Among the truths that are lost when we fail to recognize God as the “outside God” is his power over evil.

[W]ithout his holiness God is reduced to being kind, amiable, approachable, and harmless, but for all his likeability he is incapable of dealing with evil in the world. The perspective of the Bible, by contrast, is that God’s patience and forbearance will one day run out. The time will come when he acts in judgment because of his holiness. And when he does, he will place truth forever on the throne and evil forever on the scaffold. All that has broken and defiled life will be finally, and irrevocably, overthrown.
   This doctrine of God’s judgment should not be an embarrassment to the church. It is not simply a negative doctrine. It is profoundly positive.
   It is this doctrine that carries the church’s hope. For in this world evil often triumphs, goes unpunished, and what is good and righteous is often dismissed or even penalized. However, this applies only to the interim period. In the end, evil is judged, the world is cleansed, and the church is finally redeemed. This is why Christians have hope. All the injustices, the upside-down nature of things morally will be set right. God’s holiness will descend upon the rebel creation. And then, as John saw, the “night will be no more.” And God’s people “will need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever” (Rev. 22:5). This vision of the end of time now throws back its clarifying light into the muddled present.
   Sin, grace, love, and faith . . . Have nothing but a superficial meaning until we see them in relation to the Holy, arising from it, and setting it forth. God’s love is his holiness reaching out to sinners; grace is but the price that his love pays to his holiness; the cross is but its victory over sin and death; and faith is but the way in which we bring our worship to him who is holy.

—David F. Wells, The Courage to Be Protestant: Truth Lovers, Marketers, and Emergents in the Postmodern World (Eerdmans, 2008), 130.