A life of integrity is a necessary component to being an ambassador for God. The word integrity comes from the Latin, integritas, meaning “wholeness” or “completeness.” Warren Wiersbe points out: Integrity is to personal or corporate character what health is to the body…. A person with integrity is not divided. He or she is “whole.” People with integrity have nothing to hide and nothing to fear. Their lives are open books. This is important to understanding what it means to “love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.” It is a complete surrendering of one’s whole self to God in thought, desire, and action.
The Psalmist describes his surrender in this way: It is time to act, O Lord, for they have broken Your law. Therefore I love Your commandments…I hate every false way (Ps.119:126-128). His resolve to act in surrendered obedience called for well grounded, reliable knowledge – God’s precepts. Notice, however, that the Psalmist did not say, “I need to apply Your commandments.” Instead, he said, “I love Your commandments.” This man exercised a delight in God’s Word; Scripture molded his habits of thought.
This is how we must develop that godly integrity – as Peter put it, “add to your faith, virtue” (2 Pet.1:5). It is a matter of being “renewed in the spirit of your mind” (Eph.4:23). In other words, don’t just try to apply God’s Word, but let God’s revealed truth mold your habits of thought. This will mold your desires, your actions – your character. We are transformed, as Scripture says, not by applying God’s truth, but by the renewing (renovation) of the mind through God’s truth. W.E. Vine describes this renovation as “adjustment of the moral and spiritual vision to the mind of God.” The first step in this process is the “duty” of delighting, as recorded in the 119th Psalm:
Your testimonies also are my delight and my counselors. (v.24)
Make me walk in the path of Your commandments, for I delight in it. (v.35)
I will delight myself in Your commandments, which I love. (v.47)
Unless Your law had been my delight, I would then have perished in my affliction. (v.92)
Great peace have those who love Your law; nothing can make them stumble (v.165)
Integrity is not a put-on – it comes from the core.
Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly.
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