Advent is a season of both sobriety and celebration. For too short a time it holds before us the stark realities of our ultimate existence, the inevitabilities of personal judgment and its eternal consequences. There will be no oversights or excuses on “the day of his coming” (v2). The Lord will search every heart and scrutinize every life. There will be no exemptions from or exceptions to this thorough summing up and the irreversible sentence that the Lord will deliver. The books of our conduct and conscience will be opened and examined. The first volume will have been written by ourselves. The second will be God’s critique, his commentary on our performance, which we shall see to be exact and beyond dispute. Our memory will confirm its accuracy in every detail. We shall render silent concurrence with its findings and either stand secure or collapse completely after we have viewed our video curriculum vitae.

  The question Malachi poses is valid for each occasion on which the Lord visits men individually or collectively. “Who can stand?” The question is rhetorical. Scripture knows the answer only too well. “But who can endure the day of his coming?” The tone is ominous and the conclusion devastating. No one can stand, or endure the Lord’s coming inspection. His justice is something we must face but it causes super-terrifying fear when we recognize that we must fall guilty into the hands of the living God. “It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God” (Hebrews 10:31).

  The Lord will testify against all wickedness and our part in it in terms of our having committed sin or having complied with evil. We shall be judged singly for our own breach of the divine law, either in action or attitude, deed or desire. We shall be assessed for our assent to social sins against which we did not protest, and which we did not seek to rectify, according to our opportunity or ability however limited. The two tables of the law will be placed before the eye of the soul and we shall register our infringements of the moral law in relation to God and man.

  The list of sins against which the prophet inveighs is partial but fundamental to fallen human character (v5). Sorcery means to submit to demonic control and to call upon evil supernatural powers to gain fulfilment of evil desires. It is to endeavour to gain ends by enchantments and spells. We are all enchanted by our own perverse inclinations and seek to satisfy our wills rather than to serve the Lord’s will. There are flagrant and sinister manifestations of the dark arts that cause us to recoil, but there are dark ways and concealed craft in every heart that are akin to sorcery – the pursuit of perceived advantages without reference to God and reliance on his guidance. Adultery covers marital and spiritual infidelity. The treacherous heart is firmly lodged in every human being. We are wanderers through weakness and self will. Our lives leave a trail of broken promises and commitments. As God is ever reliable he detests our lack of reliability towards him and others. Perjury under oath is a serious crime with injurious consequences, especially if it amounts to false testimony against another. But human nature lies constantly to itself, others, and to God. Dishonesty and deceit is a constant stream that flows from the heart, consciously and subconsciously. Crime is only our true character appearing on the surface and beneath it is a foulness that is frightening and unfathomable.

  The law is so penetrating. Even when it tackles various types of wrongdoing, or addresses sin in general terms that seem to exclude ourselves explicitly, it very soon homes in on our hearts accusingly. Our sense of decency dissolves when we discern the spirituality of the law. We realize that action is small evidence of our corruption. The heart stores up and pores over a universe of depravity and defilement that only God can weigh and the load of iniquity sinks us into hell. The next three sins on Malachi’s list aim principally at the rich and powerful in society, those who have influence over the wellbeing of others, the makers of policy and shapers of practice. They are aimed at the moral leaders and monetary manipulators of a nation. 

  Fraudulence against labourers is a more serious crime against God and man than many admit (Adam and Eve were co-labourers with God and amply provided for beyond their strict deserts by any calculation). Who can assess a fair wage? How is it gauged? Both need and generosity will come into consideration. Workers have duty and dignity. Israel had God-given ceilings for wealth (honest gain and the provisions of the Year of Jubilee) and safety nets for welfare (care for the poor as observed by Boaz). Justice prohibited greed and provided for acts of compassion. The King was to oversee and act for the wellbeing of his subjects spiritually and socially. The elite classes and the common citizenry had responsibilities to each other. However a fallen race provides severely limited opportunity for any indulgence of idealism, and self interest will always prevail between the now contending sectors of the human community. 

