Ezekiel 18:4 Behold, all souls are mine; as the soul of the father, so also the soul of the son is mine: the soul that sins, it shall die. (with Ezekiel 36:25, 26; Ezekiel 37:14): — Every living "word" must be made flesh, and dwell among us; live in a human and personal life, breathe our warm breath, grasp us with sympathetic and friendly hands, carry our sins and bear our sorrows, if it is to gain admission at "lowly doors"; stir the "spirit's inner deeps"; compel and inspire to an ampler life the reluctant souls of men. The maximum of power is never gained by ideas till they possess and sway the "body prepared for them," and clothe themselves with the subtle and mysterious influences of a vital and impressive personality. The notion of rescuing the waifs and strays of town and village life was in the air of the last century for a long time, and occasionally passed out of its formlessness into print and speech; but it did not grapple with evil, and become the power of God unto the salvation of young England, until it was incarnate in Robert Raikes, of Gloucester, and through him became, as the Sunday School, "the pillar of a people's hope, the centre of a world's desire." The brutal hardness and ferocious cruelty of the prisons of Europe had arrested the fickle attention again and again, but no blow was struck to abate the prodigious mischiefs of criminal life, and elevate punishment into a minister of justice, till John Howard was fired and possessed with the passion of prison reform, and dedicated his will to its advancement with the glorious abandon and success-compelling energy of the prophet. The same is true of the war for personal liberty, of the battles against superstition, and so on ad infinitum. Now, our Bible is a book of ideas — ideas the most simple and sublime, central and essential to all human welfare; but these ideas do not appear as ghosts of a strange and distant world, but clothed in our own humanity, our veritable flesh and blood, speaking "our own tongue wherein we were born," and moving in the midst of the experiences of sin and sorrow, temptation and suffering, and painful progress common to us all. The biblical evangels are all in men. Each one comes with the momentum of a human personality. The Gospel of all the Gospels, the pearl of greatest price, is in the Man Christ Jesus; and in accordance with this Divine principle, the Gospel of the Exile was incarnate in the prophets, and notably in Ezekiel. His very name was a Divine promise, "God shall strengthen"; and his life an enforcement of the beautiful saying, "They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength," etc. The signs and proofs of imperfection notwithstanding, it is palpable that Ezekiel, moved by the Holy Ghost, is a man of invincible newness of spirit, works by methods of evangelical thoroughness, and inspires and impels by motives of a decisively Christian quality. I. Ezekiel breathes THE SPIRIT OF THE NEW EVANGEL from the beginning to the close of his ministry, the spirit of unbending courage, iron consistency, uncompromising faithfulness, heroic self-abnegation, and living faith in God. The breath of Jehovah lifts him on to his feet. The ineffable thrill of the Divine life fills him with a manly daring, makes his "forehead as an adamant, harder than flint," so that he faces and accepts in his inmost being the unspeakable bitterness of the communications he has to deliver, and bears without repining the pressure of an overwhelmingly sorrowful work for the disobedient and obdurate house of Israel. The conscious possession of a gospel for men is the true inspiration to fearlessness, defiance of wrong and falsehood and hypocrisy, calm and inflexible zeal in work. The real prophet of his age reckons with calumny, misrepresentation, neglect, and poverty. Livingstone carries in his New Testament the food on which martyrs are nourished. Savonarola is fortified for death by the vision of the future of Florence which grows out of the good tidings he preaches. Paul and Barnabas can readily hazard their lives as missionaries because they know they are conveying the unsearchable riches of Christ. II. THE GOSPEL OF THE EXILE IS INCARNATE IN EZEKIEL AS TO ITS METHOD, as well as in its new and conquering spirit. There is a penetrating thoroughness characteristic of the life. of the time, and of the particular experience through which Israel is passing; a going to the root of individual and national mischief; a searching of heart, an arousal of conscience, an insistence on the doctrine of individual responsibility; a forcing of men face to face with eternal and irresistible Divine laws — all essential to the successful proclamation of a true evangel for sinning men. 1. The prophet's first word anticipates that of John the Baptist and of our Lord, "Repent ye, repent ye. God is at hand. His rule is real, though invisible. His kingdom is coming, though you do not see it. Repent, and repent at once." With an energy of language, and a vigour of epithet, and a vehemence of spirit, that could neither be mistaken nor resisted, he rebuked the sins of this house of disobedience, exposed its hollow sophistries and self-delusions, and bade it cast away its transgressions, and make itself a new heart and a new spirit. 