Malachi 3:3 And he shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver: and he shall purify the sons of Levi, and purge them as gold and silver… We may take these figures as exhibiting the plain and manifest features of our Lord's mission to earth. Still He is among us as fullers' soap, and as a refiner's fire, to cleanse and to purify us all. Here is a great, continuous office of our Lord Jesus Christ. Wherever He comes, He is always "like a refiner's fire, and like fullers' soap." Christ came expressly to establish sanctification, and seal a covenant, of which the very spirit was cleansing and purification by His blood, which cleanseth from all sin. And Christ came also to give those purifying graces without which no effectual cleansing can be carried on or maintained. It is in all the graces, and motives, and desires, which the Holy Spirit generates, fosters, and matures in our too often half-reluctant hearts, that the great Fuller and Refiner of the Word carries out the purpose, the great mission of cleansing and refining for the perfecting of which He once graced the earth, and the nature of man, by His Incarnate Presence. What is the machinery by which the Holy Refiner makes His power known? This refining is to be sought for, and realised if we would have any usefulness, any ultimate profit, in it. The Refiner is ever present, doing the refining work Himself. But He is as the refiner's fire. In the furnace of some kind of affliction He refines us — "Purging away the dross, taking away all the tin." Trial is the refining agent. The trial may bear relation not only to the outward, but also to the inner life. Whether then Christ sit among us as a Fuller to cleanse, and as a Refiner to purify, is a question which concerns us all. (Archdeacon Mildmay.) Parallel Verses KJV: And he shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver: and he shall purify the sons of Levi, and purge them as gold and silver, that they may offer unto the LORD an offering in righteousness. |
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