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, and to walk humbly with your God? (Micah 6:8 ESV)
Requirements
When I was learning how to play chess, my instructor kept changing the rules of the game… or at least that was how it seemed to me. He kept throwing in new ideas, just when I thought I had it figured out. Pawns can not move backwards? You can not move into check? You can trade a pawn for any other piece if it reaches the far side of the board? And what is castling??
Life sometimes seems like we are learning chess. And the rules might seem to be changing. It would be unnerving, difficult, and unfair if the standards for success changed half-way through life.
And it might seem like that to the world.
But God is consistent in His requirements. He wants to see justice, He wants to see us loving mercy, and He wants us to be humble before Him.
And all of those are really summarized by the idea of putting others before ourselves.
We might not like His standards. We might find them incredibly difficult to honestly keep. We might despair of impressing Him.
But He has made His requirements plain to His people.
And even better… He gives us Jesus to keep His requirements on our behalf. In fact, He is really the only requirement God’s given us.
We are peculiar, we know God’s requirements.