Malachi Chapter Four, Justification By Faith

 

But the fact remains that Moses is recognized as the lawgiver. The Jews weren’t commanded to remember Moses, but the Law. It was for “all Israel,” and the nation was meant to govern itself “with the statutes and judgments,” within its pages. Jesus Himself, in the quotation mentioned above, emphasized the witness of Moses’ writings. The Sanhedrin, when interrogating the man born blind, vehemently assailed him when he asked them if they wished to become disciples of Jesus. They answered, “We are Moses’ disciples. We know that God spoke to Moses,” John 9:28, 29. This was actually a very condemning admission to make. A little later, when the Pharisees asked Jesus if they too were blind, He answered, “If you were blind, you would have no sin; but now you say, ‘We see.’ Therefore your sin remains,” John 9:41. The Law made mankind accountable. The Law exposed sin for what it was is; it magnified sin’s nature because the Law magnified or demonstrated God’s holiness and justice. Contrasted against a holy God’s denouncement of sin, the Law only made the hearer guiltier before God.

The Gentiles, governed by conscience, were still held accountable and created governments and moralities that reflected a God-given understanding of good and evil. But Moses brought down the tablets of God’s writing, forever separating the Jewish people as one uniquely gifted with a revelation of the separation and circumspection righteousness required. The Pharisees erred by challenging Jesus about the nature of blindness. The Christ stood before them, the expectation of the prophets, the great Prophet foretold by Moses, and they didn’t see Him. Had they truly been Moses’ disciples as they claimed, the Law would have trained them to recognize and accept the coming One. Instead, it exposed their guilt for rejecting Him and their blindness for believing that by the Law they were already righteous. A Law that not even they followed completely or thoroughly, Acts 15:10.

 

Moreover, Paul writes, “Therefore the law was our tutor to bring us to Christ, that we might be justified by faith,” Galatians 3:24. The Pharisees sought justification from the Law, Romans 9:31, 32. The Law became a stumbling stone for the Jewish mind, because they thought that by it, they would have life. Paul further explains, “For they being ignorant of God’s righteousness, and seeking to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted to the righteousness of God. For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes,” Romans 10:3, 4. The word “end” here can be a little ambiguous. The NIV really clarifies when it translates the verse, “Christ is the culmination of the law.” He isn’t its destruction; He is, as He said, its fulfillment. He fulfilled the Law’s requirements so the Jew through faith might have life in Him. There was a great ignorance regarding righteousness, and how one attains it. The Jews did not comprehend God’s righteousness, substituted their own standard for it, and by doing so failed to submit to Christ, the Messiah and Prophet of their expectation, who is described in Romans 10:3 as the “righteousness of God.”

 

By remembering the Law, and meditating on its precepts as the Psalmist did in Psalm 119, it would make the reader, through faith, ready to receive the Coming One. Such faith would also provide a remedy to the miserable practices being perpetuated in the temple during Malachi’s prophecy. Zeal for God’s word results in a fervor to purge what opposes it. Someone genuinely obeying the Law from the heart would be trained to give mercy to the needy and justice to the poor. The attributes that make our God so amazing would be grown in them, and they would look not to the Law for justification, but the God who pardons sin when they have transgressed the Law. Mercy triumphs over judgment; judgment makes us prejudicial and hardened. The Pharisees and scribes of Jesus’ day knew much of the Law, but little of the One who gave it. The thing that was meant to be a tool for mankind, provided to craft an ideal community where the poor, the stranger, the widow and the orphaned could find equity was turned into a weapon wielded by the privileged to burden those they deemed inferior. The Law divorced from the Lawgiver, the living God whose presence gives life, could only bring about judgment and death. Malachi strove to remind Israel to look back at Moses’ Law, God’s servant. As His servant, when Moses obeyed by faith it was written that he found grace in God’s sight, Exodus 33:12-17. Moses’ justification came not from the Law of God, but the God who gave the Law. God extends grace on His own terms (Exodus 33:19) and grants it to those who come to Him in faith.