The Pain of God Part 2

“I have loved you,” says the LORD. But you ask, “How have you loved us?” (Malachi 1:2) Isn’t this how it normally goes? We allow the misfortune of our circumstances to decide whether or not God loves us. Doubt of God’s love is one of the most natural tendencies of humanity. War, poverty, starvation, drought, and injustice constantly clobber our weary world. The earth cries out in pain as its inhabitants curse the God who made them. “How have you loved us?” We challenge the King of Heaven, “You have hurt us,” we say. We disregard His response, “You have hurt me.” 

The book of Malachi was most likely written during the time of Nehemiah over a hundred years after Judea’s return from the Babylonian exile. It was a time when people were doubting God’s love because the blessings promised by Him were nowhere to be found. Malachi is a conversation between the people of Israel and God. Israel asks why God has refused to bless them, and God responds with how they refused to follow Him. Israel was a nation that had a special relationship with God. They were descendants of Abraham, who was promised an offspring as numerous as the stars in the sky. (Genesis 15)  A covenant was made, an everlasting covenant, where the LORD promised to be the God of Abraham’s children. As a sign of the promise, God required circumcision, a scar in the flesh to demonstrate a tie between the spirit of man and the Spirit of their God. God chose the bloodline of Abraham as His special possession, so that one day a Savior could be born through pure descent and redeem the whole world. But the Israelites were unfaithful with their end of the deal. They were given a relationship with their Creator and scorned it with their stubborn sin. The Old Testament is an account of Israel’s wandering and God’s searching. Malachi, the last book of the Old Testament, is a conversation between the Wanderers and the Searcher. 

In Malachi, Israel asks why God hasn’t fulfilled His promises. They ask why they are in pain, forgetting the pain they inflicted on God. But God doesn’t punish them as a reaction to pain, He withheld blessings from them as a reminder of the covenant that they broke. “I the LORD do not change. So you, the descendants of Jacob, are not destroyed.” (3:6) The covenant was not originally given because of Israel’s holiness, it was given because of God’s holiness. Therefore, it could not be revoked through any unholiness of the Israelites. It was based on the foundation of His sufficiency, not theirs.

A few blogs ago, I wrote about how the sins of Noah’s age broke God’s heart. The sins that Israelites committed also broke God’s heart. “Ever since the time of your ancestors you have turned away from my decrees and have not kept them.” (3:7) The price of loving a sinful nation was having to watch them sin. The price of making a covenant with unfaithful people was watching it be disregarded. “Will a mere mortal rob God? Yet you rob me,” God says. He who cannot be robbed opened His heart to be plundered. He who cannot be broken became breakable because that was the consequence of indescribable love. 

He did not revoke the promise He made with Abraham, He did not reroute His plan of sending a Savior. “On the day when I act,” says the LORD Almighty, “they will be my treasured possession. I will spare them, just as a father has compassion and spares His son who serves Him.” (3:17) Jesus, God Himself, the conclusion of God’s covenant with the Israelites, came so that a new covenant could be made. The sign of this covenant was not seared into our flesh as circumcision was, it was scarred onto the body of the Savior, holes in His wrists and His side eternally display the ultimate sacrifice. “I have loved you, I do love you, and I will love you,” God says, “I loved you so much, I endured your complaints, I suffered your abuse and neglect, I found you even when you thought you had hidden yourself from my sight. Your sin breaks my heart, but I allow it to be broken because I keep my promises even when you don’t.” The new covenant is this: the pain which we inflicted on God was not counted against us, and the cost of our sins are paid in full, out of the richness of His grace.