He has told you, O man, what is good, and what the Lord really wants from you: He wants you to carry out justice, to love faithfulness, and to live obediently before your God.
Into the Text
Have you ever gotten something really wrong before? Maybe you’ve been listening to some music, singing along, and you realize that you really don’t know the words. You’ve been singing it wrong the whole time. Maybe you were on the way to your destination and realized you were going in the wrong direction. Though these are silly examples, it is what Micah is addressing here in the beginning of Micah 6.
The people of Israel and Judah had gotten their faith all wrong. They had started to look like the nations around them serving false gods and rejecting the true God: Yahweh. So God asks them, “What have I done to deserve this?” He lists out His faithful acts of rescuing Israel from slavery in Egypt (Exodus 12-15) and provision in the desert (Numbers 22-24). God had always been faithful. It was the people who had forgotten their God and refused to follow Him.
What does God require of His followers? Micah tells us to carry out justice, love, and faithfulness and to live obediently to God. Essentially, God wants us to love Him and love others.
We can equate going to church or doing good things as the sum of following God. This is not the case. Yes, our actions can be indicators of who we follow and love, but God ultimately looks at our hearts.
If we have not trusted in Jesus for the forgiveness of our sins and our hearts are not fully surrendered to Him, then our actions are meaningless. That’s because we will not be doing the good things for the glory of God, but rather to impress Him and others or to feel proud about ourselves. Instead, God wants our actions to be done out of sincere devotion to Him and real love for the people around us. How short we fall of His standards if left to ourselves! We need to humbly ask Him for help so that we can increasingly love Him and others the way He wants us to.
Love God and love others. It’s that simple.
Prayer
God, thank you that all you ask of me is my heart. May I live fully surrendered to you each day and love others in response to your love. Amen.