Rebecca Florence Miller
And now we come to Ezekiel’s role. Ezekiel is called to be a watchman, one who gives warnings. Cities in the time of Ezekiel were surrounded by thick walls. Watchmen were regularly on duty to watch for approaching threats. If a watchman saw an army advancing on the city and decided to take a nap or to run away without warning anyone, that watchman would be existentially responsible for the deaths that would follow. It would be an egregious dereliction of duty to fail to warn people that mortal danger was approaching. God tells Ezekiel that he has such a responsibility. Ezekiel is like the weatherman or the mayor of a town about to be hit by a hurricane. Or the fireman knocking on doors and saying, “The fire is coming! Get out!”
God says to Ezekiel, “Son of man, I have made you a watchman for the people of Israel; so hear the word I speak and give them warning from me. When I say to the wicked, ‘You wicked person, you will surely die,’ and you do not speak out to dissuade them from their ways, that wicked person will die for their sin, and I will hold you accountable for their blood” (33:7-8 NIV). God calls his people today too to serve as prophetic voices. When God reveals to us sin within the Church, we must not keep silent. We must not just “make nice,” ignoring the crucial truth God has revealed. We are responsible to the level of knowledge God has granted us, to communicate it faithfully and as winsomely as possible to the community of believers. We are not responsible for their response to it. That part is their responsibility.
That response is what God turns to next, in his word to Ezekiel: “But if you do warn the wicked person to turn from their ways and they do not do so, they will die for their sin, though you yourself will be saved” (v. 9). Sometimes when we challenge fellow believers about an area of sin, we will be frustrated by their response (or lack of response). They may ignore us or become hostile. It may feel like our words are accomplishing nothing.
And of course, we must challenge ourselves to make sure our proclamation is based on biblical truth and is communicated with love. But even if we are faithful in the substance and manner of our communication, we need to realize that still does not guarantee a positive response from the believer to whom we speak. That can be very frustrating and alienating. It is easy to throw up our hands and stop speaking the truth and stop challenging sin. But people’s responses are not our responsibility. We do need to mourn the responses of the ambivalent or hostile, to weep over that, and to keep praying for them. Our hearts would be hard and unfeeling if we didn’t feel anger and grief over that. But we must not accept responsibility for other people’s responses to truth. In the end, they are responsible before God for their response.
These are hard words about sin and judgment. But there is also good news here. God is love itself, and 1 Corinthians 13 tells us that love “always hopes” (v. 7). God is a God who desires to mend that which is torn. If the essence of sin is the tearing of wholeness, the essence of salvation is a permanent repair of that tear. While the people of Judah in this passage angrily declare that God is unjust, God declares, “As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign Lord, I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn from their ways and live. Turn! Turn from your evil ways! Why will you die, people of Israel?” (v. 11). This is the desperate plea of a God who sees the danger ahead and does not want destruction or harm for his people. It is the desperate warning of the firefighter and the weatherwoman, “Danger is coming! Get out!”
Think of the worst thing you’ve ever done to another person. Think of how much you hurt them, how deep the wound, the relational tear, went.
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