An Inheritance of Gratitude
What you’re in for
The word ‘essay’ is used in a variety of ways. The way I’ve often used it was as a noun, meaning “composition”. The person largely responsible for my foray into writing, a certain Dr. Peterson, is fond of another definition: to try; attempt. This definition is a verb. Another verb definition, “to put to the test; make trial of”, characterizes what all my writing tries to be. I’m putting my ideas on trial.
As a writer of what is most likely theology, I’m often looking for scriptural ways to engage with contemporary and cultural misunderstandings. One that I purport to have identified, is the role of the Law the gospel. The understanding that Menno Simons or apostle Paul had of the Law is not an obvious ingredient of the waters I swim in.
Is this a problem? I believe so. A friend of mine pointed to gratitude as an antidote or solution to depression. I will essay to illustrate that the right understanding of the Law is the root—deepest source—of gratitude. If that doesn’t make it important and applicable in today’s climate, I don’t know what will.
David loved to meditate on the Law, and promised great peace to those that loved it.[1] I am intent on making his testimony mine, and wish that even the beginnings of this testimony could be gifted to all. If this essay accomplished anything, I’d want it to be that.
Menno Simons and apostle Paul do a great job of demonstrating the Law’s role in salvation. I am not writing to plug any holes in their explanations. However, I do believe that it is incumbent upon modern Christians to take ownership of what we were given. Menno’s understanding will not suffice for my salvation. I must possess understanding of my own. We each have salvation to work out with “fear and trembling”.[2]
The way I chose to narrate my understanding of the Law is through one of the narratives given in Scripture: Christ as older brother. Like many biblical narratives, it is not handily compiled in one place. Our inheritance with Christ, or sibling-ship, does not get its own book. Instead, it is a recurring theme. This leaves the door open for me to get creative in lifting out this theme and compiling it here.
Remember, this is not authoritative. It’s an attempt. Remember also, that this writing contains my opinions. Opinions are beliefs held as fact, but may be wrong. For someone who holds truth as an ultimate priority, wrong opinions are to be engaged with and corrected.
People can confuse opinions with preferences, but preferences are tastes. They have no morality and are never wrong. I don’t like to eat fish. That is my preference. My opinion about fish is distinct from my taste for it. In my opinion, it’s a healthy food choice. You can present data to discredit my opinion, but not my preference.
Upon this distinction, note that the opinions recorded here were not naturally or easily developed. That would make them preferences. Many natural desires and tendencies have to be changed and re-purposed in order to build rigorous beliefs. If my presentation makes you uncomfortable, it may have at some point done the same to me. This is no reason to back away. Please, correct me if I’m wrong. Prove the spirit or spirits you find here. It may be uncomfortable for all parties, but it’s the right thing to do.
On brothers
I have two of them, seven and nine years my senior. For the first twelve years of my life, we lived under the same roof. Looking back on these twelve years, I would say this is not an ideal age difference for having shared interests and close, brotherly bonds. Or to state this more precisely, I was too young to act on any of our shared interests, and they were too proud to admit we had them.
While our age difference may have inhibited our sense of brotherhood, it made my brothers easy to worship. They were significantly better than me at everything. It is not hard for a fourteen- or sixteen-year-old to vastly outperform a pudgy seven-year-old on the hockey rink.
Obviously, these metrics for heroism were not very rigorous. Time was not kind to the status my brothers reached in my mind and imagination. At some point, I realized that being the most talented member of my family did not make my brother the best teen-aged forward to ever lace up skates. I was eventually convinced he wasn’t the best goaltender, even though he brought home the goalie gear a couple times. Then to complete his debasement, I found out he played not forward, but defense!
But these beliefs were not all toppled at once, and the heroic illusion lasted for most of my preteen years. In this era, I did everything I could to spend time with my brothers. I’d try and be close by when they had friends over, so I could listen in to their conversations. Anytime they tried to leave the yard for an evening drive, I’d scramble to accompany them. The time I spent around my brothers and their friends was useful for the calibration and advancement of my sense of humor. With a bit of luck, this could get me status of my own with my friends.
They weren’t always fond of my desperation to be with them. I don’t think this will surprise anyone. The annoyance older siblings feel at having tag-alongs is well documented. Adding to the annoyance, my father would sometimes compel them to take me along, or otherwise spend time together. Their annoyance at him could overflow its banks and easily affect me. The truck cab wasn’t always a sea of calm as we rolled out of the driveway.
