To me, these verses from Micah 6 are a snapshot of the difference between the sort of true righteousness that God is actually after as opposed to the “works of the Law” that are so often performed in an effort to win God’s approval and cover over sin.<\/p>\n\n\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
6 \u201cWith what shall I come before the Lord,<\/i><\/p>\n\n\n
and bow myself before God on high?<\/i><\/p>\n\n\n
Shall I come before him with burnt offerings,<\/i><\/p>\n\n\n
with calves a year old?<\/i><\/p>\n\n\n
7 Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams,<\/i><\/p>\n\n\n
with ten thousands of rivers of oil?<\/i><\/p>\n\n\n
\u00a0Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression,<\/i><\/p>\n\n\n
the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n\n\n
8 He has told you, O man, what is good;<\/i><\/p>\n\n\n
and what does the Lord require of you<\/i><\/p>\n\n\n
but to do justice, and to love kindness,<\/i><\/p>\n\n\n
and to walk humbly with your God?<\/i><\/p>\n\n\n
Notice that doing justice, loving kindness, and walking humbly with God would all still be expressed as deeds. And these things are “required” of humanity.<\/p>\n\n\n
It’s not about God condemning ALL righteous deeds or deeming them all to be filthy rags.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
It’s about the motivation and the relationship – or lack thereof -behind the deeds.<\/p>\n\n\n
It’s the difference between a man who buys flowers for a woman as an expression of his deep love for her and the man who buys her flowers hoping to get her into bed.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
To me, these verses from Micah 6 are a snapshot of the difference between the sort of true righteousness that God is actually after as opposed to the “works of the Law” that are so often performed in an effort to win God’s approval and cover over sin. \u00a0 6 \u201cWith what shall I come […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8873","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8873","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8873"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8873\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8874,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8873\/revisions\/8874"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8873"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8873"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8873"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}