Micah 6:8 He has showed you, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you, but to do justly, and to love mercy… These words express the true object of all revelation, which is to make men good; they express the inmost meaning of all life, which is the attainment of holiness. Unmistakable in their plainness, these words sweep away the cobwebs of confusion of ages. Frankly accepted, they would be an eternal cure for all the maladies which in age after age have afflicted religion. They show that the aim of religion is to elevate character, to purify conduct, to promote goodness; they sum up the mighty spiritual teaching of the prophets; they herald the essential moral revelation of the Son of God. The word "religion" properly means certain opinions, and certain ordinances; a set of doctrines; or a mode of worship. New, outward ordinances, when their importance is exaggerated, tend to become burdensome and superstitious; and religious opinions, when maintained by ambition and self-interest, have deluged the world with crime. To avoid confusion, however, I will call this "religionism," not "religion." A stream of religionism flows through the Old Testament. The Judaic code has neither value nor significance in itself, but solely in so far as it may be a help or adjunct to higher things. Religionism, when it ends in opinions or observances, is worthless. All that was poorest and most pagan in Judaism eagerly seized on this element in the sacred books. Side by side with this stream of religious ordinance flows, through most of the Old Testament, and through all the New, the richer, purer, deeper stream of righteousness. And righteousness expresses, and alone expresses, the essence of true religion; for true religion is a good mind and a good life. Ask a dogmatist "What must I do to be saved?" and he will give you some elaborate, metaphysical definition. Ask a party religionist, and he will say that you must hear the Church. Ask your Lord and Master, and He will say, "If thou wouldest enter into life, keep the commandments. See how the prophets spoke; the New Testament so completely endorses their spiritual ideal that, while every page and verse of it breathes of righteousness, you scarcely find any religionism at all scarcely any organisation, ritual, or dogmatic creed. What is the sum total of the moral revelation of Christ? It goes into two words — Love: Serve. The teaching of every one of His apostles was the very antithesis of the spirit of externalism. According to them, "he that doeth righteousness is born of God." To preach these principles is to preach the very essential heart of the scriptural morality; but yet it is a preaching that invariably makes religionists very angry. For its importance lies in this, that it is the very touchstone which discriminates between true and false religion, and which sweeps away, at any rate, the exaggerated importance attached to the adjuncts, the scaffoldings, the traditions and ordinances of men, which to so many make up the whole of their religion. What God wants is not so-called orthodoxy, but "truth in the inward parts." What will avail you is not any amount of religiosity, but righteousness. The reason why it is necessary to insist on this is that eternal pharisaism of the human heart, which prefers formalism to spirituality, and which causes a constant recrudescence of Judaism in the heart of Christianity. The lesson for us is clear. Our religious opinions may be false; our party shibboleths may be but the blurred echoes of our ignorance or our incompetence; our private interpretations of Scripture may be no better than grotesque nonsense in their presumptuous falsity, and all this may not greatly matter, if by some Divine deliverance from our opinionated follies, we still do justly, and love mercy, and walk humbly with our God. (Dean Farrar.) Parallel Verses KJV: He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the LORD require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God? |
    |