What is the difference between righteousness and holiness?

Righteousness is perfectness in, or consistency with the relationship in which anyone stands; evil and good being known. Holiness, the aspect of heart, which intrinsic purity of nature bears towards other things, according to their character. We may speak of things as holy when entirely set apart to God, and separated from all profane use; but properly it applies to persons expressing their abhorrence of evil and delight in that which is pure and good. God is holy in Himself, abhorring evil and delighting in what answers to His perfect nature. The creature can only be holy as separated to God in what He is in His perfectness, because its nature can have no true and perfect object but Him, and its object gives its character to a nature in a creature, and holiness is the expression of a nature, not the obligation of a relationship. We are holy as far as every movement of thought answers to the impress and character of God, having Him for its object. Anything taken up in itself, apart from Him, is necessarily independency and sin. So far God is set aside. We have no object which makes the heart right but Him. Although we cannot leave God out as the author of, and as giving authority to, the relations in which we stand; yet, as we are placed in certain relationships, righteousness has somewhat more extensive range, though as a sanction God must be brought in. But whenever a relationship owned of God exists, it is unrighteous not to act up to it: not to be faithful to obligation in it.

Holiness supposes good and evil, and the hating the evil and the loving the good; innocence does not know of evil. In righteousness I see judicial authority about it, but holiness is the nature repelling or delighting in. Righteousness is the judgment formed either in mind or in act.

In Ephesians we hear of the members of the body; here it is the nature. In Ephesians also they are to put off the old man and put on the new; but here it is said, "which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him." In Ephesians it is as a fresh thing that they had not before, without any reference to being renewed; it is absolutely new-created; whereas here they have received the fresh blessing, but at the same time there is renewing. Both ideas are in the two epistles, but put so as to prove the complement of each other. In Ephesians it is said that the new man is after God created in righteousness and true holiness. What is the difference between the two? Righteousness brings in the idea of authority; it supposes an answer to a just claim; let it be man that meets it, or God, a right to demand underlies it. Holiness is His nature alone and intolerant of evil; it has in itself nothing to do with the claim of justice. To the believer Christ is made righteousness, which is grounded on God's judgment, though it may be entirely settled in our favour; whereas holiness would have been true apart from the question of His authority; it is the essential nature and character.

The angels are said to be holy, but are never said to be righteous or just. The new man rejoices in both. There is entire acquiescence in the authority of God, and delight that the judgment of God has been so met in Christ that He is glorified more than ever. Besides that, there is the moral nature that feels with God. Righteousness is more a bowing to God, holiness is the participation of His own feelings about good and evil. In us the two feelings often mingle. Righteousness is a true balance, the maintenance of what is just in relationships of all kinds. For instance, it is right for a child to obey its parents; it is not merely holy but "right" to do so. The one belongs to the nature quite apart from relationship, or anything of duty, apart from anything that is a sort of obligation which brings in the idea of righteousness.

Hence, we see, Rationalists admit the value of holiness, but they seldom talk of righteousness; for righteousness supposes judgment. Righteousness is a terrible word for a man until he has got hold of Christ. Righteousness, I repeat, proclaims the authority of God. God was holy before sin came into the world; but who could speak of His righteousness before there was the judgment of evil, spite of conscience, and against His express authority? Under the law, therefore, which was the formal assertion of that authority in dealing with men in the flesh, Jehovah, as a righteous God, is continually set forth. "The righteous Lord loveth righteousness," etc. There was neither righteousness nor holiness in Adam before he fell. We have both and become both in Christ. Adam was made upright, but that is not the same thing as being righteous or holy; it was the absence of evil; he was innocent, unfallen.

Righteousness and holiness differ in this respect. Righteousness is the true perception and, of course, the walking in our relative duties as men of God, holiness is rather the rejection in heart and way, according to God's nature, of what is contrary to Him. Holiness, therefore, is a far more absolute thing than righteousness, which takes up what we owe relatively to God and man. It is in contrast with the first man. Adam was good as a creature, but he had no right apprehension of God Himself, or of what evil was according to God. He did not then know sin; there was no evil to know. If one had talked about lust to Adam in the garden of Eden, he must, I believe, have avowed his ignorance of what it meant. Therefore, if the law had been given to Adam, "Thou shalt not covet," he would not have comprehended its meaning, having no experience of sin till afterwards. We have hearts which crave what we have not got, but Adam had not. He was just the sample of creature-goodness in a man. It was not after God, created in the righteousness and holiness of the truth. God made man upright; but uprightness is a different thing from being created in holiness. Upright he was created, and innocent; but the new man is much more, knowing right well, through the Spirit's teaching, what evil is and what good is. Adam only learnt what good and evil are when he fell, never before; he then became conscious of a good that he lost and that he was not, and of an evil that he had fallen into, which God hated and must judge. So when a man is brought to the truth as it is in Jesus, he knew good and evil before with a bad conscience, but now he knows it with a purged and good conscience. There is nothing that could make a conscience so clean as the sacrifice of Jesus. Supposing that any of us were able to live without iniquity to the end of our days, would this make our conscience good? Not in the least. There would always be a bad conscience, because of the consciousness of past, unremoved, unforgiven sin. No human process, nay, nor giving us a new nature, can get rid of the evil we have done. The sacrifice of Christ has done it perfectly. My evil is there judged according to God. The evil of the old man is dealt with in His death before God. Christ rises from the dead and gives me His life, which is the new man. Christ in resurrection is the very source of the new man in my soul. If this be so, we must deal with the old man. It is to faith a thing done with. Jesus has shown me it as a judged thing in His cross, and I must judge it, and in no way allow my old pride and vanity and folly. I have all still within me, but I must treat it as dead: else I shall grieve the Lord, and bring myself under His hand. We have each of us to watch earnestly against the former conversation; but then it easily happens that a person might be enticed by an evil never fallen into before, because he imagined it was impossible for him so to fall. There is nothing so exposes one to fall, as the notion one could not so turn aside. Self-confidence leads away from dependence on God, and has often been the ruin of a Christian man, as far as His glory is concerned.

