Malachi 4:2, But to you who fear My name the Sun of Righteousness shall arise with healing in His wings; and you shall go out and grow fat like stall-fed calves.
Malachi 4 opens with the fearsome image of the coming Day of the LORD as an oven, burning all the proud and wicked like stubble. The same day that is an oven of judgment for the rebellious is a dawn of righteousness for the faithful.
The Sun of Righteousness is an image of beauty and precision. The sun is the source of light, warmth, and life. Without the sun, nothing grows, nothing thrives, nothing lives. And this Sun is identified with righteousness; with God’s own righteous character, His saving justice, His covenantal faithfulness.
In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it (John 1:4-5). I am the light of the world. He who follows Me shall not walk in darkness but have the light of life (John 8:12). The Sun of Righteousness has arisen. The One whose rising Malachi foretold has come, and in His arising, everything Malachi promised is available: righteousness, healing, freedom, joy.
The image of wings evokes a bird: a hen gathering chicks beneath her wings, an eagle bearing its young. The image of God’s wings – His protective, sheltering presence was already rooted in their worship (Psalm 91:4; Ruth 2:12; Psalm 36:7). The Sun of Righteousness rises with healing spread across His wings; healing for every wound, every sickness, every brokenness.
Matthew 4:16 quotes Isaiah 9:2, The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light as a description of the beginning of Jesus’ Galilean ministry. And Jesus went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing all kinds of sickness and all kinds of disease among the people (Matthew 4:23). The Sun of Righteousness rose, and healing was in His wings.
The physical healings of Jesus’ ministry were signs pointing to the more comprehensive healing He came to bring: the healing of the soul from the sickness of sin. And by His stripes we are healed (Isaiah 53:5). Peter quotes this passage and applies it to the spiritual healing of the atonement: who Himself bore our sins in His own body on the tree, that we, having died to sins, might live for righteousness – by whose stripes you were healed (1 Peter 2:24). The Sun of Righteousness bore in His own body the wound of our sin.
And you shall go out and grow fat like stall-fed calves. This is the picture of the life God intends for those who encounter the Sun of Righteousness. An overflow of vitality and joy.
Revelation 22:5 describes the new Jerusalem: There shall be no night there: They need no lamp nor light of the sun, for the Lord God gives them light. And they shall reign forever and ever. The Sun of Righteousness, whose rising began in Bethlehem, whose morning broke fully in the resurrection, will one day shine with a noonday glory that makes all present darkness inconsequential.
Ask God to:
- let the sunrise be the defining reality of our lives and fill us with unshakeable hope.
- release unto us the joy of the stall-fed calves set free and let our worship be marked by the gladness of those who live in the light.
- help us be people who carry His light into every dark place.