The point is that the ruling class with all its advantages was taking advantage of the less advantaged and dependent (cf. Amos 5: 11ff and the many other strong denunciations offered by the prophets). Minimal wages were awarded, withheld, or delayed. Widows and orphans, anyone in penury, were oppressed (e.g. slum landlords on various continents today charge exorbitant rents to those afflicted with the suffering and shame of poverty). Resident aliens (those without rights and dependent on goodwill) were not treated humanely. On all sides there were laws to be upheld and love of neighbour to be exercised in ways that were appropriate to circumstances. In the Lord’s eyes those without affluence or influence are to be considered kindly. Those with distinguishing differences are to be integrated into the just ways of a society that insists on fairness. Who better to learn and exhibit these divine instructions than the people of Israel who had been involved in grave offences against the law given for their moral benefit, or had been victims themselves of immoral cruelty (Egypt was no vacation resort). 

  The wonderful thing about any warning of judgment is that it contained the clues of a divinely given alternative – the promise of a saving act imposed upon a chosen remnant. Judgment is necessary purgation. But God also performs a salvific purification of his true people. “I the Lord do not change” avers Malachi. The people of righteousness will be accepted as in former days.  Their offerings to God – of praise and reconciliation – are rendered through the validity of a purification to be wrought on their behalf by One who will cause them to stand and endure through the Great Ordeal because he will have diverted it away from them and directed it toward himself. There is a covenant that keeps the believer safe. Its messenger is the voluntary means of our deliverance. He is both Prophet and Priest. He announces and accomplishes a perfect atonement for those who have affronted a holy God. He makes amendment for our offences. Through his disposition of mercy we are not destroyed. 

The offer of nearness to God is the supreme invitation and blessing of Holy Scripture. The prospect is not merely proximity of position but intimacy of relationship that culminates in mutual indwelling (John14:15-20 & 23, 17:20-26). The progressive course of salvation in Holy Scripture is from announcement of God’s gracious intention to befriend alienated mankind toward a state of each abiding in the other. The home of God is the human heart and the home of the saint is heaven, eternal existence in his embrace. Closeness to God, our ultimate goal, is to be enclosed within the presence of God and to enjoy him as our all-surrounding environment. Our salvation is deliverance from the infinite distance that separates us from God due to our sin, and sin is not only a matter of committing wrongdoing, evil is the condition of our human constitution. We are inherently incompatible with God and repugnant to his holy nature. To even think of closeness to God as being a possibility is to entertain the prospect of a supernatural event that achieves such a result. It is not within the bounds of human inclination or achievement. We are too far gone to retrace our steps to the former fellowship of Eden, and too perverse to resume that fellowship if proposed. The Gospel of reconciliation requires the occurrence of regeneration to accomplish its success. The notion of nearness to God when our merited final destination is inevitably to experience his endless absence (the horror of hell) is the first glint of hope granted to hopeless men. God tells us in his Word that for the repentant, those who turn around towards him, “there is a place near to me”. Union with God is restored.

  Moses was the man of ardent yearning to know God. It was his dominant desire; to be assured of the Lord’s favour. His varied experience of privilege at the Egyptian court and exile in the wilderness had taught him the futility of heathenism and the foulness of his own heart that had rushed him to commit murder and left him to the musings of his wild estrangement from God in the lonely regions on the far side of the desert. Moses had much time to ponder serious matters of the soul until his encounter with the Lord in the burning bush. There Moses learned that any approach to God could not be casual. He must approach the Holy One with caution and only through the access of the promises granted to the Patriarchs. Even with caution in his heart, and covenant promises bidding him and covering him,  “Moses hid his face because he was afraid to look at God” (Exodus 3:6).  Nearness to God was by no means an automatic human entitlement even when God made the first move man-wards. There was a protocol to be observed – man’s awareness of the divine majesty and his own misery.  Grace is never cheap. The pearls of the Gospel are never strewn before swine. Grace has a price (and the cost has been met by Jesus Christ). When we reach out towards mercy God reveals its value together with our ill-desert, and our meeting with God is always a marvel that humbles us. Moses desired God but knew that he did not deserve him, but the Lord’s compassion and Moses’ inner compulsion made him daring enough to declare his passion for intimacy.

  In his earnest dialogue with God Moses became convinced of two fundamental soul-saving facts: a) Man comes to know God because he is previously known by God in electing love. “I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion” (Exodus 33:19). b) God is only known through the condescension of his own self-revelation through his word and by his own enlightening and persuasive presence that is so impactful it cannot be resisted. The knowledge that God imparts is effectual interior knowledge, insight into God that lodges inside the recipient of revelation. The mutual indwelling, he in us and we in him, is initiated. The object of God’s self disclosure is to display “all his goodness”, i.e. the fact of his perfection, the range of his qualities, and the array of his attributes. All these will be enjoyed in his act of generous self-giving to those he selects for this inestimable privilege. His goodness becomes an attraction to the called, and the possession of the converted.

