Scripture Daily

Context No. 1585 of 4322 · Malachi

Context · Reflection

Malachi 1:1-5: in context

1A revelation, the LORD’s word to Israel by Malachi. 2“I have loved you,” says the LORD. Yet you say, “How have you loved us?” “Wasn’t Esau Jacob’s brother?” says the LORD, “Yet I loved Jacob; 3but Esau I hated, and made his mountains a desolation, and gave his heritage to the jackals of the wilderness.” 4Whereas Edom says, “We are beaten down, but we will return and build the waste places,” the LORD of Armies says, “They shall build, but I will throw down; and men will call them ‘The Wicked Land,’ even the people against whom the LORD shows wrath forever.” 5Your eyes will see, and you will say, “The LORD is great—even beyond the border of Israel!”

Malachi opens with a declaration of love and a doubting response. I have loved you, says the LORD. And the people answer, how have you loved us? God points them back to their origin: was not Esau Jacob's brother? Yet I loved Jacob, and Esau I rejected, giving his land to desolation. Whatever Edom rebuilds, God will throw down. And your own eyes, God says to Israel, will see it, and you will say, the LORD is great, beyond the borders of Israel.

The exchange at the start is arresting: God says I have loved you, and his people reply, how have you loved us? God declares his love, and they doubt it, question it, cannot see it. It is a strikingly human moment. God's people, in a discouraged and diminished time, looked at their circumstances and could not see the love God claimed; his declaration met their doubt. And we do the same. When times are hard, when life is disappointing, when God seems distant, we hear that God loves us and we answer, in our hearts if not aloud, how have you loved me? We cannot see it; the circumstances seem to contradict it; and God's love feels like a claim belied by our experience. God's answer to Israel's doubt is to point to concrete evidence, to his choosing of Jacob's line, his covenant faithfulness that had nothing to do with their worthiness. His love was grounded not in their circumstances or their deserving but in his own free choosing, his election of a people to be his own. That is worth holding when we doubt God's love. His love does not rest on how our circumstances feel or on what we have earned; it rests on his own choosing, his own steadfast commitment to his people, which the hard times cannot cancel. The language of Jacob loved and Esau rejected is covenant-election language, God's sovereign choosing of a line for his purposes, and its point to a doubting Israel is that God's love for them was his own free, faithful commitment, not a fair-weather feeling. When we cannot see God's love in our circumstances, the answer is not that his love has failed but that it rests on his choosing, not on our feelings or deserving.

When hard times make me doubt God's love, answering his I have loved you with how have you loved me, can I remember that his love rests not on my circumstances or my deserving but on his own free, faithful choosing of his people, which the hard times cannot cancel?

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