Amos 5: Where Does the Never-Failing Stream Flow?

4 "This is what the LORD says to Israel: 'Seek me and live.'" 15 "Hate evil, love good; maintain justice in the courts. Perhaps the LORD God Almighty will have mercy on the remnant of Joseph." 24 "But let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream!"

1. What It Means to Seek God: An Invitation to Lived Faith

What God required of Israel through Amos was neither complex theology nor elaborate ritual. It was an utterly simple and clear command: "Seek me and live." What does this seeking concretely mean? Simply this: to live humanely, with common decency—in other words, lived faith. To hate evil and love good, to establish justice in the courts, that last refuge where society's most vulnerable should find support.

Yet Israel's reality was the polar opposite. They attempted to mask God's absence with increasingly elaborate and lavish religious ceremonies. Justice and righteousness, collapsed in the marketplace of daily life, were drowned out by burnt offerings and songs of praise in the temple. This is precisely the hypocrisy Jesus condemned as whitewashed tombs. God called it all detestable. He declared He would not accept worship divorced from life, praise absent of justice. God desired that "justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream" through the very heart of their daily existence.

2. The Repeated Failure: Humanity's Unchanged Answer Sheet

Amos's indictment doesn't end with one era's failure. Centuries later, Jesus leveled the same rebuke at religious people who, in the name of holy Sabbath laws and purity codes, walked past their beaten and robbed neighbor. And now, millennia later, aren't we likewise substituting religious fervor and self-satisfaction for genuine response to God's call to live justly?

Like the insight that history isn't progress but a sine wave endlessly repeating, perhaps our failure before God's summons is a universal human condition transcending time. Israel in Amos's day, the Jews in Jesus's time, Christians today—none have managed to turn wholly back to God by their own strength. This desperate self-awareness is the very starting point of the gospel. Humanity cannot save itself; we are utterly dependent on God's grace.

3. A Thread of Hope: Who Are the Remnant?

Amid his message of devastating judgment, Amos casts a single ray of light: "Perhaps the LORD God Almighty will have mercy on the remnant of Joseph" (v. 15). Traditionally, the remnant has been understood as a small minority who maintain faith through judgment and receive salvation. But our conversation invites us to see this concept with greater depth and breadth. Is the remnant truly only a part of the whole?

If God's salvation is restricted to a tiny few, doesn't that diminish the cosmic significance of Jesus Christ's incarnation, cross, and resurrection for the entire world? If God's essence is infinite love, could He ultimately conclude by eternally abandoning the vast majority of creatures made in His own image? Here we must exercise bold theological imagination. Perhaps the remnant isn't a part of the whole at all, but rather another name for hope—pointing to the whole of the whole, who will ultimately be invited into salvation within God's never-surrendering love.

4. The Destination of the Never-Failing Stream: Hope for All

The command to "let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream" now gains new depth. This stream is not simply a torrent of wrath sweeping away the wicked, but rather God's living water seeking to drench and restore the entire world—the river of His love and grace. As Romans declares, this is the river of love demonstrated when Christ died for us while we were still sinners. No human sin can dam this river's flow.

Of course, this doesn't mean we can sit in God's seat and doctrinally declare that everyone will ultimately be saved. Scripture clearly warns of judgment's possibility, and we must humbly take those warnings seriously. Yet we can, following Karl Barth's theological humility, earnestly hope for universal salvation based on God's revealed love.

Within this great hope, the church's role is redefined. The church is not an ark for the saved alone, but a community that already tastes and witnesses to the world the salvation God has accomplished for all in Christ. We don't practice justice to earn salvation, but live lives of justice and righteousness with joy and gratitude for the amazing salvation we've already received. Amos's cry asks us today: "Are you ready to channel that stream in your place in life, holding the hope that this never-failing river will one day cover the whole earth?"