Malachi 4:2 But to you that fear my name shall the Sun of righteousness arise with healing in his wings; and you shall go forth… Were I to adhere to the textual view of these words I should be shut up to consider what Christ's coming was to those who already had some true light, to those who already feared God and thought upon His name, and thus I should have mainly to set forth the superiority of Christianity to Judaism. But I shall make no apology for giving to this title "Sun of Righteousness" a wider application, and for considering not so much Christ's rising then and there upon Jewish cloudiness and dimness, as rather His arising from first to last upon the total darkness of our fallen world. I. THE NATURE OF CHRIST'S LIGHT, OR ENLIGHTENING POWER. 1. This light is saving light. In many parts of the Old Testament "righteousness" is used in nearly the same sense with "salvation." The salvation of God, resting on the perfect righteousness of God's own Son as the sinner's substitute, applied to believers in Him for justification, and in its gracious operation, terminated and completed by their willing return to personal righteousness and holiness of life, — this is what is here meant under the name of "righteousness" (Jeremiah 23:6). We speak in our own language of the "sun of freedom" rising upon a country, or of the "sunshine of peace" revisiting it. But the light which here bursts upon a lost and guilty world is the saving light of righteousness. It announces to the condemned the hope of pardon, and shows the way; and it discloses with equal clearness the means of deliverance from the power and bondage of corruption. In Christ the whole salvation is contained, even as the sun reveals himself. In Him the guilty are righteous in law; in Him, and as subdued by His birth, they are righteous in fact. 2. This light is original light. The light of the sun is unborrowed. It is a mystery which our science has not yet solved, how this fountain is fed. But relatively to all sources of light that we know, it is higher and self-sustained. This images the nature of Christ s light, in contrast with all the knowledge of Divine things which comes to us from other quarters. 3. This light is pre-eminent light. The most glorious object in nature is the sun. The ancient world had its lights, we grant — its poets, philosophers, moralists, law-givers. But what were they in regard to righteous ness or salvation? How much did they diffuse of the light of life? Christ was even pre-eminent above Jewish prophets, who had known and revealed God to men. They were but secondary lights. Their use was to point to Him. It is needless to assert Christ's pre-eminence over His own apostles and ministers and people. 4. This light is a universal light. What a universal blessing is sunshine! What an emblem of the Higher Light which is not less universal, though, for reasons which we cannot fathom, it is still beneath the horizon in many a wide region of the earth. Where it has shone, can the natural sun be more unrestricted and free? II. THE NATURE OF CHRIST'S HEALING INFLUENCE. By wings the prophet means the rays or influence of the sun. In addition to the influence of light we are now to take into account that of heat, of which, too, the sun is the centre. 1. Christ's healing power in relation to sin. What is wanted to moralise the whole community? Only one thing, the love of Christ in every man's heart. 2. Christ's healing extends to sorrow. This follows from the healing of sin. Every sin has its own sorrow, its remorse, its injuries to mind and heart, and often also to body and estate. 3. The influence of Christ's sun shine upon death. The natural sun lights all generations to their grave. How is Christ risen from the dead, risen with healing in His wings for all that sleep in Him! Oh, the glory of that victory over death, the last enemy, which the light of Christ's immortal countenance shall achieve! (John Cairns, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: But unto you that fear my name shall the Sun of righteousness arise with healing in his wings; and ye shall go forth, and grow up as calves of the stall. |
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