Advent is a season highlighted by holy living. By the Spirit’s help, we meditate on the Word, Jesus Christ, understanding the life He calls us to live. In Advent, we prepare for someone’s arrival, not of this figure we call “Santa Claus,” but for the coming of Jesus. His first coming and His second.
Our country’s way of preparing for Christmas is rooted in the Christian faith. Over centuries, however, our culture took to bending, mishandling, and deforming parts of the Christian faith. Today, we can no longer recognize Christianity in our cultural celebration of Christmas—not unless we understand the distortion.
Here’s an example:
You better watch out, you better not cry, you better not pout, I’m telling you why: Santa Claus is coming to town! He sees you when you are sleeping; he knows when you’re awake, he knows if you’ve been bad or good, so be good for goodness sake.
Jesus misses nothing, not Santa Claus. So, what happened? The world morphed some of the qualities, which Scripture uses to describe Jesus and transferred them to a fictitious character, whom we call “Santa Claus.”
Who is Santa Claus? He is the malformed descendant of St. Nicholas, Christian Bishop of Myra of long ago. What described Jesus transferred to an unrecognizable distortion of a Christian Bishop of centuries past.
Jesus is the man for whom we prepare, not Santa Claus. To be ready is not “behave and you’ll receive a present.” No, what Jesus comes to bring is much deeper and richer than something we will find under our Christmas tree.
Jesus is coming to rescue us from the results of sin, our bad behavior, from an eternal aftermath we couldn’t begin to imagine. He is coming to save us from the sequel trailing behind our sin. In return, Jesus asks, motivates, and enables us to live holy lives. By living such lives, we show Him our thanks for what He did and does for us. Our Lord’s Christmas wish is not to clean you up. No, He wants to refine you.
Malachi calls Jesus, a refiner. “He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver.” Who is a refiner and what is refining? Refining is what takes place after metal comes out of the ground. When you remove iron, copper, gold, or silver from the ground, impurities are embedded within. Contaminants fuse themselves within the metal.
You need to separate the impurities defiling the metal. You do this by heating the iron ore (or some other metal) to a searing, hot temperature. The metal becomes liquid and starts to separate from the other substances. Jesus does the same: He refines us and makes us over. He melts us down and re-forms us into a different shape, different from our fallen, corrupt self. Jesus does part of this through the trials we endure.
Suffering is a common theme running throughout the Bible—how God uses the difficulties we face to refine us. He melts down the pride, the self-satisfied smugness, so often clinging to those who think Christianity is only about behaving. God reveals true faith is not rooted in what we do, but in what Jesus did for us when He faced the heat of the cross.
Only Jesus is pure, without dross or corruption within. He offered the perfect sacrifice for sin—Himself. But we don’t value His gift of sacrifice until we’ve undergone refining.
God must make us over in His image, so we don’t abuse His gift of grace. He melts down this sinful nature of ours, and He re-forms us into a new self, like Him. We find this to be painful because a sinful nature claims home within us, refusing to leave, fighting God the entire way.
So, what’s involved in refining metal? Malachi tells us the metalworker “will sit” as He attends to His tasks. You might think, “The Lord can’t only be sitting when He’s refining somebody. How lazy can He be?” A metalsmith will tell you: You must sit down to be stable, with your eyes fixed on the furnace. For if you let the refining go on for a second too long, the silver or gold vaporizes.
What beauty and comfort Malachi hides within his words: “He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver.” God understands the depths of our corruption and our need to be purified. He is always focusing His eyes on His refining work. All His faculties–His wisdom and His love—are at work on us.
Our trials do not come at random, and He will not let the fallen ways of this world test us beyond what we can endure. For us all, death will even become God’s way of escape for us, when the effects of sin become too much to bear (1 Corinthians 10:13).
Still, refining is painful. So, this question may linger in our mind. “When will the refining be finished?” The silversmith will reply, “Simple, when the silver reflects my image back to me. When my image shimmers before me, all is complete.”
Silver reflects an image. God is refining us into pure silver, so His image’s reflection is sharp, without impurities marring the image. Rejoice in what God is achieving as He refines us, recreating His image within us.
God created Adam and Eve in His image. The image of God is holiness and purity. Adam and Eve lost God’s image when they fell into sin. So, the entire history of humanity is a constant refining by God, recreating His image within us by bringing people to faith in His Son, Jesus. Through Jesus, we become perfect again. We receive His holiness in Word and Sacrament, which faith receives. God causes us to grow in faith and also in godliness and holy living.
“He will purify the Levites and refine them like gold and silver.” Why does Malachi mention the Levites? They helped the Old-Covenant priests in their duties. They helped with Temple preparations, and the many sacrifices made each day.
In the same way, you are people who work in the Lord’s Temple, in God’s new-covenant Royal Priesthood (1 Peter 2:9). God calls you to work. He outfits you with skills and abilities and strengthens your motives to serve.
What do the Levites do? “They will present offerings to the Lord in righteousness. The offerings… will be pleasing to the Lord as in days of old and years gone by.” Our offerings are a way in which the image of God reflects itself within us. When we realize how much God blesses us, we want to return a fitting portion of those blessings back to God and the work of His Church.
Malachi wrote those words about 400 years before Jesus’ birth. He wrote some of the last Hebrew words in the Old Testament before the coming of the Savior. They foretell the arrival, not only of the Messiah but also of the forerunner, John the Baptizer. “I will send my messenger, who will prepare the way before me.”
The Old Covenant neared its fulfillment, with John the Baptizer speaking of God’s refining fire. He called Israel to repent: “The ax is ready to strike the root of the trees! Produce fruit in keeping with repentance. Every tree not producing wholesome fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire” (Matthew 3:8, 10).
John’s message differs from our culture’s message of Christmas. He did not proclaim a “you better not pout” message. The Baptizer didn’t only spout stern words to “shape up.” His preaching went much deeper, cutting to the root.
It takes a miracle to be ready to meet the Lord. We don’t prepare ourselves to meet Him by cutting out a few bad habits. A new, complete creation needs to be in place. God must re-form the human heart anew.
Behavior reflects the heart, which we can often hide from others. But God misses nothing. He comes with grace, fostering a new attitude within us. He brings this about, melting our imperfect hearts, making them molten, burning away the impurities.
How grueling! Malachi reports: “Who can endure the day of his coming? Who can stand when he appears?” What does he imply? “No one will survive!” No one can endure God’s refinement of our sins. Our righteousness, strength, and endurance will fail us. We will all be burnt stubble when our Lord returns.
God, however, changes everything. In Him, we can endure, no matter how hot the refining fire. Whatever the purifying is for now—job stress, family difficulties, personal weakness—the Lord is sitting, focused on you. He will not let the pressure crush you. He understands you better than you do. He realizes how much you can handle, how much you need to endure to change you, to make you over in His image.
Today, we clamor for change, for something new. Here’s the truth: The change we want is cosmetic. We evade the painful purification we need for real change. We’ll admit as much if we’re honest. We’re satisfied with cosmetic surgery, while God wants to give us a heart transplant.
The Lord refines you. Bear the heat, for if for now, your life is not to your liking, you will like the result—if not today, in eternity. God wants to reshape your life, leaving no part unpurified, which means change. Change is never easy. The old ways—painful as they are to give up—must go. Such change is worth it and needed. It means gold!
Don’t only try to clean house this Advent season. No, let the Lord refine you—otherwise, you’ll never become pure gold. Amen.