There is the practical righteousness that God expects from His people, the full result of which is seen in Revelation 19:8. But whilst remembering this, we wish to take up IMPUTED righteousness contrasting it with holiness in this article.

These Scriptures connect the thought of righteousness with a work done outside of the believer altogether, whilst the thought of holiness is linked up with a work done inside the believer. In the former case the work done is that of the Lord Jesus on the cross; in the latter it is that of the indwelling Holy Spirit in the believer.

When the thoughts and affections are governed and kept in order by the truth, there will be a good conscience, a holy and a righteous walk with God and before men. This association of ideas seems beautifully united in Ephesians 4:24; "And that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness;" or, the "righteousness and holiness of truth." The truth produces both. Hence the beauty of the divine order. First, the heart; second, the conduct. Righteousness is the due attention to what we owe relatively to God and man. As says the apostle, "And herein do I exercise myself, to have always a conscience void of offence toward God, and toward men." (Acts 24:16.) This is practical righteousness — a righteousness which gave the apostle amazing courage, holy boldness, when he stood up before his enemies. Holiness is rather that which repels evil — instinctively repelling that which is contrary to God. Thus the happy combination of the "righteousness and holiness of truth" forms the sterling metal of the Christian's breastplate.

H. To be sure it does. Holiness is the quality of a nature which repels evil in its nature, and delights in what is good. Righteousness is founded really on the same principle, but brings in the authority of God, which judges of this and the responsibility of the creature. Now man will admit holiness, because that exalts man, makes him like God, excellent in himself — he has "no guile;" righteousness he does not, because this asserts God's authority — the creature's responsibility. It is making good God's authority against evil by judgment — our real relationship to God. This man will not submit to. He is willing to be free from guile: it exalts him in his own sight. But to be under guilt — no: that humbles him.

Holiness may be distinguished from righteousness thus: the latter is consistency in one's relationships; the former is an inherent abhorrence of iniquity, and delight in what is excellent and good. Measured by such a standard as this, every member of our fallen race stands disqualified by nature for the presence of God. In this "there is no difference, for all have sinned and come short of the glory of God" (Rom. 3:23). It would be as reasonable to expect to gather figs of thistles, or grapes of thorns as to look for natural holiness in a single scion of the first man. It is the beginning of good things with a man when this is frankly and humbly acknowledged before God.

It is a thing very difficult to define if before us as an abstract quality. Take it up, however, in a concrete shape, and an answer is easier. A righteous man is one who is RIGHT in all his relations with God, and consequently with his fellow-men also. It may be asked, “What about the expression ‘the righteousness of God’” found in the epistle to the Romans? It stands in sharpest contrast to man’s sin. It would seem indeed that if sin had not invaded creation God’s righteousness would hardly have been drawn out into display, it would have remained latent in Himself. Holiness on God’s part is absolute. It is His nature; what He is irrespective of all creation outside Himself. Righteousness on His part is relative; it is the quality stamped on all His activities, what He is in every dealing and relation with others. Sin is the infringement of rights, His own rights. Righteousness is the maintenance of rights, His own and all others.

Righteousness, as contrasted with holiness in God, is the judicial estimate of, and dealing with what is right or wrong - involves responsibility to some one, and obligation in the one judged - and, in its exercise, the authoritative acceptance or rejection of what is presented to its judgment. It is used also for that which is the fulfilment of obligation, and acting according to what is due (and in this sense is true even of God), and satisfies that judicial estimate, but also for the just estimate itself too - the righteous Lord loveth righteousness - in all cases, its measure is consistency with the relationship in which we stand - in God, consistency with Himself and His own perfection, maintaining withal the obligation of those relationships in which He has placed us. It is thus doing right according to them, or judging justly how far right is done.

Holiness, on the other hand, is the abhorrence, in the nature, of what is evil, and delight in what is good and pure, and, when we speak of men, God having His own full place in our hearts, as in God it is His separation from all evil, and abhorrence of it. One is connected with judicial title, the other with the delights of the nature.