 12:29).

There is a wondrous singularity in the purpose of God to save. This especially is the display of his holiness. Holiness may be studied as a particular attribute of God, along with God’s other attributes, e.g. wisdom, eternity, goodness, patience, and the like. Holiness also may be studied as a Verhältnissbegriff, by which God coordinates all his qualities and attributes in the accomplishment of his holy will. But it must be said that there is much about these matters that begin to touch the inner economy of the divine person that is necessarily, rightly, protectively, graciously, and forever hidden from our view. Some things within the divine person are unknown to us, not only because God so values our humility as creatures, but much more because he so greatly prizes within himself the glory of his divinity. He has determined that much of this divine economy has been shielded from our knowledge simply because he is God. We should study what we can and love what God has revealed, but the end of this inquiry of the economy within the divine person must be worship, not philosophy.

From More Glory by W. Thomas Warren (2013).