Goodness week2

 Love the LORD your God and keep his requirements, his decrees, his laws and his commands always.     Deuteronomy 11.1

‘Goodness', said Moses, ‘is a matter of loving.’ Those who love God will behave themselves. Struggling to keep God’s commands while we are indifferent to loving God will produce only a mechanical obedience. That is why Augustine said, ‘Love God and do what you will,’ because love is the key to goodness. Love is the key to morality. Love is the foundation of genuine goodness.

This verse in Deuteronomy offers four categories of mandates to which love is the empowering key, God’s requirements, His decrees, His laws and His commands. God’s requirements are different from His laws, but Micah lists but three moral requirements, ‘To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.’ (Micah 6.8) Notice that these requirements are not a part of the Ten Commandments. One might keep all of the commandments but still not love mercy or walk humbly. Yet for even the most righteous, these traits enumerated by Micah are beautiful virtues, which not only make those who wear them more beautiful, they make a relationship with God appear more inviting.

The world usually admires those who live by the Ten Commandments, but the world would be more likely to seek God if those who kept his Ten Commandments would also keep Micah's three requirements. Acting justly is that behaviour that makes us treat all people fairly, regardless of social station. Loving mercy is that requirement that makes us appear gentle. Walking humbly is that approach to life that takes away every hint of pretence and arrogance.

Obeying the commandments will give us moral rectitude, but living by God's requirements will give us the best form of goodness, which is Christlikeness.