Jesus as the Sign of Contradiction

The first reading from Malachi just before Christmas is fire and brimstone:

"Who will be able to resist the day of his coming? Who will remain standing when he appears? For he is like the refiner’s fire and the fullers’ alkali. He will take his seat as refiner and purifier; he will purify the sons of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, and then they will make the offering to the Lord as it should be made.” 

One of the complaints about the Bible is contradiction. In the Old Testament, God is depicted both as a a vengeful, ominous God and other times a merciful, intimate God. Sometimes He is too holy to touch without dying, and other times we are “the apple of His eye” as the psalmist says. 

So I imagine Jesus reading and studying the Bible as a child, understanding He would have to fulfill the Old Testament.  Not an easy task.  He would have to somehow combine all these visions of God into his single person. 

And yet he succeeded. One could hardly pigeonhole Jesus as completely the vengeful God or completely merciful one. He certainly gave no quarter to the Pharisees and Sadducees, calling them white-washed tombs and saying that not everyone who says “Lord, Lord” will get into Heaven. In 70 AD the Jews and the Temple would be utterly destroyed. So that’s very strong stuff. But at the same time he was surreally merciful given the constant healings, the unparalleled situation of a rabbi speaking to Samaritan woman with five husbands (she was wrong on three counts: Samaritan, a woman - whom Jewish rabbi’s were supposed to talk to alone, and a serial adulterer), the Prodigal son story, the woman caught in adultery, Zaccheus, Matthew, and on and on etc... 

Malachi’s prophecy was certainly lived out in that Jesus was like a refiner’s fire to the Pharisees and the Jewish Temple... and he did “purify the sons of Levi and make them like gold and silver” given that all the apostles save Judas were martyrs and/or saints. 

And so was the Old Testament passages about him being a suffering servant, and a lover of all of mankind. 

Jesus literally embodied the contradictions of the Old Testament. He was both ominous and scary, and intimate and merciful.