Proverbs 20:7

To walk in integrity is the fruit of divine grace. Faith alone can enable anyone to do this. We live in a world of empty show, and our nature is corrupt or false, proud or empty. Either way, that nature is easily satisfied with itself and open to self-conceit.

But it is wonderful to see this integrity of heart come into the full light of God's presence. Once it shrank from that light, because the light searched everything. Now it wants God's thorough searching, so that it may get rid of the evil that it hates. Note too that mere integrity will not do without God to find out the evil. By nature, an honest man may use his conscience. But the eye needs light to search with, and in the same way we need the presence of Him who is light.

People commonly fail in the same way. They put on a display of worldwide kindness. They cheat themselves into believing that their talk and tears over the widow and the orphan are real kindness of an unusual kind. Let us beware of walking in such an empty show. Remember that the Word of God asks whether the reality is there in deed and in truth.

God rewards those who seek Him out. The blessing is not only a good conscience in his walk. God also does not forget his children after him.

The walk of the righteous man will be one of integrity, and the normal result of this will be the true blessing of his children (v. 7). Abraham is an example of this integrity. The Lord said of him, "I have chosen him, that he may command his children and his household after him to keep the way of the LORD by doing righteousness and justice" (Gen. 18:19).

The children of believers are, of course, like other children by nature. The nature we can pass on is the old one, not the new: to have that, they must be born again, as everyone must. It does not always follow, as we know, that a saved man has a saved household. But suppose faith in God is joined with faithfulness in the place where God has put us. Then His promise stands: "Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it." Here is the thing that tests us. It is not our words alone that bear fruit this way. Our words and our ways work together.

God gave that good son Asa for David's sake. And David was Asa's great-great-grandfather! To the fourth generation David's ways brought down blessing on his descendants. And we know also that God visits the iniquities of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generation (Ex. 20:5). This is a most solemn thing for each one of us to remember. Our walk, day by day, may affect our children for blessing or otherwise. It may do so for as much as three or even four generations, or for far longer.