Is Your Righteousness Filthy Rags?

During yesterday’s church gathering, we sang a new song, with this chorus:

These guilty hands are raised, filthy rags are all I bring
And I have come to hide beneath your wings
These holy hands are raised, washed in the fountain of your grace
And now I wear your righteousness

The reference to “filthy rags” is from Isaiah 64:6, "We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment (NIV, “filthy rags”)." What does Isaiah mean when he says that our righteous deeds are like filthy rags? Recent blog posts on Romans 8:3-4 have reflected on the fact that Jesus was condemned for our sin “in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us.” We have noticed that this fulfillment refers to our genuine, though imperfect, life of love for God and others.

Are these acts of love, wrought in the Spirit’s power, filthy rags in God’s sight? That seems to be what Isaiah is saying, because he says “all our righteous deeds” are like a polluted garment. And that seems to be what we were singing yesterday morning. You see how this can be confusing. And because I want us to sing with understanding (1 Corinthians 14:15), it’s worth clarifying this phrase, “filthy rags” (in the following five paragraphs, I am summarizing from John Piper, Future Grace, pp. 150-52).

Isaiah 64:6 does not mean that all righteousness performed by God’s people is unacceptable to God. In the context of the book of Isaiah, Isaiah is referring to people whose righteousness is in fact hypocritical. It is not real righteousness (read Isaiah 1 to see the kind of “righteousness” the Israelites have been bringing). In verse 5, Isaiah says that God approvingly meets “him who joyfully works righteousness.”

We need to be clear that none of God’s people – before or after the perfect sacrifice of Jesus on the cross – could be accepted by a perfectly holy God unless the perfect righteousness of Jesus was credited to them (see Romans 5:19, 2 Corinthians 5:21). But that does not preclude God from producing in these justified people an experiential, lived-out righteousness that is not a filthy rag. In fact, He does just this, and this righteousness is precious to God and pleasing to Him.

Consider a biblical example, then an everyday example. The biblical example isJohn the Baptist’s parents, Zechariah and Elizabeth. Luke says of them, "they were both righteous before God, walking blamelessly in all the commandments and statutes of the Lord" (Luke 1:6). This righteousness was not a polluted garment. Luke is not condemning these people as filthy and wicked with these words. They were not sinlessly perfect, but their righteousness was a life of habitual faith and obedience that received cleansing from its imperfections through the provisions of forgiveness that are in Christ, and were already operating (in a temporary, incomplete way) in the Old Testament sacrificial system. For support of this, see Psalm 32, where the righteous are those whose transgression is forgiven and to whom the Lord counts no iniquity.

Now, the everyday example: when I give my daughter a command (for instance, “clean your room”) and she does what I tell her to do – and does it with a spirit of compliant, happy trust in my wisdom and care – I do not call her obedience a polluted garment, even if the room is not perfectly clean. Neither does God, when we obey Him in the Spirit’s power, working in us the very things that please Him (Hebrews 13:21). But if my daughter had cleaned her room immaculately – angry and murmuring and slamming doors all the while – I might call that a polluted garment. And so does God. External conformity to commands without internal heart change arouses some of Jesus’ most stinging rebukes (Go back to Isaiah 1, or see Matthew 23 for an example).

It is this kind of “righteousness” – external conformity to commands devoid of genuine faith and reliance upon God and His grace (which is no real righteousness at all) – that Isaiah is condemning, and that we ought to have in mind when we sing, “These guilty hands are raised, filthy rags are all I bring.” Perhaps you knew that as you were singing, but perhaps you didn’t. And it’s important that you know what you’re singing!

If your singing, church attending, tithing, Bible reading, etc. are devoid of genuine love for God and dependent faith in Jesus, your “righteousness” is filthy rags. If you do these things in a begrudging way because you think these things will get God off your back, force His hand into blessing you, or earning yourself entry into heaven, then you are bringing filthy rags to God. Confess your hypocrisy, raise your guilty hands, and flee to Jesus for refuge, who alone is our only hope of righteousness.

But in Christ, by faith, through the Spirit, there is another kind of righteousness that is possible, an obedience which is a fragrant offering and delight to our heavenly Father (see also Colossians 1:10, Philippians 4:18, 1 Thessalonians 4:1, Hebrews 13:16). So as we sing the glorious truth that we can contribute nothing to our righteous standing before God, let us remember that now, as forgiven, cleansed, Spirit-filled worshipers of Jesus, washed in the fountain of His grace and wearing His righteousness alone for our justification, filthy rags are not all we bring to God.

"Now may the God of peace who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of the eternal covenant, equip you with everything good that you may do his will, working in us that which is pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever" (Hebrews 13:20-21).

Amen!