Micah 6:8

(Verse 8) I will show you, O man, what is good, and what the Lord requires of you: to do justice, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God. LXX: It has been told to you, O man, what is good, or what the Lord requires of you: only to do justice, and to love mercy, and to be prepared to walk with your God. For you hesitate, O people of Israel, indeed the entire human race (for I am not speaking specifically to the Jewish people, but generally to all mankind, my message reaches everyone), how you can appease God for your sins if you do not have victims with which your wickedness can be atoned: I will answer you, what God seeks, indeed I have shown it already in the Law. For it is written in Deuteronomy: And now, Israel, what does the Lord your God require of you, but to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all his ways, and to love him, and to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and to keep the commandments of the Lord your God and his statutes, which I command you today for your good? (Deut. X, 12) The Lord asks of us, seeking our necessary salvation, demands to receive what is profitable for the giver, so that we may exercise judgment, that is, do nothing without reason and counsel, and consider before our mind judges what it should do, and afterward complete it in action; so that we may love mercy, and not be merciful as if compelled or by necessity, for God loves a cheerful giver (II Cor. IX). And let us not say, go today, and return tomorrow, and I will give to you. And when we shall have done judgment, and loved mercy, what reward shall we receive? We shall walk with the Lord our God, as Enoch walked with God according to the faith of the Hebrew volumes (Genesis 5; Ecclesiasticus 44), and pleased him, and was not found, because God had translated him. […]

Here is a priest who serves at every hour with great fear while walking humbly with the Lord his God in accordance with the word of the prophet. Meanwhile another priest is hardly capable of having that much fear even when he is about to …

To love mercy - To be kind, merciful and compassionate to all, not using severity towards any. Walk humbly with thy God - Keep up a constant fellowship with God, by humble, holy faith.

He calls upon them to hear the voice of his judgments, and sets the sins in order before them for which he still proceeded in his controversy with them (

quarantine:debris (2026-07-29) — unbalanced-parens

He hath showed me, O man, what is good,....

He hath showed thee, O Man, what is good - All the modes of expiation which ye have proposed are, in the sight of God, unavailable; they cannot do away the evil, nor purify from the guilt of sin. He himself has shown thee what is good; that which is profitable to thee, and pleasing to himself. And what is that? Answer, Thou art: - I. To do justly; to give to all their due.

THIS is the essence of the Law of God, the spiritual side of it—its Ten Commandments are an enlargement of this verse. The Law is spiritual and touches the thoughts, the intents, the emotions, the words, the actions—but especially God demands the heart. Now it is our great joy that what the Law requires, the Gospel gives. "Christ is the end of the Law for righteousness to everyone that believes." In Him we meet the requirements of the Law, first, by what He has done for us and next, by what He works in us.

30:11-14). what is good--"the good things to come" under Messiah, of which "the law had the shadow." The Mosaic sacrifices were but suggestive foreshadowings of His better sacrifice (Heb 9:23; To have this "good" first "showed," or revealed by the Spirit, is the only basis for the superstructure of the moral requirements which follow. Thus the way was prepared for the Gospel.

WE shall chiefly dwell upon the last line—"To walk humbly with your God." Man asks, "Why should I come before the Lord and bow myself before the high God?" and, as if he must set himself to answer his own question, he farther enquires, "Shall I come before Him with burnt offerings, with calves of a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, or with ten thousands of rivers of oil?" Sacrifice of some sort is his idea—he supposes that he must supply the sacrifice himself and would gladly know what it should be. The answer which is given him chides him for the supposition that he is to answer his own question, for it begins thus—"He has shown you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you." If we had been attentive to God's voice we should not now be asking, "why should I come?" for He has already shown us the way. The worship of God is the subject of Revelation, not of invention. True religion is not a new design displaying each man's taste, but a copy from a plan, framed and fixed by the Lord Himself. We are to follow a path well defined and not map out a course for ourselves. We are not like children crying in the dark after an unknown Father whom we seek by ways of our own, but we are as babes who follow where the warm hand of Love gently draws them. To us it is not night, for the true light has risen and is shining round about us—the Father has revealed Himself and we have an unction from the Holy One so that all things necessary for this life and godliness are lifted out of the region of the unknown and placed among the matters concerning which the Prophet says, "He has shown you, O man." The true worship of God is not left to be a matter of conjecture, to be worked out by a man's thoughts from within, but it is a matter of distinct Revelation to be received by faith from above.

THIS is the essence of the Law of God, the spiritual side of it—its Ten Commandments are an enlargement of this verse. The Law is spiritual and touches the thoughts, the intents, the emotions, the words, the actions—but especially God demands the heart. Now it is our great joy that what the Law requires, the Gospel gives. "Christ is the end of the Law for righteousness to everyone that believes." In Him we meet the requirements of the Law, first, by what He has done for us and next, by what He works in us. He conforms us to the Law of God. He makes us, by His Spirit, not for our righteousness, but for His Glory, to render to the Law the obedience which we could not present of ourselves. We are weak through the flesh, but when Christ strengthens us, the righteousness of the Law is fulfilled in us who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. Only through faith in Christ does a man learn to do righteously, to love mercy and to walk humbly with God—and only by the power of the Holy Spirit sanctifying us to that end do we fulfill these three Divine requirements. These we fulfill perfectly in our desire—we would be holy as God is holy if we could live as our heart aspires to live—we would always do righteously, we would always love mercy and we would always walk humbly with God. This, the Holy Spirit daily aids us to do by working in us to will and to do of God's good pleasure. And the day will come and we are pining for it, when, being entirely free from this hampering body, we shall serve Him day and night in His Temple and shall render to Him an absolutely perfect obedience, for, "they are without fault before the Throne of God." Tonight I shall have a task quite sufficient if I dwell only upon the third requirement, "Walk humbly with your God," asking first, What is the nature of this humility? And secondly, Where does this humility show itself. I.

WE shall chiefly dwell upon the last line—"To walk humbly with your God." Man asks, "Why should I come before the Lord and bow myself before the high God?" and, as if he must set himself to answer his own question, he farther enquires, "Shall I come before Him with burnt offerings, with calves of a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, or with ten thousands of rivers of oil?" Sacrifice of some sort is his idea—he supposes that he must supply the sacrifice himself and would gladly know what it should be.