The Antithesis in the Public Square Text: Amos 5:14-15
Introduction: The Religion of Public Relations
We live in an age that has mastered the art of the religious bumper sticker. Our culture is quite content with a God who can be neatly confined to a sentimental platitude, a praise chorus, or a private devotional time. The modern evangelical mind has, for the most part, made a separate peace with the world, agreeing to a ceasefire in which we are allowed to keep our "personal faith" as long as we promise not to let it get out and bother anyone in the public square. We say we believe God is with us, we sing songs about it, we put it on our coffee mugs. But the prophet Amos comes to us as a rude interruption, a shepherd from Tekoa with mud on his boots, sent to crash our respectable religious parties and tell us that God is not impressed.
Amos was sent to the northern kingdom of Israel, a nation enjoying a season of peace and prosperity under Jeroboam II. They had a booming economy, a strong military, and a vibrant religious life. They had their holy sites at Bethel and Gilgal, they offered their sacrifices, they sang their songs, and they were absolutely confident that Yahweh was on their side. They were, in short, very much like the American Bible belt. They had successfully combined the worship of the true God with the pragmatic idolatries of the surrounding culture. They had the form of godliness, but they denied its power. They spoke of God, but they did not seek Him.
The message of Amos is a bucket of ice water in the face of this kind of comfortable, syncretistic religion. He tells them that God is not their national mascot. He tells them that their worship is an abomination to Him because their lives are an abomination to Him. Their solemn assemblies were a stench in His nostrils because their business dealings were crooked and their courts were corrupt. They had divorced theology from ethics, worship from justice, and faith from life. And Amos is sent to tell them that God is about to judge them for it severely. This passage before us is not a gentle suggestion for self-improvement. It is a series of sharp, urgent, covenantal commands. It is a call to radical repentance, a call to choose sides in a war that allows for no neutrality.
The Text
Seek good and not evil, in order that you may live;
And thus may Yahweh God of hosts be with you,
Just as you have said!
Hate evil, love good,
And set justice at the gate!
Perhaps Yahweh God of hosts
May be gracious to the remnant of Joseph.
(Amos 5:14-15 LSB)
Life is a Verb (v. 14a)
The first command is direct and all-encompassing.
"Seek good and not evil, in order that you may live..." (Amos 5:14a)
The word "seek" is an action word. It is a hunting term. It means to pursue, to strive after, to diligently search for. It is not a passive disposition. God is not telling Israel to have nice thoughts about goodness. He is commanding them to get up and hunt it down. This is the antithesis of their current behavior. They were seeking wealth, they were seeking comfort, they were seeking religious experiences, but they were not seeking good.
And what is this "good" they are to seek? In the context of Amos, it is nothing less than covenant faithfulness. It is economic justice for the poor. It is honesty in business. It is integrity in the courts. It is caring for the widow and the orphan. Seeking good is the practical, tangible, everyday application of God's law to all of life. It is the opposite of the evil they were practicing, which was oppressing the poor, taking bribes, and living in decadent luxury while others suffered. Good is not an abstract ideal; it is a way of life defined by God's character and revealed in His Word.
The consequence is stark: "in order that you may live." This is covenant language, straight out of Deuteronomy. Obedience brings life and blessing; disobedience brings death and cursing. This is not just about extending your physical lifespan. To "live" in the biblical sense is to flourish under the smile of God, to enjoy His favor, His protection, and His provision. To seek evil is to choose death. It is to choose to walk under the covenant curse, which is precisely what Israel was doing, all while smiling and singing hymns.
Confronting Presumption (v. 14b)
Amos then takes their own confident rhetoric and turns it back on them like a knife.
"And thus may Yahweh God of hosts be with you, Just as you have said!" (Amos 5:14b LSB)
This is a stinging piece of prophetic sarcasm. "Just as you have said!" Apparently, it was common for the Israelites to go about saying, "Yahweh is with us!" It was their national catchphrase, their slogan. They believed that because they were the chosen people, because they had the temple rituals, God's presence was guaranteed. It was an unconditional reality.
Amos says, you want God to be with you? You want your confident talk to be true? Then here is the condition: Seek good and not evil. The presence of God is not a pet you keep in a cage, to be taken out and paraded around on feast days. The God of hosts, the commander of heaven's armies, does not enlist on the side of injustice and hypocrisy. He is with those who are with Him. And being with Him means seeking the good that He commands.