Tension from this or other factors often tainted the time I got to spend with my brothers. Common sense would have questioned why a seven-year-old would put himself through that. The seven-year-old I remember being would not have been able to answer that question. From my current vantage point, I think I can get a lot closer.
Desire
Many memories of my childhood are distasteful. The most outstanding ones are not positive. I remember being punished for not eating scrambled eggs, punished for mistreating my younger sister; and desperate—but powerless—to do better after being punished. I would drive my mom crazy asking her when dad would be home from work; then question my motives once he was home because I was still vaguely miserable.
The common thread through all this misery, was desire. I yearned for things I couldn’t have, or disappointed me when I got them. I think it was healthy. The worship I had for my brothers was perfectly natural, but misplaced. My desire to perform was natural, but uneducated. And the relationship I wanted to have with my dad could only be truly satisfied in God the Father. In short, I had spiritual desires that needed to mature in order to find the satisfaction they were designed to seek.
My brothers and I now live a thousand odd miles apart, and most of our interaction is done by phone. I spend little time thinking about them, or wishing to be with them. Yes, certain events and experiences will prompt me to call them, because they provide the right kind of audience for the right kind of story. But my life is lived largely independent from theirs. And yet, I noticed that I seldom decline a phone call from one of them. Seldom enough that I don’t recall it happening.
What I have written about myself to this point is an attempt to illustrate where this behavior began. There’s something childish about it still, like my own toddler’s instinct for games. If I make eye contact with her, then duck my head out of sight, she knows exactly what’s happening. Dad’s playing a game, and she wants in. She’s programmed to recognize the signs. I still seem to have an in-built system that identifies and responds to similar signs from my brothers.
I was sharing this realization with a friend, (not the same one from the introduction. I have more than one friend) and it was from this that the idea for this essay was born. I thought about how Jesus is portrayed as the begotten son of God, and we as adopted.[3] He is portrayed as the eldest of many sons, and as not being ashamed to have us called his brethren[4]. The narrative seemed a rich ground for parallels and contrasts to be drawn.
Childhood heroes get less heroic as we age and young eyes can grow cynical as this reality sinks in. Our dads, who used to be the smartest and strongest, will gradually diminish into mere human beings. Their stock will usually fall dramatically when we are teenagers. It bottoms out somewhere below everyone else before it climbs back to something realistic when we become adults. But at some point, reality will be undeniable. There will be a more talented athlete or singer or thinker or speaker that will usurp our heroes from their place of superiority in our minds.
But Christ is not subject to the fallibility of our mortal, childhood heroes. For one, we do not measure his athletic prowess. The domains important to God, and us as his children, are spiritual and not earthly.[5] Jesus measures up better as time and reality reveal him more fully to us. There is no moment where we see him humiliated by someone more qualified. He faced off with Satan, and triumphed.[6] Christ is the only role model whose light never dims. We cannot go wrong in trying to be just like him.
A worthy hero
Who is this older brother of ours and how well do we know him? How can we know his attributes, and what we are to imitate? We call him a carpenter, but is this important? The Bible doesn’t tell us he was a skilled craftsman or athlete. We aren’t told that he built the best coffee tables or won all his childhood contests.
All we know about his adolescence is one story from when he was a twelve-year-old.[7] His parents left him behind when they were returning home from a celebration in Jerusalem. At the end of a day’s travel, they realized he was not in their company. After much searching, they found him sitting with teachers in the temple. Not only was he asking them questions, he was amazing them with his answers. Does this sound like any twelve-year-old that you know?
His response to his parents’ worry was,
“How is it that ye sought me? knew ye not that I must be in my Father's house?[8]”
It is clear that from an early age, his interests were not limited to the typical or even the visible. Jesus was keenly aware of God’s plan and his role in it. This gives us a good starting point for our imitation of him, doesn’t it? Are we at all times aware of God’s plan and our role in it? Or do we forget that he is its author, and we the beneficiaries? Do we remember that this plan is timeless, refreshing, and can always be found in Scripture?
