Jesus Christ is not teaching ordinary integrity, but supernormal integrity, a likeness to our Father in heaven.
~Oswald Chambers (1874-1917)
Oh, guard my soul, and deliver me! Let me not be put to shame, for I take refuge in you. May integrity and uprightness preserve me, for I wait for you. Redeem Israel, O God, out of all his troubles.
~ Psalm 25:20-22
One of the wonderful attributes of our wonderful God is His simplicity. The simplicity of God means He is not partly this and partly that, but that whatever He is, He is so entirely. So, an understanding of this truth conveys meaning to the words, “God is love.” God does not just emanate love. He is Love and pours out His very self on us in heroic, philanthropic and intimate ways.
It is the same with grace. Grace is not confined to the common definition: “God’s Riches At Christ’s Expense.” While it is indeed that, the riches of God are not a payment, they are a Person. They are the Value and Power of God’s very Self moving in goodness towards us – and empowering us to live like Him. Herein is a shadow of the Simplicity and Unity of the One Who was, and Is, and Is to come. All glory and honor and power and praise and majesty be unto Him. Always.
So, in becoming this new creation He makes us, we are no longer fragmented and fallen people. We are, rather, fully human beings now made complete and one with Him. Everything that He is, now dwells in us, and us in Him. The profound Simplicity of God has the opportunity – in a fully surrendered life – to actually make us into people who are becoming the same.
Said more simply: We become people of integrity. We become – as the German’s say, “Einfach” (simple, single-faceted). In understanding this, we see clearly that integrity is not about trying to make our lives look consistent and honest and reliable and all that.
Integrity IS about letting the Simple nature of God become our nature. He is the One making us into this, and will indeed complete the work. However, it is this writer’s opinion that we can greatly slow the process through our resistance – or quicken it by yielding to His power that works so mightily within us.
And as we allow Him to invade our lives, they begin from the inside to emanate a holistic completeness. We will most surely be frayed and cracked around the edges of our lives. But the ever-growing core of who we are is beginning to look more like Him every day.
He grows our integrity from the inside. He makes it happen. i don’t know about you beloved, but to me this is very good news!
The simplicity which is in Christ is rarely found among us. In its stead are programs, methods, organizations, and a world of nervous activities which occupy time and attention.
~A. W. Tozer (1897-1963)
