“He has told you, human one, what is good and
what the Lord requires from you:
to do justice, embrace faithful love, and walk humbly with your God.” – Micah 6:8 (CEB)
God has told you. Past tense. The answer was never hidden, and the worshiper’s escalating offers were a way of not hearing it.
The first verb is do justice. Not care about justice, or hold correct opinions on it, or feel the right things when the news is bad. Do. It is a verb with a cost attached, and the cost is what separates it from agreement.
Notice too that justice comes first, ahead of the softer two. Micah spent his whole book on people in power taking from people without it. So justice here is not abstract. It means the landowner, the judge, the merchant with rigged scales, each one doing right by the person who has no power to make them. Who around you has no power to make you do right by them?
God, move me from agreeing with justice to doing it. Show me the one place this week where doing right will cost me something. Amen.