The Surprising Meaning of Holiness
How an ancient Hebrew word frees us from the burden of moral superiority.
The word “holy” makes many people cringe. It conjures images of pious posturing—the “holier than thou” attitude of those who look down on others with moral superiority. We use it to characterize individuals who appear judgmental or “excessively positive.”
But this modern understanding has drifted remarkably far from the word’s original meaning. The Bible doesn’t say that being holy means being perfect in the modern sense of the word. It means being different in a fundamental way. And hidden within that powerful idea is an invitation that could change your life.
The Great Misunderstanding
In contemporary language, “holiness” has become an ethical term. People who act “holier than thou” believe they are morally superior to others. But this modern framework—measuring holiness by morality—is entirely different from the ancient Hebrew understanding.
The biblical word for “holy” is qadosh (קָדוֹשׁ). It doesn’t primarily mean morally perfect. It means “set apart.” Separated. Different.
This distinction matters enormously. When we misunderstand holiness as moral flawlessness, we burden ourselves with an impossible standard. We either become prideful, believing we’ve achieved it, or despairing, knowing we never can. Neither response reflects what the biblical authors intended.
Incidentally, in Matthew 5:48, Christ says, “Be perfect as your Father is perfect.” Like qadosh (קָדוֹשׁ), teleios (a Greek word translated as “perfect”) doesn’t primarily mean “morally flawless.” It means “complete, whole, fully developed, mature, or reaching its intended purpose.” The same word describes mature adults versus infants (1 Cor 14:20) and the “full-grown” plants in a field (Mat 13:33 in the Septuagint).
What the Torah Actually Says
The most famous call to holiness appears in Leviticus:
“You shall be holy (qedoshim; קְדֹשִׁים), for I the Lord your God am holy (qadosh; קָדוֹשׁ)” (Lev 19:2).
Think about that statement for a moment. Is God really commanding Israel to be as morally perfect as the Creator of the universe? That seems not just difficult but impossible—and the wider context of the Torah acknowledges this very reality. The entire sacrificial system, detailed earlier in Leviticus, was established to atone for sin and provide a means of restoration because God knew that the people would fall short. The system existed to confront the reality that Israel wouldn’t be perfect. So what does “holy” mean in this context? Not sinless perfection, but being set apart.
The God Who Is Set Apart
Understanding the distinctiveness of Israel’s God illuminates the whole concept. When God tells Israel to be holy because “I, the Lord your God, am holy,” this statement clarifies that the God of Israel was set apart—unique and different—from the gods of other nations.
Consider the first of the Ten Commandments (actually called the “Ten Words” in Hebrew):
“You shall have no other gods before me” (Exo 20:3).
The Hebrew phrase al-panai (עַל-פָּנָי), often translated as “before me,” more literally means “in my presence” or “in addition to me.” The command, then, is one of exclusive allegiance. While the ancient Near Eastern context acknowledged the existence of other claimed deities, Israel was to have nothing to do with them. The God of Israel was “holy”—uniquely set apart—and demanded the same exclusive loyalty from His people.
No Moral Superiority Required
Here’s where the biblical text directly challenges our modern assumptions. Deuteronomy calls Israel “a people holy (qadosh; קָדוֹשׁ) to the Lord” (7:6). But the same book explicitly states that Israel isn’t morally superior to anyone else.
Moses tells his people,
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“Do not say to yourselves, ‘The Lord brought me here to possess this land because of my righteousness (tsedakah; צְדָקָה).’ … It is not because of your righteousness or your upright heart that you are going in to possess their land, but because of the wickedness of these nations” (Deut 9:4–5).
The original Hebrew meaning of “holy” has nothing to do with the “holier than thou” attitude that people use today. Israel was set apart by God’s choice and for God’s purpose, not because of their inherent goodness.
Clean and Unclean: Another Misunderstood Pair
The same dynamic applies to the Hebrew words for “clean” (tahor; טָהוֹר) and “unclean” (tame; טָמֵא). In the Torah, these terms primarily refer to ritual purity, not moral failure.
Leviticus states that if someone develops a skin disease, “the priest shall pronounce him unclean (tame; טָמֵא)” (Lev 13:11). This condition doesn’t imply any misconduct by the patient. It’s about ritual contamination, not sin.
And ritual uncleanness wasn’t permanent. For example, once a sick person recovered and was examined by a priest, they could simply “wash his clothes and be clean (taher; טָהֵר)” (Lev 13:6). Cleanness meant returning to a state of ritual purity, not achieving internal righteousness. The same word for “pure” describes the oil for the tabernacle’s lamps (tehorah; טְהוֹרָה)—oil obviously isn’t morally pure, but it is set apart for sacred use.
Leviticus itself makes the distinction clear when God tells Aaron to “distinguish between the holy (qadosh; קָדוֹשׁ) and the common (chol; חֹל), and between the unclean (tame; טָמֵא) and the clean (tahor; טָהוֹר)” (Lev 10:10). This verse draws a clear line: what is holy is set apart from what is common, and what is clean is separated from what is unclean. Neither category is inherently about personal morality.
