“He has showed you, O man, what is good.
And what does the Lord require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy
and to walk humbly with your God.”
So, what does this mean? God is speaking, and He used the singular pronoun “man,” which makes it personal, but surely He is speaking to His people (specifically, Israel, which can always be generalized to all of His people), so I would be wise to listen. The Lord requires this of me: to act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with my God.
Hmmm. Am I doing this? Am I acting justly? Am I loving mercy and walking humbly with my God? When I think of these things, I try to contextualize them into my own life. When it comes to justice, I have to think of injustice and/or reasons to apply the concept of justice. It’s like forgiveness. If I want to know what forgiveness is all about, I better have someone in my life that I need to forgive or ask forgiveness of. Some of these concepts are only really learned when I have to walk them out.
I think God’s will is for us to learn from the mistakes of others (like seeing how Israel blew it over and over again) and being able to read about these things and apply them to our lives. It would be good to not make the same mistakes that we read about and already know the right response. Sometimes this is the case. Other times we can apply these lessons when we face them. We learn them even more when we add our own failure to the mix. Then we taste and see how bitterness and sorrow is in real life. It helps us remember the lessons when our own emotions sear the experience into our conscience.
I know that, if I have a hard time forgiving someone, then I must not really understand forgiveness. Jesus taught us about forgiveness more than once. One parable talks about a guy that owed a ton of money to someone in authority. He was given a pronouncement that would send him into “debtor’s prison” until he paid back what he owed. He cried and pleaded for mercy and the one in authority (a king in this instance) showed mercy and forgave this man’s debt. This guy was relieved, but he didn’t really understand what had happened, because he found a guy that owed him a significant but meager compared to the debt he was just forgiven and made the same pronouncement of debtor’s prison to this guy. Instead of having mercy on him, he had him thrown into prison. Of course, some observers saw this and reported it to the king, who turned around and blasted this guy for not showing the same mercy to others that he had been shown. He was then cast into the judgment that he’d previously been pardoned of.
One detail of this story that sticks out is the poor guy that had been thrown into prison for the meager sum… There’s no mention of him being released as part of this justice. That really sucks. I’ve heard it said that when you don’t forgive someone and/or you harbor hatred and bitterness in your heart towards them, it hurts no one (especially the deserving scum you’re mad at in the first place), but yourself. In other words, the choice to be bitter, mad, hateful and unforgiving only hurts the one who makes that choice. The recipient of your bitterness and hatred never really receives it. It just stews and ferments in your own heart.
Jesus drops a real zinger at the end of that parable, too, when He says, “This is how My heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother from your heart.”
Wow! I pay attention to this if and when I ever find myself still grumbling about the wrong that someone has done against me. I can justify my bad attitude all day long, but if I ask myself, ‘Is this the kind of forgiveness that I want God to apply to my life?’ Then I realize that my flavor of forgiveness doesn’t taste so well.
And what’s this “walking humbly with your God” business? I think it’s a similar attitude. It’s not too hard to realize how great and merciful God is — especially when we’ve been on the receiving end of His mercy and forgiveness. It’s only honest to realize that God is the One Whom we should thank and give credit to. If you hear someone complain about an athlete that gives glory and thanks to God during this championship football post-season, do your best to ignore the complaint. It’s possible (not absolutely confirmed…) that this complainer doesn’t understand the mercy/walk humbly principle. Perhaps they do understand it and are just more brilliant at defining it than the athlete is, but perhaps instead we should give the athlete a break and let him or her give the humble thanks and credit to God for His provision.
I certainly get mad when someone does me wrong, but it sure does me good to remember these principles when I think about justice and “making things right.”
The rest of Micah chapter 6 continues with God kind of in a bad mood, underlining His points, like:
“…Shall I acquit a man with dishonest scales…
Her rich men are violent;
her people are liars and their tongues speak deceitfully.”
He rattles off a few of His punishments, like:
“…You will eat but not be satisfied;
your stomach will still be empty.
You will store up but save nothing…”
I think God is serious about this justice stuff. All of us know, deep down inside, that it’s wrong to rip people off. Another principle I glean from this might be explained thus: “When you’re weak, humble yourself. You’re already down, just take the next step. And, when you’re strong, walk humbly.”
Another glib statement could be: “God is rich in mercy. Borrow some of that mercy to share with others…”
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