Malachi challenges the people of the nation of Israel in regard to the way that they are treating one another and God. In our verse for the day Malachi asks three questions that each of us should answer in our hearts. The greatest commandment tells us that we are to love God and to love others. Today’s verse asks us if that is what we are doing.

First, we are asked about our relationship to one another. We are all children of the same Father; that makes us brothers and sisters. That is not usually how we treat people that are not in our immediate family; instead, we treat them like strangers. If we would start looking at everyone that we encounter as a brother or sister, we might behave differently toward them. We would be less likely to sin against them.

Then we are reminded that the same God created all of us. This speaks of a common design; we are all created with a common purpose. God created us to love Him and to love others. We were all created with that same purpose. This also should have an impact on how we view and treat people. People were created for God not for themselves; we need to be a vessel that God can use to model and teach people how to be the people of God.

Knowing these things then begs the question as it does in our verse; ‘Why are we faithless to each other?’ We cannot treat people with disdain and contempt and expect that God would be pleased with us. We need to be treating people faithfully because of our relationship to them as brothers and sister in Christ and because of our common purpose in the world.

One of the big problems with the world is ignorance of this fact and the result is that most people do what they can to please themselves even if it means being faithless to others. Most people don’t care what happens to most other people. There is a real lack of love that can be easily seen in the way that most people treat those around them.

Our ability to love God is manifested or revealed by the way that we love other people. They are directly linked and cannot be separated. If you can’t love other people, then you really can’t love God the way that you are supposed to. Love is the key to our relationship with God. We show our love to God by showing our love to others. As we do acts of love to our brothers and sisters, we are actually loving God. Each time we do something as an act of love we are fulfilling the purpose that God created us for and that is pleasing to God. Each day we should look for ways to show God that we love Him by showing His love to someone else through acts of faithful love. Jesus, teach us to love.

Read: Malachi 1:1-2:17; Revelation 21:1-27; Psalm 149:1-9; Proverbs 31:10-24