The following "Question" was asked by a member of the congregation at Grace Community Church in Panorama City, California, and "Answered" by their pastor, John MacArthur Jr. It was transcribed from the tape, GC 70-1, titled "Bible Questions and Answers."  A copy of the tape can be obtained by writing, Word of Grace, P.O. Box 4000, Panorama City, CA 91412 or by dialing toll free 1-800-55-GRACE.

Question

In Malachi, chapter two, this has been bothering me for quite a while. In verse eleven, it talks about the people of Judah who have divorced the wife of their youth and have married the daughters of a foreign god. And it goes on into verse fifteen where it says that the people who have done this--not one of them have had any remnant of the Holy Spirit. What I was wondering, how does this carry over into the New Testament, as far as a person who claims to be a born-again Christian, if they were to do something like this--is this saying that they were never really saved to begin with?

Answer

Not necessarily. You see what he is doing here is pronouncing judgment upon an ungodly, unregenerate people, for the most part. Because over in chapter three, there is a very interesting statement made in verse sixteen. After all these pronouncements of judgments, it says, "Then they that feared the Lord spoke often one to another, and the Lord harkened and heard it and a book of remembrance was written before Him for them that feared the Lord and that thought upon His name, and they shall be mine." In other words, the Lord knew out of the nation who were the true believers, and He says "They will be mine in the day that I make up my jewels and I will spare them as a man spares his own son that serves him," and so forth and so on. But the other people are going to be judged: In verse one, chapter four, "When the day comes it burns like an oven," and all of that kind of stuff, and so forth.

So, He's sorting out the wicked from the saved, the wicked from the redeemed, if you will, and when He writes all these indictments, and there's a whole bunch of indictments for different things. Back in chapter one, you notice in verse six, He says "even a son honors his father, and even a servant honors his master, why don't you honor Me?" He is therefore revealing these people as unregenerate people--they don't honor God, "and the priests despise My name. And then you say 'What way have we despised Your name?' 'You offer polluted bread upon My altar.'" In other words, they were giving lame sacrifices, instead of bringing the first of the flock they were bringing some crippled lamb or some diseased lamb that they wouldn't eat anyway and offering that to God. Then further, He talks about some of the other things they have done, and He comes down into chapter 2, verse eleven, and He says, "Another thing you have done, you have committed an abomination by profaning your marriages," in other words, you have divorced your wives and gone off and married the daughter of a foreign god--you have married pagans, and again He's marking out these as those who don't honor God--those who offer polluted sacrifices, those who have defiled hearts, so He's talking about unredeemed people, and that's what He means down in verse fifteen, just like you said, when He says, "None of you possess the Holy Spirit (is one way to translate that verse). So He is talking about unregenerate people. 

Now, having said that, let me say this, this is characteristic of an unsaved person, but it doesn't mean that a Christian couldn't do the same thing, because any sin that could be committed, short of denying God and denying Christ, could be committed by a Christian. Right, I mean, none of us is completely invulnerable to committing any sin. I mean, we would respond differently to the committing of that sin than this person would, and we might repent and turn from it, but any Christian could commit that sin. So divorce is not a sin, that when you see it being committed you can say, "Well, that's not a Christian,"--not necessarily true.

I'll tell you another illustration to prove it to you. The Corinthian church was full of people, he calls them "saints" in chapter one, 1 Corinthians, "saints, holy ones, you come behind in no gift of the Spirit" he says, "you lack none of the Spirit's ministry, but many of you," he says, "have committed fornication, and some of you (he says in chapter five) have even committed incest with his father's wife. So those kind of sins can be committed by believers, and that is why we are warned in 1 Corinthians, chapter six, "not to join ourselves to a harlot, because if you join yourself to a harlot, you join the Lord to a harlot. If you are one with the Lord and you unite with a harlot, you have made the Lord one with that harlot, that's to say then that a Christian could do that. But the Lord is undefiled--it's kind of like--I've used the illustration of a sunbeam shining into a dump--the sunbeam can shine into the dump, but the dump isn't going to affect the sunbeam.

So a Christian could commit any sin but these people in Malachi were definitely people to be judged by God, because they were dishonoring His name--an unbelieving people.