Jesus came to fulfill a plan that was older than time, and promised only three chapters into the Bible.[9] The Old Testament contain books of Law, prophesy, poetry, and the history of God’s people. All of them hinge on this promise and its fulfillment. There are a number of ways the Old Testament centers on Christ. I have neither time or space to delve into all of them. I’ll say just enough to make the point.
Jesus fulfilled prophecy by coming to earth in the manner foretold by God’s messengers. The books of history trace the lineage and physical connection from the Adam to Christ. And Jesus fulfilled the Law by keeping it entirely and perfectly. Christ’s fulfillment of Law is where I want to elaborate.
The Law of God is the standard by which Christ is measured. Not his skill as a carpenter. Not his athletic prowess. Not his looks, or sense of humor. The important attributes that came down to us through scripture are spiritual ones.
Often, thinking and talking about the Law can be done with negative connotation. It will make us think of Pharisees, hypocrisy, and bondage. And this is all for good reason. Jesus did not spare the hypocritical Pharisees in his denouncement of the bondage they induced.
But there was an aspect of the Law that went missing from the Jewish nation’s psyche between Moses and Christ. It was the element of faith. Abraham’s belief—faith—pleased God. Out of God’s pleasure, the covenant of circumcision was introduced. Circumcision didn’t please God; it was Abraham’s belief and obedience that pleased God. When God told Abraham to leave his father’s house, he left. When God told Abraham to sacrifice his son, he saddled his donkey and headed out. When God told Abraham his descendants would be like the stars for number, he believed that too. It was by this belief that Abraham was deemed righteous and therefore pleasing to God.
The Law was an added layer to the covenant. It was comprised of 613 laws categorized as civil, ceremonial, and moral. The civil law was for government of the promised land. The ceremonial consisted of sacrifices and rituals that were a shadow of Christ’s eventual sacrifice. These two branches were done away with in Christ.
Moral law, if kept, would amount to righteousness. The Pharisees seemed to think they had this in the bag. What Jesus did was change the whole paradigm. He restored to the Law what I want to call ‘the Mount Sinai effect’.
It was at Mount Sinai that Moses received the Law, and it was no small feat. There was thunder, lightning, smoke, and a voice of a trumpet. If you’ll remember, the twelve tribes were more than happy for God to speak with Moses on their behalf. They told him,
“Speak thou with us, and we will hear; but let not God speak with us, lest we die.[10]”
Keeping the Law, as they knew it, was a way to interact with a terrible God and live. The Law represented an aspect of God’s glory that was survivable.
The terror Israel felt at Mount Sinai faded with time. The Law lost its place in their lives and they repeatedly lost their place in God’s will. The faith of Abraham that so endeared him to God dwindled almost to nothing, with John the Baptist rebuking the Jews for mistakenly putting their confidence in their bloodline.[11]
By the time Jesus arrived, authorities used the Law for their own purposes. It had become bondage. It was a bedraggled remnant of its original form and was no longer balanced by Abraham-like faith or the fear of Mount Sinai. They forgot the novelty of Abraham’s answer to God’s call. The relief of having Moses at hand to retrieve the Law—so they didn’t have to face a terrible God in person—had long since disappeared. The Law’s proper place had been corrupted.
Through his ministry, Jesus re-established the Law in its rightful position. He restored a level of out there-ness that had gone missing; what I call the Mount Sinai effect. He did this in the Sermon on the Mount, when talking about the commandments. He redefined several of them, but I’ll use the ones against murder and adultery as examples.
“Ye have heard that it was said to them of old time, Thou shalt not kill; and whosoever shall kill shall be in danger of the judgment: but I say unto you, that every one who is angry with his brother shall be in danger of the judgment.[12]”
“Ye have heard that it was said, Thou shalt not commit adultery: but I say unto you, that every one that looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.[13]”
By these statements, Jesus elevated the standard of the Law from the seen to the unseen. He took laws that were understood as literal, and pointed out a scope of meaning that had not been ascribed to them before. In doing so, he made it impossible to stand innocent before the Law.
The Law describes righteousness. God is righteous. Falling short of the Law and falling short before God are one and the same. None of us can claim innocence before such a standard, just as the Israelites could not stand before God’s glory at Mount Sinai.
