Well, today's question comes to us from a listener named Andrew. "Pastor John, hello. I was wondering if you can explain the difference between God's holiness and God's righteousness, and how does that apply to us? What does it mean that we are supposed to be holy and righteous? What is the difference for us?" If we start at the bottom, that is where we live, I would say that the kind of behavior that would be called holy and the kind of behavior that would be called righteous are in fact the same behavior, but viewed from different angles.

In other words, I don't think it's ever the case that we would do something that would be called righteous but would be unholy, or that we would ever do something called holy that would be unrighteous. So when it comes to the actual deeds and attributes, all holy behavior will be righteous behavior, and all righteous behavior will be holy behavior.

That's the first thing. Now, that doesn't mean that the words are identical in meaning. So what's the basic difference? The essential idea behind the concept of holiness is being separated from, distinct from, that which is ordinary or common. So in its initial usage, it could refer to something bad or good.

There might be a temple prostitute who's holy because she's not an ordinary prostitute. But in the Bible, that's not the way the word holy is used. Holiness has taken on a moral meaning that derives from God's holiness. In other words, God is separated from all that is not God and is in a class absolutely by himself, which means that God, like the rarest diamond in the universe, absolutely unique, is infinitely valuable.

His holiness, therefore, most essentially consists in his absolute uniqueness and therefore the infinite value of his beauty and his excellence. He's in a class by himself. He's above all things. He's sui generis. He's distinct from everything that is not God, and therefore he is of infinite and of absolute worth.

When Isaiah 6 describes the angelic beings crying out, "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts. The whole earth is full of his glory." It seems to me that the reason it doesn't say, "The whole earth is full of his holiness," which is kind of what you'd expect—"Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts.

The whole earth is full of his holiness." And it doesn't say that. It says, "The whole earth is full of his glory." The reason, I think, is that holiness is conceived of as the intrinsic worth and beauty and purity and value and excellence of God, and his glory is conceived of as what that looks like when it goes public, when it fills the earth and is made visible for humans to see.

He is holy, holy, holy, and he fills the earth with his public manifest holiness called now glory. Now this implies that God's holiness in action is all of his thinking, all of his feeling, all of his doing, which is in accord with his infinite value. That's the way I'm defining God's holy action, holy thinking, holy feeling.

If God ever acted in a way that somehow contradicted his utterly unique existence and his infinite worth and beauty, his action would be unholy. Now right at this point, there's an overlap with the concept of righteousness. Righteousness doesn't have the basic idea of being separate and distinct from what is common.

Righteousness has the basic idea of conforming to a standard, and when that standard is conformed to, the behavior, the thinking, the feeling is right. It's right. And you can see how the two concepts produce the same behavior, because if you ask what is the ultimate standard by which all thinking and feeling and acting should be measured, the answer for God and for us is the absolute worth and beauty of God himself.

Or you could say in its manifest form, the glory of God. Everything you do should be in accord with the glory of God, the worth of God manifest in his glory. All behavior that is consistently done in accord with God's glory is righteous behavior. It conforms to the highest standard.

And just in passing, I'll say we have the Word of God because as sinners, we can't know all that conforms to God's worth without his guidance. So if somebody says, "Well, what about the Word of God?" I say, "Oh, the Word of God is indispensable, but I want to define righteousness and holiness as what they are intrinsically, not just to say, 'Obey the Word of God and you're righteous.'" That would be true, but it wouldn't tell you why it's ultimately righteous.

So the Word of God is indispensable in telling us what does conform to the infinite worth of God and to the glory of God. When the psalmist says in Psalm 147.11, "For your namesake, O Lord, preserve my life. In your righteousness, bring me out of trouble." That parallel between "for your namesake" and "in your righteousness" gives a clue.

For God to act in his righteousness is to act for his namesake, that is, for his glory, that is, in accord with the ultimate standard of his glory or his manifest worth and beauty. So my conclusion is that God's holiness is his complete and utter uniqueness distinct from all other beings in his infinite and absolute worth and beauty, and that his holy behavior is behavior that accords with that infinite worth and beauty, which means it overlaps with his righteousness, which is his unwavering commitment to the highest standard imaginable, namely his glory, which means that when God acts in a holy way, he is always acting in a righteous way and vice versa.

And that's true of us as well. When we are distinct from all that is sinful and bring our lives into conformity with God's infinite worth and beauty, that is, when we're holy, we are at the same time acting in righteousness because we're conforming to the highest standard in the universe.

Amen. Thank you, Pastor John, and thank you for listening and making the podcast part of your day and your commute. It is an honor to join you as part of your day. And for more about this podcast, check out our online home at DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn. Well, I'm not sure what's up next on Wednesday, but I do know that we have a trio of Reformation-related episodes in the works, one talking about the five solas of the Reformation, another one talking about your, Pastor John, your favorite biographies of Reformers, and then we are going to have a 30-minute conversation with a Reformation scholar coming up.

We haven't published many long-form conversations of late, but we hope to publish one soon, talking about how Martin Luther single-handedly made the printing press and the book publishing market into what we know of them today. All of that is coming up later this month as the monumental 500th anniversary of the Reformation approaches at the end of October.

For now, I'm your host, Tony Reinke. Thanks for listening to the Ask Pastor John podcast with longtime author and pastor, John Piper. We'll see you on Wednesday. 1. John Piper, The Reformation 1. John Piper, The Reformation 1. John Piper, The Reformation