The question is asked in Micah 6: “Wherewith shall I come before the Lord?” And by way of pointing to a response that some would have made, the further question was asked, among others: “Shall I come before Him with burnt offerings, with calves of a year old?” It is impossible, of course, for such a possibility to open a way for anyone to approach the holy God. No sacrifice can possibly take away our sin, which stands in the way of our drawing near to God. We sinful creatures cannot approach God unless we have the beginnings of holiness, and Jesus made it clear that “except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God” (Jn 3:3). Not only is it impossible for us to enter heaven itself – but we cannot be received within God’s kingdom in this world – apart from the new birth, and its consequence: a new, holy heart.
Micah’s answer is: God “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?” (Mic 6:8). God had already shown Israel how they should live; what they needed to do was to search the Scriptures and to seek God’s blessing on them. There they would have found the need to live a holy life. In this article we will focus on this part of duty, as expressed in the verse just quoted: “to walk humbly with thy God”.
The Lord is our God, for He made us; He has a right to our obedience; He has a right to demand that we walk humbly before Him and that we do so in a consistent way. Enoch was consistently obedient to God’s revealed will; in the words of Scripture, he “walked with God” (Gen 5:24). Accordingly “he had this testimony, that he pleased God”, and so he passed into the eternal world without passing through death; he “was translated that he should not see death” (Heb 11:5). He walked humbly; he was far from being proud; he was ready to submit to all the commandments of God.
Those who walk humbly are submitting to God and to His will. It is not that they are perfect, but there is in them a sincere readiness to obey. They will not escape death, but they will be brought safely through it and they will spend eternity in the presence of the One who gave them grace to walk humb-
ly before Him while they were in this world. “Every thought within us”, says Matthew Henry in his Commentary, on Micah 6:8, “must be brought down, to be brought into obedience to God, if we would walk comfortably with Him. This is that which God requires, and without which the most costly services are vain oblations; [to walk humbly with God] is more than all burnt offerings and sacrifices.”
A man who at first did not walk humbly before God was Saul of Tarsus. In early life, he was becoming more and more prominent as an earnest Pharisee. He was later to describe such people as “ignorant of God’s righteousness, and going about to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted themselves unto the righteousness of God” (Rom 10:3). Charles Hodge points out that “the grand mistake of the Jews was about the method of justification. Ignorance on this point implied ignorance of the character of God, of the requirements of the law, and of themselves. It was, therefore, and is, and must ever continue to be a vital point. Those who err essentially here, err fatally.1 Many who would not obviously err in their doctrine go astray in their practice. They are ignorant of the character of God, of the requirements of the law, and of themselves. They have no sense of the absolute holiness of God, or of His demands for perfect obedience (or complete submission) to His law, and how entirely fallen they are, so that they are entirely unable to satisfy God and His law.
Hodge goes on: “The cause of the rejection of the Jews was the rejection of the method of salvation through a crucified Redeemer, and their persisting and confiding in their own merits and advantages as the ground of their acceptance with God. . . . As we have no righteousness of our own, nothing that we have done or experienced, nothing personal or subjective that can answer the demands of the law, we can be justified only through the righteousness of God, imputed to us and received by faith.”2
These truths about ourselves and our fallen state may be unpalatable, but they are accurate, and we need to be convinced of them, or else we will never seek the righteousness that brings salvation to lost sinners like ourselves. We also need to submit to the truths that Hodge points to about the way of deliverance, by way of a free justification made possible by the glorious work of the God-man Jesus Christ while, in a state of humiliation in this world, He acted as the Substitute of sinners.
But a massive change came over Saul. Instead of being proud and un-submissive, he began to walk humbly before his God. In particular, his
1 The Magazine in recent years has drawn attention to the dangerous views of N T Wright and others.
2 C Hodge, A Commentary on Romans, Banner of Truth 1983 reprint, pp 334,335.
attitude to the Lord Jesus Christ became altogether humble and sincere; he received Him as the promised Messiah and trusted in Him for the salvation of his soul. His language now was: “God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ”. Previously he had been rejecting Jesus’ self-sacrifice, placing no value on it; now he sought to put away from himself every thought of glorying in anything else whatever. And this is the humble, submissive attitude he carried with him for the rest of his life.
At the very beginning of his Christian life Saul addressed a very significant question to the Saviour; it was: “Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do?” The question is permeated with a sincere desire to obey humbly the King of all the earth, and in that spirit he walked throughout the rest of his course in this world. Whatever duty God laid upon him, however difficult, he would submissively take it up; whichever of the commandments applied to the situation he was in, he would humbly seek to obey it; whatever teaching God had revealed, he was willing to receive it wholeheartedly as the truth. The risen Saviour was Saul’s Lord and God, and this is the spirit of believers throughout the ages: they seek to walk humbly before God; they seek to submit to all that God has made known in the Scriptures. They recognise the whole Bible as “profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness” (2 Timothy 3:16).
Some will react negatively to the apparent contradiction between God’s commands and human inability. They will ask how it is that God commands us, as He commanded the jailer in Philippi, to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ (Acts 16:31), if we as dead sinners are unable to carry out any spiritual action, such as the exercise of faith. The answer is that what God requires He must give. If He requires faith, He must give faith; it is His gift (Eph 2:8). If God commands us to repent of our sins, He must give the grace of repentance. If God commands us to live a holy life, He must begin and continue the work of sanctification so that we may live in a godly way. These are all the Holy Spirit’s work. We must be altogether dependent on God for everything, and especially for every aspect of salvation.
All these are benefits which we are to seek with real earnestness, knowing that God is far more ready to give than we are to receive. Every step that we take on the journey through life, we ought to be concerned to bear in mind the words of Micah: “Walk humbly with thy God”. Yes, we must realise that we will come short continually. So we need grace to begin a humble walk with God; believers need grace to continue that walk; they need to grow in grace so that they may walk more and more submissively before God; and they need grace to take even the last step of their journey, the step that will bring them into the promised land of heaven.