Malachi 3:1–5

God’s judgement has been something of a third rail in some parts of American Christianity lately; and not without reason. There are whole generations of would be Christians who were turned off by the church’s obsession with Heaven, Hell, who’s in, who’s out, and what horrifying things God has planned for the end of the world. Obviously, far too often that discourse had a vindictive, self-righteous tone to it, and was far too reductive to have come from a place of deep scriptural study. However, that is the only face of Christianity many in the West have ever encountered, and the church has at times tried to overcorrect by distancing ourselves from talk of judgement and condemnation altogether.

But there are two things that often get dropped from the conversation; 1) The bible views God’s Judgement of the wicked not as primarily destructive in nature, but primarily creative; and 2) The world has already encountered ‘The Day of the LORD’s Judgement’ once, and rather than hellfire and brimstone, it came in the form of God Himself taking on the consequences of human sin.

Let’s break that down a bit more; first off ‘How in the world could Judgement be a creative activity?’ Background: Genesis portrays the world as a tapestry in which the moral and physical fibers of reality are inextricably woven together; tear one, and you tear the other. This is precisely what happens when the first humans sin, and the very earth is cursed by their actions. That situation then escalated when Cain killed Abel, and the earth tasted innocent blood poured out in anger. The blood of the innocent cries out to God from the dirt; the earth is revulsed to have the dust that was taken from it returned to it in such a manner. That act of violence is the start of a trend that spirals out of control until God declares ‘I can’t put up with this forever, I’ll give them 120 more years to turn things around. They don’t, and all the blood that’s spilt, all the boundaries of the good ordered creation that have been broken, it all culminates in the collapse of the ordered creation back into its chaotic, precreation state.

After the flood God promises humans, and the earth, that He’d never let human sin reach such a global tipping point again. And soon after, we find two civilizations on a fast track to reach exactly that point; first the civilization founded by Nimrod at Babel, then the Jordan River Valley civilization led by Sodom. But the thing is, in all three stories, the Judgement of God is told through language that connects the reader back to the creation poem on page1. At the end of the flood, the world that had been damaged irreparably by human violence is gone, and good, green things are growing again. God comes down to judge Babel and Sodom, using the same word, ‘rah’ah’, as was used in the creation poem when God judged (or ‘saw’ in most translations) his own work. In both cases, God’s judgement is that these two cities, if they are allowed to continue down this path, will have a massive negative effect on the world in general. So He scatters the people of Babel, putting an end to their self-deifying work in constructing the ziggurat.

Sodom doesn’t have it so good, because they’ve gone further with their wickedness; abusing the poor, using violence and sexual coercion as weapons to defend their wealth from outsiders, and oppressing the foreigner in their midst. And just as God declared that every intention of the human heart was only ever evil before the flood, the text tells us that every man, all the men of Sodom, both young and old, from every quadrant of the town, all of them were complicit. As the sun rose on each day of creation, when the sun rose on the day of the Lord’s judgement of Sodom, actual hellfire and brimstone rained from heaven (where the rains of the flood came from) turning the Jordan River Valley civilization into the Dead Sea. But here’s the crux of it all, the author of Genesis wants us to see creation in these Judgements, because those who were judged were actively working against the good, ordered creation. More importantly, they were people with power, using that power against those without any.

Men like Lamech, the descendant of Cain, used their power to enslave and forcibly marry women, and to abuse and kill anyone who looked at them sideways before the flood. The leaders of Babel (according to the genealogy just before that narrative, those leaders are foreign conquerors led by Nimrod), force the local people to build a ziggurat in their name, for their own glory. Sodom made a habit of abusing and manipulating its allies, of oppressing the poor, and the outsider. They even, seemingly, tried to commit the same sins as the ‘sons of God’ before the flood in defying the heaven/earth boundary in order to procreate with angels and make Nephilim.

Conversations about power; who has it, who doesn’t, and how it gets used, these things are left out of conversations about divine judgement far too much considering the abuse of power is one of the most often repeated reasons for God to destroy a civilization. For that reason, if we are going to talk about divine judgement in our churches, then like Malachi we should be quick to criticize power, and to come to the defense of the downtrodden. If justice is ever going to be meaningfully, and lastingly achieved for those who have been pushed to the side by society; the orphan, the single mother, the widow, the foreigner, the wage earner; then by necessity some sort of judgement must occur against the people who oppress them. God’s judgement is creational precisely because oppression, bloodshed, greed, self-aggrandizement, these are all inherently destabilizing to creation, and the destructive choice would be to do nothing about it.

However, before we all grab our pitchforks and storm Wall Street and Silicon Valley, we need to talk about that second thing at the top: the last time ‘The Day of the LORD’s Judgement’ came and went. The day Malachi looks forward to is the coming of John the Baptist, and Jesus. And far from fire raining from the sky to consume the wicked, fire came from the words of Christ to purify our wickedness. Christ bore the punishment we deserved in His own flesh. He died, was burried, and rose again, leaving our sins behind in the grave where they belong. We follow that journey down into death in the waters of baptism, rising again with Him out of the waters of the grave, leaving our old selves behind. What we all must begin to understand is that we all have some measure of power, and we are all guilty of misusing it. We all are complicit to some extent in the evils of our society, and deserve the punishment of Sodom. But when Lot fled Sodom, he begged God to spare one of the cities in the alliance that was being destroyed, Zoar, so that he could flee there. Zoar was as guilty of Sodom, though of less power and significance, and deserved the same fate. But Lot’s intercession saved the city. We are as guilty as Sodom, but Jesus’ intercession saves us. When Jesus came to judge the earth, He did indeed condemn the powerful, and reprove the wicked. Some listened, some didn’t. But on the cross He didn’t call down angels to rain fire on those who put Him there. He said ‘Father forgive them, because they have no idea what they’re doing.’

One day God will fully and finally set things right, and when He does he will necessarily have to punish those who built up and benefited from oppressive systems. But we don’t know when that day will come, nor what metrics or means God will use to pass judgement. So until that day comes, rather than seeking the destruction of the wicked, we should seek their repentance.

It is a just thing for the one who oppresses the wage earner to be removed from wealth and power. It is a glorious thing when one who oppresses the wage earner comes to see their actions through God’s eyes, and bends the power and wealth they once abused so that it now works for wage earners rather than against them. It is a just thing for a powerful person who oppresses orphans, single mothers, widows, refugees, and foreigners to be removed from their power. It is a miraculous thing for them to see Jesus in the oppressed, and to learn to use their power to advocate for the powerless. So Christians, let us not long for the punishment of the wicked so desperately as we long for their redemption. Because we too were sinners saved by grace, and not by our own actions, but by the intercession of Christ.