Nobody listening that day can have been confident of their own innocence. I would guess all honest men in the audience that day knew in their hearts—or at least suspected—that they were guilty of adultery. Under the tension of Roman occupation and the bondage of the Jewish rulers, it seems reasonable that they knew what it was like to be angry with their brethren.[14]
Jesus did something similar to the Law-abiding ruler who came to him seeking eternal life.[15] Jesus started by telling the young ruler if he wanted to enter into life, he should keep the commandments. When the man testified to having kept the commandments since his youth, Jesus pressed him further, saying:
“If thou wouldest be perfect, go, sell that which thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come, follow me.[16]”
Jesus has perfect discernment. The message we should get from his invitation to this man is not, “get rid of all earthly possessions.” Rather, Jesus put his finger on the thing this man was most attached to and told him to exchange it for treasure in heaven.
Just like in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus started with something that was familiar to his audience. He tells the crowd “Ye have heard”. To the young ruler he says “thou knowest the commandments”. The young ruler confirms his familiarity with the Law by his testimony of keeping it.
But just like in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus seems to move the goalposts. This time he doesn’t redefine the commandments. He just asks the young ruler to do something that he knew was improbable. At Mount Sinai, Israel trembled before God’s glory. At the Sermon on the Mount, the crowd had all hope of righteousness stripped away. The young ruler simply walked away.
The message in Jesus’s invitation is multifaceted. The Law and prophets were fulfilled in him, and for the young ruler to follow him would be the true keeping of the commandments. To my knowledge, the Greek word translated as “perfect” implies completeness. If you want to be perfect—complete—follow me. I am here to fulfill—complete—the Law.
In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus also encourages perfection[17] When talking to the young ruler, he states that perfection lies in following him. This is the kind of role model our big brother is. A perfect one.
Hope
Jesus took the old paradigm and re-calibrated it. He told the Jews that their literal understanding of righteousness was inadequate.
There’s way more to this than what you think. The Law condemns you at every level, not just for your actions.
But then he offered hope.
You can have perfection, if you have it in me.
The whole gospel rests on this transition. I don’t claim that it happens in the Scriptures I’ve referred to, but rather that some understanding of this thing is how all of us come to Christ. To be fully in Christ, we first need to understand our need and hopelessness without him. Only then can we trust ourselves to the hope he offers.
When Jesus offers a more complete understanding of the commandments, he revealed hopelessness and hope at the same time. Hopelessness in the high standard that was set; hope in the invitation to meet it by following him. Only because of this hope, was a fuller revelation merited. The people of that time and place were already in bondage to their current understanding of the Law. But by revealing the true nature of the Law’s demand, he could also reveal a fuller extension of hope.
Accepting Jesus’s invitation is how we measure up. When we are in Christ, we can stand in God’s presence. We no longer send Moses up the mountain on our behalf. We have access to the glory of God in a fuller revelation of the Law, and we need not tremble in fear. Our Moses is Christ who rightfully rules alongside God, and is our representative.[18] The hope he offers us is so powerful we don’t need a veil over Moses’s face, or in the temple, to shield us from the glory of God.[19]
Jesus didn’t only set high standards. He lived them as well. As a man who was subject to all of man’s temptations, he knew the cost of denying the desires of the flesh. He withstood all temptations without sinning. He walked a perfect walk with his God. This perfect walk culminated in his death on our behalf.
All who sin need to be justified in order to stand before God. In order to be justified, it had to be paid for by death. Many lives were lost through the Old Testament and many sacrifices were offered. Yet the price for sin remained unpaid. The simple fact was that no sacrifice was good enough. In order for me to pay for my own sin, I would have to offer myself as a perfect sacrifice. But I am a badly corrupted human, especially once I have sinned and have a debt to pay. The price that needs to be paid once I have sinned is too high for me to pay. This is another part of the same impossible problem that Jesus came to solve.
It is after we’ve accepted Christ’s death for our sin that he becomes our elder brother. Until we repent, the high standard he highlights in the Sermon on the Mount would only crush us. If we were at Mount Sinai, we’d be trembling with the rest of them. In the final analysis, Jesus would stand over us as judge and not brother.
But if you’re reading this, that likely isn’t you. You are the grafted in, adopted children of a Father God. You are his child, and it is because Jesus walked a walk you and I could not. He measured up to a standard that would crush us. And then, as the only innocent and perfect man to ever live, paid a price for you and I that we could not afford. And he did it as the only one who did not owe a single penny.
