Doing Good

It's funny how such a famous and practical verse as Micah 6:8 gets completely ignored in our culture, and far too often in our own lives:

Micah 6:8 (ESV)

⁸   He has told you, O man, what is good; 

and what does the Lord require of you 

but to do justice, and to love kindness, 

and to walk humbly with your God?

Pretty simple. You want to do good? (Doing well is another matter.) God has shown us what good looks like. Carry out justice, love kindness (or "mercy" or "loyal love"), and walk humbly with God.

Injustice and abuse are not new. And they are rampant. What is our call? We can't control the systemic abuses of humanity, can we?

It is notable that "you" and "man" are collective singulars in this verse. The call is to mankind ("adam") as a whole. You and I do not act for all mankind - only as individual parts of it - but we do share some responsibility for the actions of our human community. We should be grieved when injustice, meanness, and pride permeate our society, and we should exercise any power God grants us to work against these evil activities.

But isn't it far easier to curse the system, and the frustrating inability to "move the needle" toward good, than it is to carry out justice, kindness, and humility on a PERSONAL level? Do we scream about the evils of our government, our courts, and our society and then personally mistreat our fellow man? Where is our justice, kindness, and humility when we stand opposite a poorly trained barista, a forgetful waiter, or a pre-occupied driver? Or our fellow church member? Or our spouse? Our child? Are we frustrated with an inability to move our own personal needle toward good?

If we acknowledge our shortcomings and remember the gospel, surely we will be better disposed to doing good. For we can only do justice because it was already carried out in Christ, we can only love kindness because it was first poured out on us through Christ, and we can only walk humbly with God through our union with Christ, our Lord. When we fail to do good, let's confess our sin and do good with our next opportunity.

By the way, Micah's call here is the prescribed offering we are to bring in order to worship God. Of all the possible offerings to qualify us for worship, the only acceptable one is v.8. And again, we only have this to offer through Christ. This agrees with Paul's call in Rm 12:1-2. We are to discern "what is good, acceptable and perfect," and then to sacrificially offer ourselves to act on it. That doesn't just prepare us for worship, Paul says it IS worship!

We must respond to this call to do good in gospel order. An old hymn may help us here. It is NOT, "It is well with my soul because I do good." It is rather, "Since it is well with my soul, I will do good." Christ only does good. We are in Christ, and so we should (and can) do good.

Will you?