Malachi 4:1-6
In today’s reading from the Book of Malachi, the prophet serves as the mouthpiece of God in telling us what the coming of the Lord on the last day will be like. He says:
“For behold, the day is coming, burning like an oven, and all the proud, yes, all who do wickedly will be stubble. And the day which is coming shall burn them up,” says the Lord of hosts, “that will leave them neither root nor branch.”
This is very similar to what the last of the Old Covenant prophets said during his ministry. John the Baptist – the immediate forerunner of the Messiah’s first coming – for redemption – said this regarding the Messiah’s second coming, for judgment:
“His winnowing fan is in His hand, and He will thoroughly clean out His threshing floor, and gather the wheat into His barn; but the chaff He will burn with unquenchable fire.”
This imagery is truly frightening – and it is meant to be. No one should want to be on the wrong side of Christ when he returns to judge the living and the dead.
What people should want – and what the gospel causes people to want, when it has done its saving work in their lives – is the ability to welcome Jesus, when he comes again in glory, with great joy and celebration.
We who know him by faith now will not be on his wrong side then and will not be condemned by him then. He tells us in St. John’s Gospel that
“God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved. He who believes in Him is not condemned.”
The Book of Malachi likewise describes the very different way in which God’s redeemed and forgiven people will experience the visible return of Christ to this world, when God says through Malachi:
“But to you who fear My name, the Sun of Righteousness shall arise with healing in His wings; and you shall go out and grow fat like stall-fed calves.”
For the wicked and unbelieving on that day, the fire of God will be a consuming fire of destruction. But for those who fear the name of the Lord, the fire of God will be like the contained and controlled fire of the sun: that is, a warming and healing fire.
And Jesus is described as the Sun of Righteousness, who comes with healing in his wings, or we might say, who comes with healing in the rays of light that emanate from him.
The English word for the sun in the sky and the English word for the son of a father sound the same, even though they are totally different words. We are, of course, accustomed to referring to Jesus as the Son of his Father in heaven.
But this passage from Malachi is talking about the other kind of sun. Jesus is a sun of divine light, shining down upon his people as he descends to the earth.
That is not a frightening image – especially when the power to heal is attached to this light – because we know that we need the special kind of healing that comes from this special sun. And on the last day we will likewise need an even more special kind of healing.
The first and most basic healing that we need is the healing of the soul. And primarily this means the healing of hearts that have been wounded by sin. These wounds are usually self-inflicted. But they are healed by God’s forgiveness in Christ.
God’s Word speaks this kind of healing, and this salvation, into us. The Prophet Jeremiah already understood this, when he prayed:
“Heal me, O Lord, and I shall be healed; save me, and I shall be saved, for You are my praise. Indeed they say to me, ‘Where is the word of the Lord? Let it come now!’”
Jesus is, of course, the great physician, and the great healer. The bodily healings that he performed on some, during his earthly ministry, always pointed toward the deeper healing of the soul that all people needed and still do need. And so he said:
“Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance.”
Those who are sick with sin, when they repent, will receive from Jesus the healing medicine of his forgiveness.
And on the last day, a profound healing of the human bodies of all of us will also occur. St. Paul soberly reminds us in his Epistle to the Romans that the wages of sin is death, and this include also physical death – even for those whose sins are forgiven.
The ancient curse of Eden remains with us. But it will not remain forever. On the last day we will be raised from death, in the most marvelous healing imaginable.
This will not be like the raising of Jairus’s daughter, the raising of the son of the widow in Nain, or the raising of Lazarus. Those people were restored by Jesus to the mortal lives they had before. And they all eventually died again.
When we are sick or injured, we call out to God for relief from our bodily suffering. And God often answers those prayers by physically healing us: usually through the ministrations of physicians, but sometimes in ways that the doctors can’t explain.
Yet we, too, will all eventually die. At some point, the medical treatment won’t work, and the healing won’t come. And our bodies will be laid to rest in the embrace of the earth, to await the resurrection – even as the bodies of Jairus’s daughter, the son of the widow of Nain, and Lazarus are now awaiting the resurrection.
When that great and final healing comes – from Jesus, as he himself comes – the resurrection will be a resurrection to immortality. It will be like the resurrection of Jesus, not like those other temporary restorations.
Of course, the power of Jesus’ resurrection effects us, and changes us, even now – while we still walk the earth as his disciples. But we look forward to even more than this. St. Paul gives us this hope in his First Epistle to the Corinthians, where he writes that
“Christ is risen from the dead, and has become the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For since by man came death, by Man also came the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ all shall be made alive. But each one in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, afterward those who are Christ’s at His coming. Then comes the end, when He delivers the kingdom to God the Father, when He puts an end to all rule and all authority and power. For He must reign till He has put all enemies under His feet. The last enemy that will be destroyed is death.”