Jesus as Our Holiness
This ancient understanding of holiness—being “set apart for a purpose”—finds its ultimate expression in Jesus. The Gospels present Him as the qadosh par excellence, the Holy One of God (Mark 1:24). Yet He constantly shattered the moralistic expectations of the religious elite because He embodied what holiness was always meant to be: not separation from people, but separation for God’s redemptive purpose.
He was set apart not to condemn the unclean but to make them clean. When the bleeding woman touched Him, His holiness went out to heal her (Mark 5:25–34). In Christ, holiness wasn’t a barrier to the impure; it was the power that transformed impurity.
Jesus prayed, “For their sakes I sanctify myself, that they also might be sanctified” (John 17:19). He set Himself apart for God’s mission so that we—the imperfect—could be made holy too. And He accomplished this not through repeated sacrifices, but through the once-for-all offering of Himself (Hebrews 10:10).
Conclusion
The liberating truth is that you don’t need to be perfect to be holy. The heavy burden of “holier than thou” is lifted as soon as we realize that holiness has nothing to do with our moral resume and everything to do with who we are. To be qadosh is to be set apart—not because we are flawless, but because we belong to the One who is.
In a world that demands conformity, the call to holiness is an invitation to stop pretending. It is permission to stop measuring yourself against others and instead rest in the reality that you are distinct by design. You are set apart, not to look down, but to be a bridge. Just as Jesus touched the untouchable and made them clean, your distinct life is meant to draw others in, not keep them out.
Therefore, let go of the performance. Embrace your place as someone chosen and set apart. Let your life be a sanctuary—not of sterile perfection, but of radical welcome, grounded in the Holy One who makes you whole.
Comments (32)
SET APART
You hear the word
and something in you tightens.
Not because you don’t understand it—
but because you think you do.
You’ve seen it worn like a badge,
used like a weapon,
spoken from higher ground
with eyes that never look level.
You’ve heard the tone—
that quiet distance in someone’s voice
that says
“I made it further than you.”
And something in you says—
no.
If that’s what it means,
you don’t want it.
So you step back.
You keep your distance.
You file it away
with all the other words
that feel like they belong to someone else.
But what if
the word you walked away from
isn’t the word that was ever meant?
What if it was never about standing above—
but about being pulled aside?
Not lifted higher—
but called different.
Not polished—
but purposed.
Because somewhere deep in the older language,
before we twisted it into performance,
before we turned it into comparison,
there was a meaning that didn’t ask you
to be better than anyone.
It just asked you
to be set apart.
And that hits different.
Because being better
is exhausting.
It’s a scoreboard that never stays still.
You win for a moment—
then someone passes you.
You measure your worth
against a moving crowd
and wonder why you can’t breathe.
But being set apart—
that’s not a competition.
That’s a calling.
And it doesn’t start with your behavior.
It doesn’t begin with your résumé.
It doesn’t wait for you
to clean everything up first.
It starts with this quiet, unsettling truth:
You were never meant
to blend in.
Not because you’re superior—
but because you’re assigned.
There’s a difference.
One builds walls.
The other builds purpose.
And we’ve been confusing the two
for a long time.
We thought it meant
never making mistakes.
So we pretended.
We learned how to speak right,
stand right,
act like we had everything together
while something inside us
was quietly falling apart.
We thought being clean
meant never being touched by anything messy.
But if you look closely—
really closely—
you start to notice something strange.
The ones who carried the real weight of it—
they didn’t stay distant.
They stepped in.
Into the places everyone else avoided.
Into the lives people had already written off.
Into the moments
that didn’t look redeemable.
And instead of being contaminated—
they changed the atmosphere.
Like light
doesn’t ask darkness to clean itself up first.
Like water
doesn’t refuse the dirt—
it washes it.
There’s something in that
that doesn’t fit the version you were given.
Because real separation
was never about isolation.
It was about direction.
Not separating from people—
but being anchored to something deeper.
Something steady.
Something that doesn’t shift
with every opinion,
every trend,
every new definition
of what you’re supposed to be.
You ever notice
how hard the world works
to make everything the same?
Same goals.
Same measures.
Same ideas of success.
Be more.
Have more.
Show more.
Prove more.
And if you can’t keep up—
hide it.
Polish it.
Pretend it’s not there.
But something in you knows—
that’s not it.
Because even when you win that game,
it doesn’t feel like winning.
It feels like maintenance.
Like holding a pose
you’re afraid to drop.
And then comes the quiet question—
the one you don’t say out loud:
What if I was never meant
to fit into this at all?
What if the pressure you feel
isn’t because you’re failing—
but because you’re forcing yourself
into something
you were never shaped to hold?
Because being set apart
doesn’t mean you’ve arrived.
It means you’ve been claimed
for something specific.
And that something
doesn’t always look impressive.
Sometimes it looks like choosing differently
when it would be easier not to.
