“And what does the LORD require of you but to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God?” (Micah 6:8)
The great prophet Micah asked a very important question, in effect: what are the divine requirements of God? What does God expect, require, demand, and command from me? Micah gives us three answers to that question.
His first answer is that we should do justly. In other words, we should be a conduit of justice. We should stand up against injustice anytime and anywhere we see injustice. Since we live in a world that is filled with injustice this could be very dangerous. Jesus Christ did this perfectly and it got Him crucified.
Micah’s second answer is that we should love mercy. Mercy is unconditional love. This is the chief characteristic of the love of God. David believed that the mercy and the unconditional love of God would follow or pursue him all the days of his life.
Micah’s final answer to his profound question is that we are to walk humbly with our God. Humility has consistently been a characteristic of the great old souls we have known in this life. C.S. Lewis wrote that pride is the mother of all sins and we read in the Proverbs that God hates pride. We can see why God would hate pride because He hates sin.
Are you willing to be the person Micah profiled? There is a sense in which we cannot become that just, merciful and humble person through our own efforts. But these three answers give us a profile of the person God wants us to be.
Are you willing to let God give you the grace to cultivate the divine requirements of justice, mercy and humility to be that person?
Dick Woodward, 20 March 2011