Micah 6:6–8 Salvation Through Righteousness?

Micah 6:6–8 Salvation Through Righteousness?

6 “With what shall I come before the Lord,
and bow myself before God on high?
Shall I come before him with burnt offerings,
with calves a year old?
7 Will the Lord be pleased with [1] thousands of rams,
with ten thousands of rivers of oil?
Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression,
the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?”
8 He has told you, O man, what is good;
and what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness, [2]
and to walk humbly with your God?

    Two different and opposing kinds of false claims are made about this text. Some readers see the text as refuting all external, ceremonial religion in favor of a totally internalized faith response to God. Others, reacting against more conservative theologies of the atonement, argue that essential religious acts focus solely on issues of justice, mercy and humility; all else is beyond what God expects of even the most devout.
    Unfortunately, both positions are extremes that fail to grasp the prophet Micah’s point. His answer to the question “With what [things] shall I come before the Lord?” certainly went beyond the people’s appalling response. They were convinced that they could earn God’s favor by deeds and various types of religious and even pagan acts, such as the human sacrifice of their oldest child. They were ready to bargain with God and to bid high if need be. But their attempts to earn righteousness availed them nothing in God’s sight.
    The prophet’s answer, on behalf of his Lord, was very different from theirs, though it was hardly novel. They had already known what was good and pleasing to God, because God had revealed it time and time again. Each time they had refused to acknowledge it as God’s way.
    Three items are mentioned: justice, mercy and humility before God. The norm of justice had been set by the character and person of the living God, not by human standards. God’s norm of justice, announced in his law, demanded perfect righteousness available only by faith in the God who had promised to send the seed of promise.
    Mercy, the second demand, should be patterned after God’s mercy as defined in his Word—an unselfish love toward God and one’s neighbor.
    The third was a call for the people to remember that any good found in them was due to the Lord’s enabling. Those claiming the Lord as their God were to prove it by a godly lifestyle. Pride was the antithesis of what was required here: faith. To walk humbly was to live by faith. Such faith sought to give God first place instead of usurping it for oneself. In our Lord’s use of this passage in Matthew 23:23, he listed the three requisites for pleasing God as “justice, mercy and faithfulness.”
    Thus, this passage is more than just an ethical or cultic substitute for all inventions of religion posed by mortals. It is duty, indeed, but duty grounded in the character and grace of God. The question asked in Micah 6:6 is very similar to the question posed in Deuteronomy 10:12: “And now, O Israel, what does the LORD your God ask of you?” The background for both questions is the same, for in Deuteronomy 10, as in Micah 6, God had announced himself ready to destroy Israel, in that case for their disobedience in the golden-calf episode.
    Thus this saying is not an invitation, in lieu of the gospel, to save oneself by kindly acts of equity and fairness. Nor is it an attack on the forms of sacrifices and cultic acts mentioned in the tabernacle and temple instructions. It is instead a call for the natural consequence of truly forgiven men and women to demonstrate the reality of their faith by living it out in the marketplace. Such living would be accompanied with acts and deeds of mercy, justice and giving of oneself for the orphan, the widow and the poor.
    See also comment on GENESIS 26:3–5; PSALM 51:16–17, 19.