Not Enough
The prophet Micah lived many hundreds of years before Christ was revealed. He lived under the law given through Moses and would have been faithful to follow the law. However, he also understood the importance of the commands of God in a way that doesn’t match how many believers today understand the law.
Many view the law of the Old Testament as the means by which people obtained righteousness prior to Christ providing righteousness on behalf of his people. They understand the sacrifices as the means by which people were purified of the sins that they had committed. However, Micah understood the actual purpose of the law differently.
“With what shall I come before the Lord,
Micah 6:6-7
and bow myself before God on high?
Shall I come before him with burnt offerings,
with calves a year old?
Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams,
with ten thousands of rivers of oil?
Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression,
the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?”
No amount of calves, rams, or oil were capable of making a person righteous before God. He understood that there is nothing man can give to God that is sufficient to make us right before him. Even what is most precious to us (our children) wouldn’t impress God (in fact, he specifically commands against it).
If all of the temple ordinances aren’t enough to make a man right before God, how can a person be made right? Sure, now we have the perfect righteousness of Christ to depend upon for our standing with God, but that hadn’t been revealed in Micah’s time.
What God Values
He has told you, O man, what is good;
Micah 6:8
and what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
and to walk humbly with your God?
God, through his prophet, reveals here what he requires of his people. There are three things. To do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with God.
The first is a responsibility to live justly. Despite modern day perversions of the concept, justice is to give to each what they are due. This means punishing wrongdoing as well as honoring good, without any prejudice for or against doing so for any reason (bribery, racism, classism, etc…). It is even wrong to practice “positive discrimination” where you are prejudiced against those perceived to be advantaged (such as the rich [Exodus 23:3]).
The second is a to love kindness. This doesn’t undermine justice, but it will temper it. To love kindness is to be sympathetic toward others. This will include grace given to those who have done wrong but desire to do what is right. It will even mean charity toward those who need aid in turning their life around. While justice say the wicked deserve to be punished, kindness says we are eager to restore others even at personal cost to ourselves.
The final requirement is perhaps the most difficult for people to comprehend in our age. To walk humbly with God is to submit ourselves first to his understanding of things rather than our own view of what works best. Why would Micah participate in temple sacrifices that he knew wouldn’t make him justified before God? Because he knew it as a way to walk humbly before him!
When God gave Israel the law, he was providing them with culture that would point them toward Christ. While Micah couldn’t have known that, he practiced his faith in God by fulfilling the ceremonial and legal requirements of that law knowing full well that it didn’t make him perfect.
Yet at the same time, it did make him right before God. Not because his works made him justified, but because he was justified by his faith in the God who forgives. For his part, he was simply doing justice, loving kindness, and walking humbly before the God he knew would be faithful even when he was not!
Good News
What Christ has made clear, but has always been true, is that God is the only one who can justify man. In God’s justice, he requires perfection. There’s nothing we can do that is good enough to save us, because what is “good enough” is the requirement and anything less than that is the problem! Only Christ’s righteousness is sufficient.
However, in his fulfillment of the law on our behalf he has made a way for us to simply live for him. If we pursue justice, desire kindness, and humble ourselves to the fact that only Christ is sufficient, we have done everything God requires of his people! God isn’t laying up endless burdens. He has done the heavy lifting so that we can live well in these simple requirements!
Trust in the Lord with all your heart,
Proverbs 3:5-6
and do not lean on your own understanding.
In all your ways acknowledge him,
and he will make straight your paths.
