WHAT GOD REQUIRES

WHAT GOD REQUIRES

"do justly, and love mercy, and walk humbly with God." (Micah 6:8)

I go back to Deuteronomy and find that God requires of man that he should love Him and serve Him, and keep His statutes, quoted in Matthew. I come to Micah and I find that God requires that man should "do justly, and love mercy, and walk humbly with God." (Micah 6:8) In each of these declarations the word "require" is used in our translation, but the Hebrew words are different. They both convey the same idea, but there is a difference of emphasis. The Hebrew word in Deuteronomy means, this is what God asks; this is what God asks. When Micah wrote he used another word with more fire in it, more force in it, which we may safely translate, this is what God insists upon. When the law was given it declared, in our simplest sense of that word, what God requires. But the law having been broken, Micah, calling the people back from their sins, used another word with another emphasis: God insists. The things that God insists upon are that a man shall walk with Him, shall do justly, and shall love mercy. In the New Testament I find the requirements of God in words of Jesus, spoken in answer to a cynical question by a lawyer, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And a second like unto it is this, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hangeth the whole law, and the prophets." (Matt 22:37-40) Everything that Moses and Micah said lies in this, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God.... Thou shalt love thy neighbor." Hear one other word of Jesus in answer to our question. It occurs in the middle of the manifesto. More criticism has been spent on it than on any other of the sayings of Jesus, criticism of an order more perilous than all higher criticism, criticism which attempts to accommodate the great words of Jesus to the low level of the living of people who think they are Christians and are not "Ye therefore shall be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect." (Matt. 5:48) What does "perfect" mean? The exact opposite of sin. Sin, the word most commonly used in the New Testament, means missing the mark. The root idea of perfect is hitting the mark. "Ye therefore shall be perfect." You shall not miss the mark, but hit it. You shall not fail, but succeed. You shall be all God meant you to be. Whether that is a PROMISE or a COMMAND does not at all matter. Whether the mood be INDICATIVE or IMPERITIVE is of no consequence. If it be a command, all His commands are promises. If it be a promise, all His promises are commands. See also 1 John 3:2; Luke 6:40, Rom. 8:29, Col. 1:22; Jude 24; Eph. 4:13.

But what is the revelation of these terms? That God requires from every human being perfection, the realization of the ideal. That is God's 1st requirement. God expects me to be what He made me to be. That is perfection. God does not expect us to be angels, because He has not given us the angelic nature. He expects a man to be a man. He expects a woman to be a woman. He expects a child to be a child. There is nothing more out of harmony with the will of God than a child that ceases to be a child before it has ceased to be a child. There is nothing more out of harmony with the will of God than a man who does not come to manhood when he does come to manhood. Nothing insults high heaven more than a woman who does not become a woman even when she becomes a woman. Your perfection and mine will be as different as are our different lives in outward expression; as identical as are our two lives in life principle. I am not attempting to deal with the outward expression. In a group of people as those that read this article there are as many different expressions as there are people; but the inner essential thing in all life is likeness to God, that is, perfect love and perfect truth. Under the command of these two, all the things of the life are to be realized, the artistic, the mechanical, the business; whatever is in us to be realized at its profoundest and its best. That is the will of God.

God requires from me perfection (Matt. 5:48). That is, the ideal. I cannot give it Him. What does He do for me? He provides for me in Christ forgiveness for my sins (Eph. 4:331-32), and power to go and sin no more (John 8:11). Now what does He require of me? That I take what He provides, that I crown the King He presents, that I trust in the Savior He sends, that I receive the life He places at my disposal. That is the first requirement for the sinning soul. God presents the one all-sufficient Savior, REVEALING THE PATTERN, PROVIDING THE POWER, AND COMMANDING MEN EVERYWHERE TO REPENT AND BELIEVE "INTO" THE SON WHOM HE HAS SET FORTH.

The requirements of God in grace are man's fulfilling of His requirements in law. The actual requirements are realization of the ideal requirements. Am I putting these two things into opposition to each other? By no means.

Has God ever given up His ideal requirement for you or for me? Never. Does He by Jesus Christ consent to take something less than perfection in our life? By no means. Is the work of Jesus Christ that of asking God to excuse and let into heaven multitudes of incompetent souls? By no means. Was the work of Jesus Christ the making of a provision by which a man can be hidden out of God's sight in his impurity? By no means—a thousand times, by no means. Did Jesus Christ come to fling a cloak of righteousness over the filthiness of my rags? By no means. A cloak of righteousness, a robed righteousness, surely yes. I can still sing what my father sang.

Jesus, Thy blood and righteousness My beauty are, my glorious dress; 'Midst flaming worlds, in these arrayed With joy shall I lift up my head.

The robe of His righteousness is never placed upon the filthiness of rags to hide them. The work of Jesus Christ is not that of bringing into the Kingdom of God men who are paralyzed and incompetent; but men made perfect. That is the meaning of the mission of Jesus. God's actual requirement is that man shall believe on Jesus, in order that His ideal requirement that man shall be perfect may be fulfilled. “Now unto Him that is able to guard you from stumbling, and to set you before the presence of His glory without blemish in exceeding joy." (Jude 24) Was anything more stupendous than that ever written? That is what God requires. Nothing less than that will ever satisfy Him. He begins with the actual requirement that we submit ourselves to the perfect Savior Whom He has provided, in order that that Savior may realize in us all that we failed of, and all that we have lost.