David Wells lists five realities resulting from the fact that God is holy, or, in Wells’ words, the “outside God.” The first is that There Is a Law.

It means, first, that there is a moral law. Indeed, without the holiness of God, his character as morally pure, there would be no moral law in the world. Our consience reflects the moral nature of things (Rom. 2:14–15), however imperfectly, and in God’s self-revelation in Scripture we have our full, objectively given instructions on how to live. The “law,” Paul says, “is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good” (Rom 7:12). These are the moral norms for life that reflect the holy character of God. What would we lose if we had neither this law nor human conscience?
   We would lose all knowledge of the difference between good and evil, and in fact, we would do evil in complete innocence. We could not appeal to conscience . . . Indeed, there would be no morality at all. . . .
   Now let us think of the reverse side of this coin. God has not abdicated his rule. His character of holiness has not been eliminated from this world. He still sustains the difference between right and wrong. And knowing that difference, being helped to work it out in practice, is what gives our first moments of recovery a sense of what it is to live in God’s world on his terms. It steers us away from what is destructive and into what is right and healthful. Satisfaction, protection, and joy result from following God’s law. All of this is a consequence of God being the “outside God.”

—David F. Wells, The Courage to Be Protestant: Truth Lovers, Marketers, and Emergents in the Postmodern World (Eerdmans, 2008), 127–128.