Daily Devotional
True Weights, True Hearing
The Lord’s word today presses on one point: do not live falsely before God or man. In the law, Israel is forbidden crooked measures. Clement says, “There shall not be in your bag a balance and a balance, great or small, but a true and just balance shall be to you, deeming the balance and measure and number of the whole to be God.” False weights are not only for the market stall. A man may keep them in his mouth, saying one thing in the assembly and another at home; in his worship, hearing the word with respect yet refusing to obey; in his judgments, excusing his own sins while condemning his neighbor.
Jeremiah’s scroll was read aloud, and the king cut it and burned it piece by piece. So men still do when the word rebukes their gain, their lust, or their pride: they do not always burn the page, but they cast away its command. Yet the Lord, who warns, also calls back. As it is written in the ancient witness, “for I desire not the death of the sinner, says the Lord, but that he turn from his wicked way, and live.” Repentance is not shame without amendment, but a real turning.
In Acts, some raged, some mocked, and some searched the Scriptures daily. Paul proclaimed the God who made all, who needs nothing from us, yet commands all men everywhere to repent, because He has fixed a day of judgment and has given assurance by raising Jesus from the dead. Therefore let us have one measure in all things: honest dealings, humble hearing, and steadfast obedience. The man who fears the coming judgment will not toy with deceit; the man who hopes in the resurrection will not despise correction.
“There shall not be in your bag a balance and a balance, great or small, but a true and just balance shall be to you, deeming the balance and measure and number of the whole to be God.”
— Clement of Alexandria, Exhortation to the Heathen
“for I desire not the death of the sinner, says the Lord, but that he turn from his wicked way, and live.”
— Theophilus of Antioch, To Autolycus
For Reflection & Discussion
Where this week must you correct a false measure—an unpaid debt, a dishonest price, an exaggerated word, or a concealed fact—and when will you set it right?
What command of Scripture have you been cutting away piece by piece; what concrete act of repentance will you do today to obey it?
Whom have you treated as beneath you in speech or conduct, though God “made... of one blood every nation of men”; how will you show justice or mercy to that person this week?
Start the One-Year Plan Today — Completely Free
Read or listen through the whole Bible in 365 days with audio that highlights every word, a progress calendar, streaks, friends — and a devotional like this one at the end of every day.