2. Nor does he rest till he has dug up the very roots of their false and fatal wrong-doing, and laid bare to the glare of the light of day the real cause of all their sin. They are fatalists. Ezekiel met this fixed iron fatalism of the people with the all-encompassing and indefeasible doctrine of the personal responsibility of each man for his own sin; as distinct from the distorted notion of inherited and transmitted guilt and suffering, they were proclaiming. "God says," he told him, "behold, all souls are Mine"; each is of equal and independent value; as the soul of the father, so is the soul of the son; the soul that sinneth, it shall die — it, and not another for it; it alone, and only for its own conscious and inward wrong. God's ways are all equal, and righteousness is the glory of His administration. Heredity is a fact; but it neither accounts for the sum of human suffering, nor for the presence of individual sin. The grape theory may fill a proverb, but it will not explain the Exile. III. EZEKIEL COULD NOT HAVE ADOPTED SO RIGOROUS AND SEARCHING A METHOD UNLESS HE HAD BEEN BATHED AND INSPIRED BY THE GREAT EVANGELICAL MOTIVE. The motive to Ezekiel's ministry is the loving, omnipotent, and regenerating God. 1. As the idea of sin bulges more and more in the thought of the Jews, and burns with increased fierceness in their consciences, fed by the sufferings of their nation, so with unprecedented sharpness of outline appears "the wiping out" of guilt by the free, sovereign, and love-prompted grace of God. 2. It is in the inspiration of hope in the almighty power of God that Ezekiel soars to the highest ranges, and beholds his most memorable and gladdening vision. Carried in thought to his "Mount of Transfiguration," Tel-Abib, he sees covering the vast area of the far-stretching plain the wreck as of an immense army, of dry, bleached, and withering bones. He muses, and the fire of thought burns, and the voice of God sounds in the lonely chambers of his soul. The omnipotence of God is the certain resurrection of the soul of man. He cannot be holden of death. This last enemy shall be destroyed. Power belongeth unto God, and He uses it to save prostrate, despondent, and despairing souls, convicted of guilt, oppressed with the consciousness of death! His delight is in renewal as well as in mercy! 3. Nor is this a fitful and passing access of power, standing out in life like a mountain peak in a plain, a sad memorial of a delightful past, and prophecy of an impossible future; a record of privilege never again to be enjoyed. No; for "I will," says God, "take away the hard, insensitive, unsympathetic, and selfish heart of stone, and will give you a heart of flesh, tender, responsive to the touch of all that surrounds it, open to the Divine emotion of reverence and pity, love and aspiration; and I will put My spirit within you, and write My laws on your heart, enrich you with personal communion, and nourish you by a true obedience." O blessed Gospel! O cheering Pentecost of the Exile! How the hearts of the lowly and penitent in Israel leapt to hail thy coming, rejoiced in the fulness of the blessing of faith, hope, and fellowship, with the Eternal! and prepared for the world-saving mission to which God had called them. Who, then, will hesitate to preach God's last, perfect, and universal Gospel to his fellow man? Who will not seek for the strength which comes(1) from a new and full life, a heart quick in sympathy and strong in the Spirit; (2) from the conviction that we are living in a world of persons spiritually related to the Father, and immediately responsible to His judgment; and(3) from the assurance that the love of God is a real gospel for each human soul — so that he may proclaim the faithful saying, that God is the Saviour of all men, specially of those that believe? (J. Clifford, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: Behold, all souls are mine; as the soul of the father, so also the soul of the son is mine: the soul that sinneth, it shall die. |
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