PROVIDE THINGS HONEST

‘Provide things honest in the sight of all men’ is the positive counterpart to the negative requirement ‘Recompense to no man evil for evil’ with which verse 17 begins. The believer’s manner of life is not to be characterised simply by a passive tolerance of ungodly abuse and injustice, but by a definite presentation to the world of a holy life that is devoted to God. Such an attitude is in keeping with the former exhortation, ‘be not conformed to this world’, Rom. 12. 2. Every culture and every social group in the world is made up of people who conform to a certain code of moral and ethical principles. The rule that is common to all is that each person within that grouping must conform to agreed standards. Laws and regulations within every society are there to set the minimum acceptable levels of conduct, but, in a godless society, those laws also set a limit on the display of good behaviour. For example, in the United Kingdom there was once unfettered liberty to preach the gospel of God’s grace concerning His Son on every street corner and every village green. To comfort a lost child or chastise a naughty one were good deeds once counted acceptable and necessary by a nation that respected God’s word. But now? To preach openly, to take a child upon one’s knee or to sensibly punish a disobedient child is in many cases to incur the weight of the law. What has changed? The nation’s wholesale shift to godlessness has brought with it the introduction of laws that limit goodness and sanction wickedness. Against such a backdrop the believer must ‘Provide things honest in the sight of all men’.

The word ‘provide’ (which we usually use in the sense of ‘supply’) literally means ‘to thinkbefore’. Every course of action must be weighed and assessed as to its testimony before a godless, critical world, as well as in the light of the Judgment Seat of Christ, and we must set our sights on doing that which is inherently good and in keeping with our heavenly calling and dignity. As with the Saviour Himself, we shall soon learn, perhaps, that the world hates us not because of any bad things observed but because our premeditated good works condemn their wicked thoughts and ways.