There is a verse in the Bible that is commonly known as The Micah Mandate, found in Micah 6:8: “He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” I can remember first reading this verse years ago and thinking “Oh is that all God wants? I can do that.”
Boy was I wrong!
I think I have spent the majority of my adult life looking for the to-do list. You know, the one God has written out for me, the things He wants me to do and accomplish, that will make Him happy with me. The things I can check off that mean I can relax and know I’m doing a good job. A lot of you reading that will think in your heart, “well it’s the Bible, duh. That’s your to-do list.” And there’s some truth to that. There’s a lot of “do this, don’t do that” in the Bible. The guardrails and bumpers that God has recorded for us to keep us from hurting ourselves.
But I’m being real when I say I’m looking for the list of things that will make God happy with me. It’s a flaw in my perception of God and His love for us. I know this, in my head, but getting that knowledge the scant 18 inches from my head to my heart has been a life-long struggle.
I have a need to be approved. I have a need to know that I’m doing a good job. I don’t need constant reassurance, “words of affirmation” or whatever you want to call it. I do need to have something to compare my life to and know I’m stacking up okay. For a long time, I compared myself, my life, with others around me. Depending on the season I was in, my “yardstick” may have been questionable, but I have always looked around me for confirmation that I’m doing okay.
There’s a verse in 2 Corinthians that has stuck in my mind in that vein: “For we are not bold to class or compare ourselves with some of those who commend themselves; but when they measure themselves by themselves and compare themselves with themselves they are without understanding.” So, as I’ve done my best to follow Jesus over these last 6 or so years, my “yardstick” has become the Word. That’s a good thing, and there’s no denying that. But me being me, I have a tendency to take it way too far.
The “too far” for me is trying to find that famous “list.” I want a clearly outlined, numbered and bulleted, bold and italicized list, complete with headings and subcategories, definitions and directions, that I can read, refer to, check off and go on with my life.
But. That’s not how God operates. It’s quite frustrating for someone like me. He’s very vague sometimes, very esoteric and ethereal, when I just want a “do this, then do that, then repeat step 1 for six more rounds.” As a side note, I don’t even mind repeating steps if I know how many times I need to repeat them. That’s saying something for someone who intensely dislikes backtracking and inefficiency.
But, again, that’s not how God operates. I think sometimes that He deliberately operates differently expressly to frustrate those of us who need that step-by-step formula.
The Bible is full of accounts of people and nations who latched on to a to-do list and thought as long as they were fulfilling their steps, checking things off the list, they were in right standing before God. To be clear, the Bible also shares the stories of those who adopted their own to-do list, leaving God off of it completely, and how that worked out for them. But I’m specifically thinking of the nation of Israel, who had the ultimate to-do list in the form of the Ten Commandments, as well as an entire scope of behavior rules that supported the Ten Commandments, and yet wandered so far from the heart of God.
God is holy, completely other than what we can fathom. I cannot begin to understand who He is in His entirety. His word shares aspects of His character – His love and mercy, His justice and grace, His righteousness and power – but never to the full scope of who He is. We humans, with our human brains and understanding, are not meant to know Him to the full, not yet (1 Corinthians 13:12). But what He does share in His love letter to us reveals His heart toward His creation. And a recurring, consistent theme throughout the Book is one of relationship, not rules.
He wants our hearts. He wants us to lean into Him. He wants us to want Him, to love Him. Our obedience is a result of our relationship with Him, not the basis of it.
So, can I “do” the Micah Mandate? Nope. Not even close. Oh I can try, give it my best shot, and on some days I can get part of it right, but I’m not capable of walking out what He has told us is good and what He requires of us. There’s too much of “me” in me to achieve that – without Him.
And that’s the point. We can’t complete a to-do list that makes us acceptable and approved by God. That’s the whole problem with sin and human nature at it’s root. We can’t. We are born sinners, we are born selfish and self-centered, we are born with a vein of sin in our darkened hearts. We are born dead. Jesus came to make us alive in Him.
A religious “to-do” has to be replaced by a relationship with our Creator. I can’t do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with my God without Him.
Of late I have particularly been guilty of failing at all three. And, full transparency, I’ve been categorizing and columnizing my actions to compare it to God’s standard, then justifying and rationalizing in an effort to get them to fit. They don’t fit. I’ve messed up. A lot. And I hate that.
I’m not doing “justice” for myself, I’m leaning on “mercy.” Why is that a problem, you might ask? Because I’m internally demanding justice for everyone else – tattling on and complaining about people to God – while accepting the gift of mercy for myself. Am I loving “kindness?” Oh definitely for myself. Not so much for others. Leaning on the kind heart of God for my own failures but cataloging and critiquing the perceived failures of others. Walking humbly with my God? If by humble you mean pridefully, then sure. I’ve got a pretty tall I-beam of pride running up my spine. Again, excusing my own errors but camping out on the errors of others.
My heart is a mess, a jumbled confusing morass of junk.
I don’t know how to fix it. I don’t know that I can fix it. In fact, I’m pretty sure I can’t. I’m pretty sure, based on what I’ve read in God’s love letter to us, that fixing this sinful heart is completely out of my scope. Otherwise, Jesus would not have had to step into humanity and take on the sins of the world. He wouldn’t have had to die if I could repair my sinful heart myself.
The fable of “I can do that” needs to die. Human history is full of people who thought they could, but God knows us, knows our hearts and the limitations of them, and sent His Son to do what we cannot.
I can’t do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with my God, without His help. None of that is native to me, it’s all foreign. So, today, I choose to lean into the heart of God, ask Him to cleanse my sinful heart, and help me walk out His character in every thought, word, and deed. And if, at the end of the day, I can look at God and know that I’ve leaned into Him, however imperfectly, I choose to rest in a well-spent day.
I can’t do it, but He can.