GLORY OF THE SUN

“But to you who fear My name shall the SUN of RIGHTEOUSNESS arise with healing in his wings; and you shall go out and grow fat like stall-fed calves” – Malachi 4:2

The SUN of RIGHTEOUSNESS referred to here is a Person, not the impersonal sun up in the sky. That’s why the personal pronoun “HIS” is used to qualify the wings. The Sun of righteousness is none other than Jesus Christ, the SON of GOD. The Bible often used common analogies to describe deep spiritual realities – imperfect natural things to illustrate eternal truths. Similarly, the word “healing” does not only stand for bodily healing; it embraces other shades of restoration such as salvation, redemption, and deliverance. About two thousand years ago, Jesus Christ – the Sun of righteousness – arose from death with salvation, redemption and deliverance in His wings.

The Holy Spirit inspired Malachi to refer to the Lord Jesus Christ as “the Sun of righteousness” not just as a play on words. There are gems of revelation hidden in this figurative expression. In all of God’s visible creation, the sun is in a class of its own; no other created object exactly replicates the sun in its nature or qualities. The sun has unique qualities, which distinguish it from every other planetary body. Scientific facts claim that the temperature of the sun is 5,500^oC, while its diameter is almost 1.3 million kilometres. Its surface area is 11,990 times that of the earth; its mass approximately 330,000 times greater than that of the earth, and this constitutes more than ninety-nine percent of the mass in the Solar System.

The inference of these scientific facts is that: over one million earth’s could fit inside the sun! Moreover, it has been discovered that although other planets and bodies in the Solar System may not possess life, the sun is equally as influential to them as it is to the earth. This is perhaps why over the course of human history, the sun has been hallowed and worshipped among heathen cultures. Similarly thoughts may not have been far from the mind of Apostle Paul when he wrote to the Corinthians: “There is one GLORY of the SUN, another glory of the moon, and another of the stars; for one star differs from another star in glory” (1Cor.15:41). Notwithstanding all of these ‘glorious’ elements that it possesses, in God’s wisdom, the sun, in a sense, “serves” our ‘tiny’ earth! Alas, in all its hugeness, the sun is not the biggest type of star in the universe!

These unique qualities of the sun together constitute what the GLORY of the SUN. As far away as the sun is from the earth, its glory is not a hidden glory. From a simple natural perspective, the glory of the sun is evidenced in at least three ways:

First, the LIGHT of the sun is unique and visible to all. This makes the difference between night and day. According to Scriptures, relative to the earth, God ordained the sun as the “greater light” to rule the day, and the moon as the “lesser light” to rule the night (Gen.1:16). Science confirms that it takes eight minutes for light to reach earth from the sun, yet it could take millions of years to travel from the Sun’s core to its surface!

Second, the HEAT of the sun is experienced by all; it is incomparable with the heat from any other source. Even the physically blind person knows what the sun is, by reason of the warmth he or she feels. In actual terms, the amount of energy created by the sun’s core is equivalent to a nuclear fusion! Here on earth, we just feel the farthest effects.

Third, RADIATION from the sun, though invisible, makes the difference between growing plants and dying ones; it also affects many other aspects of creation. The Sun provides a vital ingredient for most of the life on earth. Without the energy provided through sunlight, vegetation cannot grow, and by extension, animals would not have a source of nourishment.

If God could array the sun – an inanimate object – with such unique ‘glory,’ how much more His SONS, made in His image and likeness!