That, dear friends, will be the deepest of healings for our sin-scarred and dead bodies. Penitent and believing Christians have already been forgiven their sins, and in Christ are counted as righteous before God by faith – so that the guilt of their sins is, as it were, removed from God’s ledger.
St. Paul tells the Colossians, and he tells you, that Christ has made you alive together with him,
“having forgiven you all trespasses, having wiped out the handwriting of requirements that was against us, which was contrary to us. And He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross.”
But when the final and ultimate healing takes place, in the general resurrection, we will not only be counted as righteous, but will actually be perfectly righteous in every respect. All the effects of humanity’s fall into sin, and of our own personal sins – all death and disease – will then be removed from us.
Let’s break away from this for a minute and listen to what the Book of Genesis tells us about the time when the Lord appeared in the form of a man and wrestled with the patriarch Jacob:
“Then Jacob was left alone; and a Man wrestled with him until the breaking of day. Now when He saw that He did not prevail against [Jacob], He touched the socket of his hip; and the socket of Jacob’s hip was out of joint as He wrestled with him. And He said, ‘Let Me go, for the day breaks.’ But he said, ‘I will not let You go unless You bless me!’ So He said to him, ‘What is your name?’ He said, ‘Jacob.’ And He said, ‘Your name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel; for you have struggled with God and with men, and have prevailed.’ … So Jacob called the name of the place Peniel: ‘For I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved.’ Just as he crossed over Penuel the sun rose on him, and he limped on his hip.”
St. Ambrose, the famous fourth-century bishop of Milan whose feast day is observed today, was a very important teacher in the ancient church. He taught his people not only through his sermons – which were marked by great rhetorical skill – but also through hymns, in which his poetic gifts shone forth.
We sang his well-known Advent hymn, “Savior of the Nations, Come,” last Sunday. In one of his writings Ambrose spoke about the marvelous healings that come from Christ now, and that will come from him on the last day, in the context of comments that he made concerning that Genesis account. Ambrose said:
“Because Jacob’s faith and devotion were unconquerable, the Lord revealed His hidden mysteries to him by touching the side of his thigh. For it was by descent from him that the Lord Jesus was to be born, of a virgin. And Jesus would be neither unlike, nor unequal to, God. The numbness in the side of Jacob’s thigh foreshadowed the cross of Christ, who would bring salvation to all men by spreading the forgiveness of sins throughout the whole world, and would give resurrection to the departed by the numbness and torpidity of His own body. On this account the sun rightly rose on holy Jacob, for the saving cross of the Lord shone brightly on his lineage. And at the same time the Sun of Righteousness rises on the man who recognizes God, because He is Himself the Everlasting Light.”
St. Ambrose spoke about the healing power of Christ and of his forgiveness – as received by faith – also in a commentary concerning the woman with a flow of blood who touched the hem of Jesus’ garment, as recorded in St. Luke’s Gospel. Ambrose wrote:
“The woman was immediately healed, because she drew to [Jesus] in faith. And do you with faith touch but the hem of his garment. The torrential flow of worldly passions will be dried up by the warmth of the saving Word, if you but draw near to him with faith, if with like devotion you grasp at least the hem of his garment. O faith richer than all treasures! A faith stronger than all the powers of the body, more health-giving than all the physicians!”
When God forgives us, he also changes us. The inborn universal cancer of sin that causes people who do not know Christ to live according to the base impulses of pride, greed, and lust, is in remission for Christians.
It’s still inside of us, and there can be recurrences. The sinful nature still lurks in the darker corners of our human existence.
But the passions that ooze out of that old fallen nature no longer enslave us and control us. And while we live here below, the Spirit of Christ now bears his fruit in us and through us.
This is the kind of healing that Christ, the Sun of Righteousness, brings to us. In his Word and Sacrament he rises upon us today. We thereby know even now the warmth of the forgiveness that restores us to peace: peace between us and God; and peace within ourselves.
And this is the kind of healing that Christ, the Sun of Righteousness, will bring to us on the day of his bodily return to this world from heaven above: in a way that will be so stupendous, and so astounding, that we can barely conceive of it or imagine what it will be like.
Yet the resurrection of Jesus demonstrates that it can happen. And God’s Word promises that it will happen. And we will live for eternity: in glorified bodies that will be healed of all weaknesses and infirmities, for eternity.
The Lord says: “And to you who fear My name the Sun of Righteousness shall arise with healing in His wings…” Amen.