In his vision of God on his throne, Isaiah realises his sinfulness, and, as a result, his unworthiness to stand before God:
In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord, high and exalted, seated on a throne; and the train of his robe filled the temple . . . "Woe to me!" I cried. "I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty." (Isa 6:1, 5 NIV)
On what basis did Isaiah find the ability to stand before the thrice-holy God? The Reformed answer would be that one can only stand before God based on an alien imputed righteousness. However, in Isa 6:6-7 we read:
Then one of the seraphim flew to me with a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with tongs from the altar. With it he touched my mouth and said, "See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for."
Instead of the "ground" of Isaiah's right-standing before God being an external, forensic imputation of an alien righteousness, it is his being spiritually cleansed/changed, something consistent with Latter-day Saint theology but incompatible with many other theologies of salvation (for LDS, our initial justification/spiritual cleansing is done through water baptism; see, for e.g., Refuting Douglas Wilson on Water Baptism and Salvation). This event in the book of Isaiah is also another nail in the coffin of the claim that, based on eisegesis of Isa 64:6, Isaiah preached total depravity. For a refutation of this, see, for e.g.:
