It is, of course, only an accident that these words close the Old and the New Testaments. In the Hebrew Bible Malachi's prophecies do not stand at the end; but he was the last of the Old Testament prophets, and after him, there were "four centuries of silence." I venture, then, to look at these significant closing words of the two Testaments as conveying the spirit of each, and suggesting some thoughts about the contrast and the harmony and the order that subsist between them.
I. Notice, the apparent contrast and the real harmony and unity of these two texts. In the first text we have distinctly gathered up the spirit of millenniums of Divine revelation, all of which declare this one thing that, as certainly as there is a God, every transgression and disobedience receives, and must receive, its just recompense of reward. And then turn to the other, "The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all." What has become of the thunder? All melted into dewy rain of love and pity and compassion. The Apostolic benediction is the declaration of the Divine purpose, and the inmost heart and loftiest meaning of all the words which, from the beginning, God hath spoken is that His condescending, pardoning, self-bestowing mercy, may fall upon all hearts, and gladden every soul. So there seems to emerge, and there is, a very real significant contrast. But beneath the contrast there is a real harmony, for nowhere are there more tender utterances and sweeter revelations of a Divine mercy than in that ancient Law with its attendant prophets. And nowhere, through all the thunderings and lightnings of Sinai, are there such solemn words of retribution as dropped from the lips of the Incarnate Love.
II. Notice the relation of the grace to the punishment. (1) Is it not love which proclaims judgment? Are not the words of my first text, if you take them all, merciful, however they wear a surface of threatening? "Lest I come." He speaks that He may not come, and declares the issue of sin in order that that issue may never need to be experienced by us that listen to Him. (2) The grace is manifested in bearing punishment and in bearing it away by bearing it.
III. Notice the alternative which these texts open for us. You must have either the destruction or the grace. And, more wonderful still, the same coming of the same Lord will be to one man the destruction, and to another the manifestion and reception of His perfect grace.
A. Maclaren, Christian Commonwealth, Nov. 25th, 1886.
Reference: Malachi 4:6. W. G. Horder, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xix., p. 243.