I. Notice: (1) How the Scriptures speak of integrity, how manifold and bold the forms in which they commend it, and how freely the good men of the Scripture times testify their consciousness of it in their appeals to God. And lest we should imagine that the integrity is only a crude and partial conception, belonging to the piety of the Old Testament, the Christian disciples of the New Testament are testifying also in a hundred ways to the integrity, before God and man, in which they consciously live. (2) What integrity means, or what is the state intended by it. As an integer is a whole, in distinction from a fraction, which is only a part, so a man of integrity is a man whose aim in the right is a whole aim, in distinction from one whose aim is divided, partial, or unstable. It is such a state of right intention as allows the man to be consciously right-minded, and to firmly rest in the singleness of his purpose. There is a kind of integrity which goes far beyond the mere integrity of trade, and which is the only real integrity. This higher and only real integrity is the root of all true character, and must be the condition somehow of Christian character itself. (3) Let us inquire in what manner this is so. There is no redeeming efficacy in right intent; taken by itself, it would never vanquish the inward state of evil at all. And yet it is just that by which all evil will be vanquished under Christ and by grace, because it puts the soul in such a state as makes the great power of Christ, co-working with it, effectual. Integrity is presupposed in all true faith, and enters in that manner into all true Gospel character.
II. Notice some of the practical relations of the subject. (1) Consider what it is that gives such peace and loftiness of bearing to the life of a truly righteous man. What an atmosphere of serenity does it create for him that he is living in a conscience void of offence! Who can understand like him the meaning of that word, "The work of righteousness shall be peace, and the effect of righteousness quietness and assurance for ever "? (2) Here, too, is the ground of all failures and all highest successes in religion, or the Christian life. Only to be an honest man, in the highest and genuinely Christian sense, signifies a great deal more than most of us ever conceive. Here is the spot where you are to make your revision, find what your intent is, whether it is honest, and whole, and clean, warped by no ambiguities, divided and stolen away by no idols. Here the Achan will be hid if anywhere. Make sure of his dislodgment, and the way is clear. (4) Every man who comes into a state of right intent, or is set to be a real integer in the right, will forthwith also be a Christian.
H. Bushnell, Christ and His Salvation,p. 157.
Reference: Psalms 7:8. C. Kingsley, The Good News of God,p. 100.