  Moses is the man who exemplifies the stunning discovery of the reality of grace as utterly sovereign and free, a mercy granted of God’s unmotivated, unconditional goodwill towards those who have emphatically renounced all connection with him and all subjection to him, and consequently have absolutely no claims upon him. Destitute of all entitlement or expectation they are favoured by divine determination alone. Salvation is solely of the Lord and wholly according to his choice without reference to human quality or co-operation. It is equivalent to the “uncaused” bolt from the blue as far as man is concerned. Moses represents what all the elect come to recognize in due time, that God affords us protection from himself: “I will put you in the cleft of the rock”.  Our only hiding place from the God of judgment, because of our sin and his offended glory, is God himself. He nestles us in his own side and covers us by his own hand. Our safety is in him, against his own flank and under the unfurled fist, that once clenched, will strike his enemies fatally. The relentless Aggressor against evil makes himself our fortress and “passes over” us so that we shall be spared (for God to “pass over” the guilty, spared by grace, is a fundamental feature of Moses’ consciousness. He knows the constant closeness of retribution). Our Attacker becomes our Defender by plucking us out of range of his righteous fury to “a place near me”. Holy wrath is graciously averted from us. The Angel of Death ignores the sentence of death against us. It has been rescinded by divine decree. The Lord’s hand does not smite us, for our names, precious to him, are engraved upon his palms (Isaiah 49:16). Thus he has notice to quit avenging action against us.

  The narrative of Moses’ revelation from God is a summary, through hindsight (the backside of God in his recorded deeds and intimations), of the meaning of the Lord Jesus Christ to the believer. His cherished Saviour is clearly delineated in the Mosaic “preview”.  Christ is the Rock upon which we stand and in whom we hide when the vengeance of the Lord is unleashed (cf. 1 Corinthians 10:4. For they drank from the spiritual rock that accompanied them, and that rock was Christ).  He is the manifestation and presence of the glory of God whom Moses longed to see (cf. 2 Corinthians 4:6. For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness”, made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ).  That for which Moses was pining, and much more, is found in Jesus, the Prophet whom he forecast and was expecting (Deuteronomy 18:15).

  Jesus is the place, presence, and protection that God affords us through his mighty and sovereign grace. He, the God-man, is the only one with the right to draw near to God and as he does so he brings us in his train. Accordingly, we pass muster. As we gaze upon him we see the face of God and revel in his fellowship. The One battered and bruised upon the cross, and risen from the tomb, has the right and voluntary obligation to preserve us until we enter his glory. “He will see his offspring” (Isa. 53:10), and God will heed his prayer,  “While I was with them, I protected them and kept them safe by that name you gave me… Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, and to see my glory, the glory you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world” (John 17:12 & 24). 

  Broadly speaking the Evangelicalism of our time is scarcely worthy of the name. It panders to human nature and propounds the sovereignty of the human will in the matter of eternal salvation. In an age when a strong Gospel is necessary to counter the hubris, wickedness, and woes, of fallen man, and bring him to humility and repentance before God, our preaching flatters the human capacity to turn to God when man chooses and decides to contribute to his spiritual recovery. In Gospel invitations the native powers of sinful men are called upon to assist the insufficient power of God in the rescue of their souls, and the full force of the Biblical message of redemption is muted by an appeal to the remaining goodness within them. Man is deemed to make the “big” decision concerning his relationship with God, and he is urged to make the vital move that causes the work of Christ to become effective. This “watered down” version of the Gospel blinds man to his absolute lostness and total helplessness and robs God of his glory as a gracious Deliverer. This approach is so contrary to the emphases of the Reformation which brought out so clearly the teachings of the Bible. Instead of making men desperate for a Saviour we make them complacent in their false assumptions about God and themselves. We do not bring folk to the point where they must admit that they can do nothing and only cast themselves upon the mercy of God – a disposition that must be God wrought.