Jesus did all the work for our salvation. When we repent and believe, we are credited with his work. His walk, his Law, and his sacrifice become ours. We’re finally enough. We’ve made it onto the way of life. But what do we do now?
The walk of the redeemed
Yes, Jesus did all the heavy lifting, but somehow, we’re still left with something to do. We’re not like the believing malefactor who joined Jesus in paradise the day he believed. We have life to live. If Jesus did all the work, how do we refer to the things that are left for us to do?
How about we call it emulation of a worthy hero, motivated by gratitude. Jesus did everything just right. He practiced what he preached. He showed us an excellent example. He showed us what good was, and how to go about doing it. He warned us of what evil was, the clothes it wore, and to watch out for it.
If my brothers were easy to worship by virtue of a few insignificant metrics, how much easier should it be to worship one who is perfect by every important metric? Where my father occasionally compelled my brothers to accommodate me, our heavenly Father does not. Jesus will appreciate our efforts to be just like him, if they are done in freedom of spirit. His desire to spend time with us is no less than ours to be with him. When that is our chief desire, our interests will be his. And in this he is a perfect older brother as well.
We are left with a limitless array of good things to do. We are given a light yoke and commandments that are not grievous. There is no upper limit to how many we can keep. We are free to do so, because Jesus already kept them on our behalf. He earned our salvation. We simply try and emulate him to show our gratitude and point others to him.
Jesus lifts the old yoke of bondage off our shoulders and replaces it with a new one. Where the old one was heavy, the new one is easy and light. The old yoke was too much to be carried, the new one is not grievous. What is our yoke, and how does it differ from the old, heavy one?
The old yoke is referred to as a “yoke of bondage”, and, “a yoke—which neither our fathers nor we were able to bear”.[20] Often it is referring to some aspect of the Law, or old covenant, such as circumcision. Circumcision was a ritual begun by Abraham that recognized his covenant with God. But that was for the old covenant and we live under the new. The Law was the highest order then, but grace is the highest order now. Our new covenant is in Christ, not in circumcision.
We can be tempted to do away with all Law when any part of it is referred to as bondage. While civil and ceremonial laws are not practiced by Christians, the commandments Jesus exhorts us to keep are mostly the same as the ten given to Moses on Mount Sinai. Only now, they are part of a light yoke that is not grievous.
So how are they different? In a way they’re the same. We still keep them for our good for instance.[21] The main reason the yoke is now light is that Jesus fulfilled all the demands of the Law on our behalf. There is no righteousness that eludes us if we believe in him. In light of this, our Christian virtue can be the equal of the Jews’ former devotion; but done entirely out of gratitude and free from any yoke of bondage.
It’s reasonable
“I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.[22]”
Jesus presented his body as a sacrifice, which necessarily resulted in his death. We are not all called to offer our lives in death, though some were and are. But the above verse calls us to offer our bodies as living sacrifices.
Sacrifices offered to God under the old covenant followed a specific order. One of these orders, was that they were to be taken from the first-fruits. This would be the first and best of the harvest, flocks, and herds. There are examples of when this was not followed, and God makes it clear that this displeases him.[23]
To present our bodies as living sacrifices would not mean giving God our cooling leftovers. We don’t give him the things that have become useless to us. We give him the best we have. Things we do and the items we possess will be yielded to God’s purposes. If he were to say “sell your goods and give to the poor,” we wouldn’t walk away. We would know that our stuff already belonged to God, not to us, and the letting go would have already happened. Abraham must have known that Isaac already belonged to God when he saddled his donkey and left home to fulfill God’s command.
The young ruler who sought eternal life was invited to exchange all his earthly possessions for treasure in heaven. Like I’ve already claimed, this is not the literal transaction we are all asked to make. It is our allegiance that needs to change. Our affections need to be on higher things.
This might mean we do the exact same things, just with different motives. When we see things from a spiritual perspective, we see a bigger picture. In this picture, everything we have is a gift. We own nothing, and all belongs to God. Our motivations will not be the acquiring of more for its own sake. Instead, we can be motivated by gratitude at the opportunities we have been given.
