What Does God Want?

What does the Lord require of you? To act justly
and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.
                                             —Micah 6:8

Israel grumbled that God was too demanding: hard to understand and impossible to please. What does he want? they asked.

Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousand rivers of oil? Shall I offer my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? (Mic. 6:6-7).

No, none of that, said the prophet. What God wants is very simple: “To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.”

Bad behavior can’t be bought off by writing a check. It isn’t what you bring, but what you are that is the God-desired coin—not the sacrifice of substance, but the surrender of self. “Not your possessions but you” (2 Cor. 12:14).

God’s requirements reduced to three:
justice; mercy; humility.

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