  Martin Luther’s favourite and most important literary work of his ministry, The Bondage of the Will, is a necessary corrective to the deviant theology of our time. It would shock the cassocks off the clergy of our day, and burst their clerical collars. It would disclose most ministry as a worthless sham in an era when we so need the pure word of God to convict and convert stubborn sinners who have no apprehension of their depravity and danger. No one should enter ministry without opening Luther’s indispensable book – especially Anglican ministry (Article 10). SIN, in real terms, is a forgotten phenomenon in our modern religion. Its deadly effects in our moral impotency is hardly suspected. The contemporary Church propounds an illusion concerning the human condition and the character of a holy God. When the Diocese of Atlanta seeks to reinstate Pelagius as a worthy doctor of the Church every effort should be made to counter the influence of the fifth century heretic whose errors pervade the entire Church and even reign in the thinking of many evangelicals. Pelagius and his views on human ability to please God, gain his approval, and win salvation, are rife within Christendom under various guises. Until we come to a full acknowledgement of the enslaved sinner (the bound will) and an electing God (his sovereign will) we come nowhere near to the true Gospel of Christ. We are mere pulpit prattlers unworthy of our divine calling. We are propping people up in their false confidence in self and what they can do in playing a part in what is exclusively the work of God – salvation is of the Lord. It is his action on behalf of men and his gift to men from the first glimmer of spiritual concern to the consummation of salvation in glory. Man does nothing until he receives divine enabling and the liberation and renewal of his will. Our preference for sin is our prison. Our freedom comes from outside ourselves when God breaks the bars of our sin and bursts the chains of our evil affections. We love self, serve Satan, and hate God. Where could any inclination to desire or love him come from except from his grace? Law (doing what we ought) is a futile thing to rely on when an antipathy to law dominates the heart and there is not a scintilla of yearning for righteousness.

  Luther’s denial of free will in relation to God and matters concerning him was the basis of his theology of salvation. It (this denial) causes us to renounce self and throw ourselves upon his compassion. We are brought to that point of self abandonment by the operations of the Holy Spirit in our heart, and through his mercy we exercise humble reliance upon the good promises of God fulfilled in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. We are destitute of all power and virtue and place our confidence in the power and virtue of Christ.

  Luther’s great opponent in the debate on the nature of man’s predicament and the nature of his salvation was the Dutch scholar Erasmus of Rotterdam. His view was that man could make effort and endeavours that prepared him for grace. Man did all that he could and God made up the deficit.  A portion of man’s restoration to righteousness and God was attributed to the sinner. He strove and he chose to depart from evil. But how does an evil nature will what is contrary to it? How does the sinner overcome the mastery of his own desires and overthrow his preferred master, the devil. How does an unconverted, unregenerate person reach out for the God his heart rejects (Romans 8: 5-8)? Such a transformation is impossible apart from the intervention of God. He must start what we cannot begin. The initiative is wholly his. Until he exercises it we are inert. We must be raised from spiritual death before there is any evidence of spiritual life. The account of Lazarus coming forth from the tomb and bound with linen strips is illustrative of this fact (John 11: 38-44). Lazarus could do nothing. The enlivening call of Christ drew him forth from the grave. “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him” (John 6:44). Until Christ commands our submission to him Luther’s accurate observation is true, “Satan, who cast Adam down by temptation alone, at a time when he was not yet Adam’s ruler, now reigns in us with complete power over us”.* We freely follow our will but we are unable to change it to a good will. That event is precisely the essence of the salvation that God achieves on our behalf. He saves us from our mad, recalcitrant selves.

  Erasmus would please men with a doctrine they would like, a doctrine that left them self confident and not wholly dependent on God. Luther referred to his “cautious, peace-loving theology” that causes no offence to the arrogance, self-righteousness, arrogance, and presumptuousness of man that listens to the word with calm indifference (I once heard an eminent gentleman saying as he left church, ‘Well, we just heard about that fella called God’). Natural man has no sense of his smallness and sinfulness before the Most High and Majestic God. He has no inkling that he lives under the sovereign dispensations of the Almighty Lord. His assumptions as to his free will and what it can do are blasphemous and opposed to the way of salvation. The teaching of Scripture on man’s corruption and God’s sovereign grace need to be noted and fathomed through study and prayer. Only our self despair can compel us to call on God with familiar words that take on a fresh and urgent meaning; “Lord, have mercy!  For those charged with the preaching of the Gospel, Luther’s Bondage of the Will is the indispensable and definitive declaration of the doctrines of grace and the helpless depravity of human nature – red meat theology indeed!

RJS

*The Bondage of the Will, translated by J. I. Packer & O.R. Johnston

  The Doctrines That Divide, Erwin Lutzer

  On Being a Theologian of the Cross, Gerhard O. Forde