This is a direct assault on any doctrine of cheap grace or empty religious identity. It is a warning to every person, every church, every nation that claims the name of God while trafficking in evil. You say, "God is with us"? The prophet's answer is, "Is He? Your public life, your business practices, and your treatment of the poor would indicate otherwise. Repent, and then perhaps your boast will be made true."
The Affections and the Gate (v. 15a)
The prophet now moves from the external action of seeking to the internal disposition that must drive it.
"Hate evil, love good, And set justice at the gate!" (Amos 5:15a LSB)
This is the engine room of true righteousness. God is not interested in mere external compliance. You can do the right thing with the wrong heart, and God is not fooled. He demands that our very affections be reoriented. We are commanded to hate what He hates and to love what He loves. This is the essence of sanctification.
To hate evil is to have a visceral, settled revulsion to sin in all its forms, not just the sins that we find personally distasteful, but the respectable sins, the profitable sins, the corporate sins. It is to hate bribery, to hate oppression, to hate falsehood, to hate pride. To love good is to cherish righteousness, to delight in integrity, to find beauty in justice and mercy.
And notice where these rightly-ordered affections must manifest themselves: "And set justice at the gate!" The city gate was the place of commerce, the court of law, and the center of public life. This is a command to take your sanctified affections and make them public. It is a command to apply God's standard of righteousness to civil life. Justice is not a private hobby. It is a public duty.
This demolishes the sacred/secular divide that has so neutered the modern church. The prophet does not say, "Keep justice in your heart," or "Establish justice in the sanctuary." He says to set it up at the gate, where the world can see it, where it affects everything. This is a call for Christian engagement in law, politics, and culture, not from a position of power-grabbing, but from a heart that loves good, hates evil, and therefore cannot bear to see injustice flourish in the public square.
A Gracious "Perhaps" (v. 15b)
The passage concludes not with a guarantee, but with a humble possibility that is pregnant with hope.
"Perhaps Yahweh God of hosts May be gracious to the remnant of Joseph." (Amos 5:15b LSB)
After such a blistering demand for repentance, we might expect a clear "if-then" promise. But Amos gives us a "perhaps." This is not because God is fickle or unsure. It is to teach Israel, and us, the proper posture of a repentant sinner. We never come to God demanding His grace. We have no claim on it. We cannot put Him in our debt by our repentance. Grace, by definition, is undeserved.
The word "perhaps" crushes our pride and forces us to cast ourselves entirely on the sovereign mercy of God. We seek good, we hate evil, we establish justice, not to earn God's favor, but because it is right. And having done all we can, we look to Him and say, "Perhaps you will be gracious."
And to whom might this grace be shown? "To the remnant of Joseph." Even in the midst of this corrupt nation, God has His remnant. Joseph here stands for the northern kingdom. The nation as a whole is destined for judgment. The axe is laid to the root of the tree. But for the remnant, for those few who will actually heed this call to repentance, there is hope. God always preserves a people for Himself. The judgment will come, the nation will be carried into exile, but God's covenant purposes will not fail. He will be gracious to His remnant.
The Gate and the Cross
As Christians, we read this passage through the lens of the one who is the perfect embodiment of all these commands. Jesus Christ is the only one who has perfectly sought good and not evil. He is the one whose heart perfectly loved righteousness and hated wickedness (Hebrews 1:9). He is the one who came to establish true justice in the earth.
But in a great and terrible irony, He went to the gate, the public square of Jerusalem, and justice was not established there. Instead, at that gate, evil was sought and good was rejected. At that gate, evil was loved and good was hated. At that gate, justice was perverted, and the only truly just man was condemned to die.
Why? He did it for the remnant. He took the covenant curse that Amos warned about, the curse of death, so that we, the guilty, might receive the covenant blessing of life. He did it so that the "perhaps" of God's grace could become the "amen" of God's promise in Him (2 Corinthians 1:20).
Therefore, our motivation for obeying these commands is not the fearful uncertainty of an Israelite, but the grateful love of a redeemed child. Because Christ has secured God's grace for us, we are now free and empowered by His Spirit to truly seek good, to truly hate evil, and to begin the joyful task of setting justice at the gates of our own hearts, our homes, our churches, and our culture. We do this not to secure a "perhaps," but because we belong to the remnant, chosen in Christ, and our gracious God has promised to be with us always, even to the end of the age.