Jesus Did Justice, Loved Kindness, and Wallked Humbly

What Did Jesus Do?

He has shown you, O man, what is good;
and what does the LORD require of you but
to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?
Micah 6.8

When the time comes that I stand before God, and that time will come for all of us, I will be totally without excuse. Knowing this is important for us because for some people making excuses is a way of life. That people do so is not surprising because we live in a culture that encourages excuse making, avoiding personal responsibility, and not being accountable for one's self. While it might be possible to go through life this way, this life, and getting away with excuses, will come to an end. When we stand before God, quite simply, the Father will not accept any excuses. Why? Because, he has shown us how we are to live. He did so in his Word, and most especially when his Word became flesh and he sent the Son, who did all that the LORD required. Jesus did justice, loved kindness, and walked humbly with his God and Father.

If we would just follow Christ's example in doing justice, loving kindness and mercy, and walking humbly with God we would not ever have to worry about making excuses. Of course, all of us have come up with excuses why we don't, or can't do what the LORD requires of us; somehow fault almost always seems to lie with some one or some thing other than ourselves. We may get away with it in this life, but that time is coming for all of us when excuses just won't cut it anymore. Fortunately, Jesus had done for us all that the LORD requires.

But here is a place to be careful, for some, mistakenly believing they are free to do whatever they please in this life because all they have to do when they stand before God is to plead the blood of Jesus, are really banking on making an excuse. Their excuse when the Father asks them why they lived like they did will be, “Because (“Because” is almost always the first word in an excuse) your Son died to set me free. So I could do anything I wanted to. He covered all my sins.” And the Father will say, “No, my Son died to free you from sin, not to sin, so that you could live according to what I require—justice, mercy, humility.” Then, turning to Jesus, the Father will ask, “Son, this one claims that you have been Lord of their life.” And Jesus, with great sadness, will answer, “Father, I never knew this one.”

I'm thinking I might want to adopt a new motto as a corollary to the Scout motto I've tried to follow for most of my life. “Excusatione” is Latin for “no excuses.” The truth is, if we want to truly be prepared for the day when we will stand before God, we would do well to live now with no excuses. I do not mean without apology. There will always be a need for sinners like us to say “I'm sorry” when we err, or hurt another. But we have to make sure we don't append an excuse to our apology, because an apology with an excuse is really no apology at all.

Personally, I plan to say something like this when I stand before the Father (after, of course, Jesus lifts me up and supports me, because I'm certain I will fall on my face): “I am sorry. Though your Son and your Word showed me exactly how I should have lived, and even though you sent me the Holy Spirit to help me, I failed. As hard as I tried, I always came up short. And for most of my life I never really tired all that hard. I have no excuse. Though undeserving, all I can do is ask for mercy for the sake of Jesus, who died for me, a sinner.”

But that will be then, this is now, and it is high time for you and me to start living without making excuses. After the example of how Jesus lived, and did what the LORD required, we should be praying for and acting upon a burning desire for justice, God's justice, not man's. We should be practicing a persistent compassion that will not rest in the face of suffering and want anywhere in the world. We should be exalting the Father in all things, and not ourselves. That is what Jesus did. I believe it is time for us, individually, and corporately as the Body of Christ, to drop the excuses, and do what Jesus did.

S.D.G.

Jim
www.jimwilkenministries.org
Marion, NC
PS 37.4