Ezekiel 33:12-19 Therefore, you son of man, say to the children of your people… These words bring out - I. THE OPPORTUNITY OF THE STONER. God gives him the opportunity of returning, and of recovering that which was lost (see previous homily). He is "not to fall in the day that he turns from his wickedness." 1. God condemns and warns him; he tells him that his sin is ruining him, leading him to death (ver. 14). 2. He hearkens and repents; has so deep a sense of his folly and his guilt that he turns utterly away, in heart and in life, from all his wrong-doing (vers. 14, 15). And then: 3. God takes him back freely and fully into his Divine favor (ver. 16). His sin is frankly forgiven him, and he "lives" unto God and in his sight. This opportunity is offered to: 1. The ignorant idolater who has been brought up in the dark shadows of superstition. 2. The man who, though brought up in the light of truth, has fallen into flagrant and shameful sin, into vice or crime. 3. The man who, while maintaining the proprieties of behavior, and perhaps the semblance of devotion, keeps his heart closed against the truth and grace of Jesus Christ. To all of these, though they have lived through many years and even whole periods of sin, there is open the gateway of immediate return and of full reconciliation to God. II. THE PERIL OF THE RIGHTEOUS. 1. His God-given hope. He looks for life: "He shall surely live" (ver. 13). The future before him is bright with many a precious promise; the further he goes the more he has to expect at the hands of the faithful and generous Giver. But let him not presume; here is: 2. His serious danger. He may, like the Jew, and like too many an erring Christian, imagine a favoritism on the part of the Supreme which does not exist, and, presuming upon it, may fall. If once the devout man loses his humility; forgets that he is but a weak, endeavoring human spirit; fosters in himself a sense of security; "trusts to his own righteousness; " - then he stands at once within the circumference of spiritual peril. It is "when he is (consciously) weak, then he is strong" (2 Corinthians 12:10). And, conversely, when he is confidently strong, then is he weak, then is he most exposed to the darts of the enemy: pride precedes a fall. 3. His condemnation and his doom. His former "righteousness will not deliver him;" for his iniquity and in his iniquity "he will die." No man living in sin may look up to God and say, "I was once pure," with any hope of acceptance; God requires of us that we be pure in heart, loyal in spirit, upright in word and deed, or he cannot grant us his benediction or admit us to his home. III. THE RIGHTEOUSNESS OF GOD IN BOTH RESPECTS. 1. God is righteous in forgiving the sinful man and restoring him to fullness of life. The Pharisaic view of this act is that it is unrighteous, inasmuch as a guilty soul is taken back to favor and raised up to life and joy. But there are two things overlooked. (1) God is ever seeking the best in man; he is working towards purity and goodness. How can this be promoted in the sinful? In no way so well as by the extension of Divine mercy. Unrelieved penalty only crushes and condemns to a hopeless continuance in sin; but mercy implants hope, - it leads to penitence, and it ends in purity, in wisdom, in moral and spiritual well-being. (2) Though mercifully restored to life, the sinner does not fail to suffer; some penalty for past transgression he must pay. In the nature of things, or rather under the working of the wise and righteous laws of God, sin works immediate mischief in the soul, and it importantly affects the life; so that not even the abounding mercy of God makes it the same thing to a man whether he spends his earlier years in wisdom or in folly. 2. God is merciful even in condemning the backslider. For if he were to act otherwise, if he were to allow a man, because he had once been righteous, to fall into any sinfulness without condemning and punishing him, what license he would be giving to iniquity, and how would he be multiplying transgression on every hand! It is in the true and lasting interest of our race, and of all his intelligent creation, that God affixes his rebuke and some appropriate penalty to all wrong-doing or wrong-being, in whomsoever it may be found. Thus the Divine Ruler and Father of men is righteous when he forgives, and is merciful when he condemns. His ways are equal, and if we fail to see it, it is because we fail to recognize the profound righteousness of mercy, and the equally profound mercy of righteousness. - C. Parallel Verses KJV: Therefore, thou son of man, say unto the children of thy people, The righteousness of the righteous shall not deliver him in the day of his transgression: as for the wickedness of the wicked, he shall not fall thereby in the day that he turneth from his wickedness; neither shall the righteous be able to live for his righteousness in the day that he sinneth. |
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