When we are of this mindset, we do not glory in the sweat and toil of our ancestors who started the family farm. We will glory in God’s graciousness that we have an arena in which we can return glory to him. When the crop fails, we can thank God that we had the soil to plant in.
There is no end to the things we can be grateful for. People who experience the worst things that life could offer testify to this. They have everything imaginable taken from them, are locked in prison, and forced to work through inhumane measures. Yet they have something to fall back on. They still have the ability to choose gratitude.
We can be grateful even to endure suffering. The apostles rejoiced at suffering done in the name of Christ.[24] If we submit ourselves to being living sacrifices, we are always in Christ. All suffering endured can be endured gratefully. No matter what we endure, it is better than we deserved; because we have an older brother who was treated worse than he deserved—he was treated as we deserve to be treated in our place.
Gratitude
I claimed in the introduction, that understanding the Law was critical to gratitude, which is in turn critical to mental health. Perhaps I’ve communicated clearly enough that more commentary is unnecessary, but I’m not that confident in my skill as a writer. Just a few more thoughts, and we’re done. I promise.
Never in history have people had it so good as we do. The better we have it, the less we deserve it. But a strange thing has happened. The more people have, the less satisfied with it they are. Instead of increased gratitude, it seems to be diminished. This is testified to by an ongoing concern about “entitlement”. People think they deserve better, no matter how good they have it.
We can hardly help that the things we see around us have a certain influence on us. It’s only natural. We’re social creatures, and with that come senses that are attuned to what other people are doing. Partly this is good. If we can’t identify with the humanity around us, we can’t empathize with them. Empathy is necessary for sincere outreach.
But comparing ourselves to others and others to us, does something to our ability to express gratitude. There will always be people who justify certain purchases and lifestyle choices by saying they are affordable. If we pay too much attention to these people, our expectations get ratcheted up. Expectations that are higher than can be met, will leave us ungrateful.
In a world full of physical reality and many kinds of distractions, something needs to keep us grounded. What if true Christian religion can do that? What if we can dig down to a gratitude that nothing in the world can shake? Wouldn’t that align rather well with the peace that Jesus says we can have in spite of the tribulation of the world?
Obviously, I think so. And I think that to have absolutely unshakable and realistic expectations, we need to understand not just grace and mercy, but law and judgment. If we would allow the Law of God to reveal our true natures to us, we would be able to see ourselves for who we are. We could see what it is that we actually deserve. Not fully, of course, but enough. I believe that’s what the Law is for. And if we could only realize a fraction of that debt, and how much it truly cost for Jesus to settle it on our behalf, we can surely have gratitude in spades.
I’ll end with this. The Law cannot help but condemn absolutely. But we have a savior who is excepted from this by having kept it perfectly. Now, he continually extends his perfection to us for our redemption. By accepting his extended invitation, we become his family. Just like that.
[1] Psalm 1:2, 119:165
[2] Philippians 2:12
[3] Romans 8:15, Galatians 4:5, Ephesians 1:5
[4] Romans 8:29, Hebrews 2:11
[5] 1 Samuel 16:7
[6] Matthew 4:1-11, Mark 1:12-13, Luke 4:1-13
[7] Luke 2:41-49
[8] Luke 2:49b, ASV
[9] 2 Timothy 1:9, 1 Peter 1:20, Genesis 3:15
[10] Exodus 20:19, ASV
[11] 2 Chronicles 20:7, Isaiah 41:8, James 2:23, Matthew 3:9, Luke 3:8
[12] Matthew 5:21-22a, ASV
[13] Matthew 5:27-28, ASV
[14] Look no further than the recent “pandemic” if you doubt that brother could be angry with brother.
[15] Matthew 19:16, Mark 10:17, Luke 18:18
[16] Matthew 19:21, ASV
[17] Matthew 5:48.
[18] Romans 8:34, Hebrews 9:24
[19] 2 Corinthians 3:15-16, Matthew 27:51
[20] Galatians 5:1, Acts 15:10, ASV
[21] Deuteronomy 10:13
[22] Romans 12:1, KJV
Note: KJV chosen here because it calls our service “reasonable”. The ASV used “spiritual” in its place. From my quick reading of the Greek, “reasonable” is—a reasonable translation. Several Bible versions use it. KJV is one of them.
[23] Malachi 1:8,14
[24] Acts 5:41