"As for you, walk before me in integrity of heart and uprightness, as David your father did, and do all I command and observe my decrees and laws." -1 Kings 9:4

Integrity is mentioned some 40 times in the Bible, and a study of the several different words which are all translated into English using our word integrity shows that integrity refers to being upright in heart, honest in your actions, committed to doing right regardless of the cost.

While there are dozens of biblical characters whose lives reveal a lack of integrity, there are three individuals whom the Bible describes as men of integrity—Job and David in the Old Testament, and Jesus Christ.

Job, of course, was the one who struggled with his health and the issue of integrity in relationship to being rewarded by God. Four different passages in the book of Job talk about his integrity. The first was God’s recognition of Job as a man of integrity. “Have you considered my servant Job?” God asked Satan, adding, “There is none like him on earth, a blameless and upright man, one who fears God and shuns evil. And still he holds fast to his integrity” (Job 2:2-3, NKJV).

When Job’s world began to collapse as the result of the trials which came from Satan, Job’s wife urged him to give up his integrity—which she thought would probably result in God’s striking him dead, thus ending his problems. “Are you still holding on to your integrity?” she asked, quickly adding, “Curse God and die” (Job 2:9). How did Job respond? “Till I die, I will not deny my integrity” (Job 27:5) he answers his detractors.

The second, whose integrity was recognized by both friends and enemies, was David, the shepherd of Israel. “As for me,” said David, “I will walk in my integrity” (Psalm 26:11, NKJV). He did, too. While Job’s life teaches that integrity is something which you can hold or keep, David’s life teaches that a man can fail and yet regain his integrity. David’s life, of course, was far from perfect.

Michael Josephson says, “We judge ourselves by our best intentions, but we are judged by our worst act.” That was true of David, whose affair with Bathsheba was a moral lapse which history will never forget. Yet David was repentant and remorseful—which reflected his true integrity.

Psalm 78:72—a beautiful passage—says, “And David shepherded them [meaning Israel] with integrity of heart; with skillful hands he led them.” David’s lesson is that people of integrity know when they have chosen wrong and are quick to confess it and forsake it.

The third who is recognized as a man of character was Jesus Christ. But what makes this significant is that it was not His disciples, His followers, who talked about his integrity, but His enemies, the Pharisees, who constantly sought to discredit Jesus. “They sent their disciples to him along with the Herodians,” says Matthew. “’Teacher,’ they said, ‘we know you are a man of integrity and that you teach the way of God in accord with the truth. You aren’t swayed by men, because you pay no attention to who they are’” (Matthew 22:16).

And from an unlikely source, the enemy of Jesus, comes a third truth about individuals who have integrity: they are not driven by public opinion. They don’t play the grandstand or cater to the highest bidder.

Integrity is based on the conviction that there is both a right and a wrong, and that the gray area wherein people are comfortable doing what makes them feel good is a wishy-washy no-man’s-land of moral decay.

The writer of Proverbs was right when he wrote, “Better is the poor who walks in his integrity than one who is perverse in his lips, and is a fool” (Proverbs 19:1,NKJV). It is still true. While integrity may be in short supply, it is still what makes men trustworthy and women safe. That’s a fact.

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“The preceding material was written by Dr. Harold J. Sala, and is copyrighted. Reproduction for sale or financial profit is prohibited. Permission to reproduce this article was granted by Guidelines, Inc.”
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