Sometimes it looks like staying
when everything in you wants to walk.
Sometimes it looks like reaching
toward the very thing
you were taught to avoid.
Not because it’s safe—
but because it’s necessary.
Because what’s set apart
isn’t protected from the world.
It’s sent into it.
And that’s where it breaks—
the version you were given.
Because if it was about perfection,
you’d be disqualified already.
You know it.
I know it.
There’s too much behind you.
Too many moments
you’d rewrite if you could.
Too many things
you still don’t have figured out.
So if that’s the standard—
you’re out.
But what if that was never the standard?
What if the measure
was never flawlessness—
but fullness?
Not never failing—
but becoming complete.
Not proving you’re enough—
but growing into what you were meant to be.
That’s different.
That’s something you can step into
without pretending.
Something that doesn’t ask you
to erase your past—
but to let it be transformed.
And that’s the part
that hits hardest.
Because it means
you don’t get to hide behind the excuse anymore.
You don’t get to say
“I’m not good enough for that.”
Because it was never about being good enough.
It was about being willing.
Willing to stand
when standing costs you something.
Willing to stay
when leaving would be easier.
Willing to carry something different
in a world that rewards sameness.
Willing to be set apart—
not for your image,
but for your impact.
And suddenly
it’s not a label anymore.
It’s a responsibility.
Because if you are set apart—
then your life
isn’t just about you.
It’s about what moves through you.
What changes because you showed up.
What becomes possible
because you didn’t blend in
when you had every reason to.
And that’s where it lands.
Not in perfection.
Not in performance.
But in purpose.
So maybe the word
you’ve been avoiding
isn’t the problem.
Maybe it’s the invitation.
Not to rise above people—
but to reach into places
others won’t go.
Not to prove something—
but to become something
real.
Something whole.
Something that doesn’t need
to announce itself—
because it’s felt.
And maybe—
just maybe—
being set apart
isn’t about who you’re better than.
It’s about what you’re here for.
And once you see that—
you don’t walk away from it anymore.
You step into it.
Thank you for sharing!
Thank you to remind me th cat i dont NEED to Be PERFECT to be Holy.
Aikya Namaste
We all need that reminder!
Shalom Alechum Doctor Eli, This message makes me ponder so many other situations in the Bible, like why God accepted Able's offering over Cains, -Able had to set himself appart to raise a sacrifice, and he had to set the animal appart from the flock. Wodering what his parents thought about that, did this disturb his brother so much? Abraham , no going back after he smashed all the idles, and Moses was set appart not long after birthand many others. Have myself been uncomfotable socially, so have become somewhat reclusive, and that is good for me in many ways. I'm really enjoying learning the Bible from the Jewish perspective, especially because the English translations are so diluted. Thankyou very much🙏🕊💞🌞🌻🙋♀️
May the Lord bless you and keep you!
Hi Dr. Eli.
I agree with your take that qadosh can/does mean "set apart." But I disagree that God isn't calling us to perfection. He is! He called Adam and Eve to that ... and they failed. God didn't change his standards. His call to perfection remains. And, yes, it's impossible! That very impossibility drives us to Jesus and the cross! Only in Jesus are my sins paid for; Jesus' perfect life is also credited to my account, all because God is gracious.
Respectfully,
Thomas
“Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you'll land among the stars.” ― Norman Vincent Peale
Thank you Dr Eli,
I always appreciate your wisdom and point of view on these subjects.
I have always thought of Holiness as a mountain to climb. As if there was a summit which some people finally reach but I continually strive for.
In reality I find the mountain of Holiness like a game of snakes and ladders. I do well and make good progress and then I throw what appears to be a good number on the dice but I land on a snakes head and tumble down and down.
Perhaps I should view Holiness as a journey in life and not a mountain? A journey needs preparation and navigation, the Holy Spirit of G-d no less. The Holy route or pathway is the one unlike the others because it leads to the light of the world, Yeshua.
Thank you for sharing your personal journey, Jeremy!
I am so grateful to those of you who have decided to help me grow this ministry! May God bless you and keep you! If you are interested in making a contribution of any size, whether one- time or ongoing, please click here.
Last Friday our rabbi said in his sermon that there is a Yiddish word for the next level of holiness. That word is mensh."
That's cute. For those that don't know. "Mensch" is yidish/german for a man in the sense of a human being (more precisely in the sense of good human being".
Amen. Praise the Lord.
Thanks for giving a wonderful insights and real meaning of being holy. Thanks dear Eli
Abel, blessings and much peace!
Exactly. Great message, brother.
Check out cqod.com
I am not big on poetry, but I do enjoy it from time to time. Thank you for sharing.
Thank you Brother Eli, your message has completely unblock my lack of understanding on this subject. It has brough peace to my soul and joy to my heart.
God bless you, Joe! Thank you for sharing!
I am so grateful to those of you who have decided to help me grow this ministry! May God bless you and keep you! If you are interested in making a contribution of any size, whether one- time or ongoing, please click here.