15 Bible Verses About Integrity

Genesis 17:1

“When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the Lord appeared to him and said, ‘I am God Almighty; walk before me faithfully and be blameless.’”

Reflection: The command comes before the covenant: “Then I will make my covenant between me and you and will greatly increase your numbers” (17:2). “Blameless” is tamim, complete or whole, and the phrase before it names where that life is lived: “before me.”

Psalm 119:1

“Blessed are those whose ways are blameless, who walk according to the law of the Lord.”

Reflection: The verse opens Psalm 119, whose first stanza carries the heading Aleph, the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet. “Blameless” is again tamim, and the psalm defines the blameless way at once as walking “according to the law of the Lord.”

1 Chronicles 29:17

“I know, my God, that you test the heart and are pleased with integrity. All these things I have given willingly and with honest intent. And now I have seen with joy how willingly your people who are here have given to you.”

Reflection: David prays this over the gifts he and the people have given for “building you a temple for your Holy Name” (29:16). He tells God, “you test the heart and are pleased with integrity,” then claims “honest intent” for his own gift and names the people’s willing giving.

Proverbs 10:9

“Whoever walks in integrity walks securely, but whoever takes crooked paths will be found out.”

Reflection: The noun here is tom, and Proverbs returns to walking in it several times. Proverbs 19:1 and 28:6 rank “the poor whose walk is blameless” above “a fool whose lips are perverse” and “the rich whose ways are perverse,” and Proverbs 20:7 adds, “The righteous lead blameless lives; blessed are their children after them.” All three use tom.

Job 2:3

“Then the Lord said to Satan, ‘Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one on earth like him; he is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil. And he still maintains his integrity, though you incited me against him to ruin him without any reason.’”

Reflection: God speaks to Satan after Job has lost his oxen, donkeys, sheep, camels, servants and all his sons and daughters (Job 1:13-19), and says Job “still maintains his integrity.” Satan answers that a man will give all he has for his own life, and Job is struck with sores (2:4-8). His wife then uses the same word, tummah: “Are you still maintaining your integrity? Curse God and die!” (2:9).

Psalm 25:21

“May integrity and uprightness protect me, because my hope, Lord, is in you.”

Reflection: The verse before it is a plea for rescue: “Guard my life and rescue me; do not let me be put to shame, for I take refuge in you” (25:20), with enemies who “fiercely” hate the psalmist (25:19). He asks that “integrity and uprightness” (tom and yosher) protect him, and the second half gives the reason: “because my hope, Lord, is in you.”

Proverbs 2:7-8

“He holds success in store for the upright, he is a shield to those whose walk is blameless, for he guards the course of the just and protects the way of his faithful ones.”

Reflection: The NIV’s “those whose walk is blameless” translates a Hebrew phrase built on tom. The two lines of verse 7 name two gifts from God, success held in store for “the upright” and a shield for the blameless, and verse 8 gives the reason: God guards “the course of the just.”

Psalm 41:12

“Because of my integrity you uphold me and set me in your presence forever.”

Reflection: The integrity David claims here, tom, sits in the same psalm as a confession: “Have mercy on me, Lord; heal me, for I have sinned against you” (41:4). The psalm speaks of a sickbed (41:3) and of a close friend who “has turned against me” (41:9). The verse before says how he knows God is pleased with him: “for my enemy does not triumph over me” (41:11).

Luke 16:10

“Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much, and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much.”

Reflection: Two sayings follow in Luke 16. The first applies the principle to property: “if you have not been trustworthy with someone else’s property, who will give you property of your own?” (16:12). The second is about divided loyalty: “No one can serve two masters … You cannot serve both God and money” (16:13).

1 Corinthians 4:2

“Now it is required that those who have been given a trust must prove faithful.”

Reflection: Paul has just told the Corinthians how to regard him and his fellow workers: “as servants of Christ and as those entrusted with the mysteries God has revealed” (4:1). The one requirement he names for people given such a trust is that they “prove faithful.”

Proverbs 11:13

“A gossip betrays a confidence, but a trustworthy person keeps a secret.”

Reflection: A secret told in confidence is a trust, and the proverb judges people by what they do with it. The gossip “betrays a confidence”; the trustworthy person keeps it.

James 1:22-24

“Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like someone who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like.”

Reflection: James calls hearing without doing a form of self-deception and compares it to looking in a mirror and forgetting the face at once. Against that hearer he sets the one who “looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues in it,” who “will be blessed in what they do” (1:25).

1 John 3:18

“Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth.”

Reflection: John has just asked how the love of God can be in someone who “has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them” (3:17). The measure he sets before that is Christ, who “laid down his life for us” (3:16).

Titus 2:7-8

“In everything set them an example by doing what is good. In your teaching show integrity, seriousness and soundness of speech that cannot be condemned, so that those who oppose you may be ashamed because they have nothing bad to say about us.”

Reflection: Paul writes to Titus, whom he calls “my true son in our common faith” (1:4), and tells him to set the young men an example. Integrity is the first thing he names for Titus’s teaching, with seriousness and “soundness of speech that cannot be condemned.” The purpose is stated: that opponents “may be ashamed because they have nothing bad to say about us.”

1 Peter 3:15-16

“But in your hearts revere Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect, keeping a clear conscience, so that those who speak maliciously against your good behavior in Christ may be ashamed of their slander.”

Reflection: The setting is suffering “for what is right” (3:14), and verse 17 adds that it is better “to suffer for doing good than for doing evil.” The clear conscience belongs to the same instruction as being ready to answer for one’s hope, and Peter expects slander against “good behavior in Christ.”