The Thesaurus1 includes the following words for ‘integrity’: honour, uprightness, completeness, and synonyms for integrity are honesty, goodness, principle, purity, righteousness, sincerity, virtue, perfection, simplicity, unity etc.

Jesus said that if we love God, we will want to obey His command, and if we obey His command, we will truly be His disciples, as in John 8:32 He says that then we will know the truth and the truth will set us free.

We are to be true to ourselves, true to God and true to others. If we are true to ourselves, God and others, we have freedom from oppression, which comes from being dishonest, cheating and from corruption that lead to oppression, confusion, and entanglement.

Also, Jesus said

Luke 16:10 (NIV)

10 Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much, and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much.

We cannot hide from God. God knew that Adam had sinned because Adam was hiding from God in the garden.

When we sin we can either hide and let our hearts become hardened towards God by following our old unrenewed nature or we can come to the foot of the cross and ask for forgiveness. We let the Blood of Jesus wipe our slate clean and receive the power of the Holy Spirit to be our strength to resist temptation.

Either way, we cannot hide from God because God is all knowing:

Hebrews 4:13 (NIV)

13 Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account.

God does not look at our works, He is interested in the root of our motives and our attitudes. He looks at our heart because from the heart spring our issues of life, and that is why God commands us to guard our hearts with all vigilance in Proverbs 4:23 and Jesus commands us to let not our hearts be troubled, but to trust in Him instead.

When we trust in God, and we are truthful in our hearts, He takes good care of us and in our obedience to Him protects us.

Psalm 25:21 (NIV)

21 May integrity and uprightness protect me, because my hope, Lord, is in you.

I pray that we will so come to know the love of God so deeply by experience that we will choose to live from the heart, being true to God, true to ourselves and true to others.

  1. What does integrity mean?
  2. How can integrity benefit us?
  3. Why does God look at our heart?

  1. integrity, Thesaurus.com ↩