- Taken, with editing, from The Modern Scottish Pulpit, vol 1 (Edinburgh, 1883).
Ezekiel 33:11. Say unto them, As I live, saith the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live: turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways; for why will ye die, O house of Israel?
This message from God contains, in the form of an oath, the declaration regarding Himself and, with earnestness most intense, conveys the call to the house of Israel. The declaration and the call are therefore the two things to which the text calls our attention.
1. The Declaration
- In considering the declaration, we must first attend (1) to the meaning and then (2) to the form of it – to what God tells us, and to how He tells it.
(1) The Meaning of the Declaration
The meaning of the declaration. It contains two statements. The first tells us what He has no pleasure in, and the second tells us what He has pleasure in. Let us consider each of these separately.
First, “I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked”. And yet the wicked dies. He who says, “I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked”, is He from whom the message came, “O wicked man, thou shalt surely die”. The death of the finally impenitent is taken for granted. It is the mind of God regarding that certain event which the text calls us to consider. This passage gives no countenance to the idea that the death of the wicked is inconsistent with the mercy of God, for here we have divine mercy proclaimed right over it. In full view of this awful fact, Jehovah asserts His benevolence. Nor is it required that we think of the death of the wicked as something less calamitous than eternal misery, in order that we may reconcile it with the character of God as good. Surely it is not mere temporary suffering, nor annihilation, over which Jehovah is exhibiting earnestness so intense. Only those who do not know sin can be disposed to modify the retribution.
If a stranger visiting this country looked in on the homes made wretched by vice, some of which are not very far removed from the Palace; or into the cells of our prisons throughout our land, which are so prominent and so costly as government institutions; or on the sad scene of an execution, at which agents of the crown were present; would he be justified in coming to the conclusion that our Sovereign was not benevolent – that such a state of things under her government was an evidence of our Queen’s lack of clemency?
If the crime was ignored which lay behind the wretchedness, the bondage and the execution, it would be no wonder if a conclusion was drawn from these facts which was adverse to the character of our Queen. But if the crime is taken into account and these instances of misery are traced to crime, then not a shadow of suspicion appears to rest on the name of our Sovereign. A ruler that would forbid exact justice in dealing with crime would, in effect, be quite as oppressive as the most cruel of all despots. The mercy that winked at crime would produce more calamitous results than the sternest tyranny. Even goodness demands a restraint on crime, and punishment for the convicted criminal.
Let it never be forgotten that the death we are now considering, in relation to the government and character of God, is “the death of the wicked”. We must think of his crime when we think of his death; he has resisted the will, disowned the authority, dishonoured the name, hated the being and defied the power of God. Can we think of God as infinite in His being, glory and goodness, without being constrained to conclude that eternal death is the wages due to all who thus sin against Him? Could we worship a God who, in the full knowledge of what He was, would award a punishment less than this? A God who is not bound to be just to Himself, to this extent, could not be infinite and could not be worshipped. You must discover in the divine mode of government such awful justice as finds expression in the eternal death of the wicked, before you can either revere or love Him who is “over all”. If you accept in faith the truth of God’s infinity, you must accept as true the awful fact of the eternal death of all the wicked who remain unsaved.
The one difficulty is the fact that wickedness exists. While this fact must be assumed, it points to what must for ever remain an insoluble mystery to us, in its relation to the will of God. But it is due to God, because of His infinite love of righteousness, that His relation to the origin of sin should be regarded without any suspicion; it is also due to Him, as Supreme Governor, that the perfect rectitude of this relationship should appear to His mind alone. We should be satisfied if the existence of sin appears to Him to be perfectly consistent with all the glory of His holiness and goodness. Into what awful darkness your mind must enter, if you presume to attempt to occupy any position, in relation to this, except that of adoring silence! Do not venture, with your imperfect conceptions of the Most High, to imagine that His way of dealing with sin cannot be right, because it does not appear so to you.
Men who are ignorant of God, and therefore ignorant of sin, often venture to pass judgement on the moral government of God as if they had before them a finite being dealing with some trivial offence. All error has its root in ignorance of God; all ignorance of what may and should be known of God has its root in hatred of the light. And all feelings that interfere with our adoration of God and our admiration of His ways have their root in the pride which thrusts us beyond our place as creatures in considering the ways of God.
At any rate, the existence of sin furnishes an occasion for the infinite display of the very attributes of God on which sin seems to cast a shadow – His holiness and His goodness – and is a proof that God alone is necessarily infallible, for it appears that no creature can become so, either in heaven or on earth. The existence of sin forms a dark background before which the glory of Him who alone is immutable appears all the more brightly. If this is so, let our thoughts, about the relation of sin to Jehovah’s sovereign will, produce the calmness of adoring silence behind the awe which overwhelms us, as we think of sin’s moral hideousness and its everlasting results.
There is no malevolence in God; so there is none which could be gratified in the death of any creature He has made. It is not because He does not delight in mercy that He has permitted sin to exist and that death is its wages. This is sufficiently proved by His providence and His gospel. Does He not cause His goodness to abound even to the evil and unthankful? At any rate, is the earth not a scene on which He demonstrates, in His providential dealings with sinful men, that He is long-suffering and slow to wrath? Each moment between birth and death is a fresh proof of this. If the wicked dies at last after a life made up of moments, each of which is brightened by the goodness of God, then this calamity of death must be traced, not to lack of benevolence in God, but to impartial justice.
And how ample is the proof given in the cross that God has no pleasure in the death of the wicked! There the death of wicked people is seen as endured by a person who is the only-begotten Son of God. There the deaths of a countless multitude of wicked people come together in one great retribution. In the light of that awful fire, in which the wrath of God is exhaustively expressed, you may read the lesson of this text. They must die, but they die in Christ and so they shall surely live. Their deaths are swallowed up in the death of Him who is their Substitute; because He alone is crucified, they all shall live. Here we see God dealing with sin apart from the person of the transgressor; instead of the guilty criminal, there stands at His bar His only-begotten Son. O how infinitely strong is the proof this affords that it is from impartial justice, and not from malevolence towards the persons of the guilty, that the sentence of death to the wicked comes forth.
But there is more than this in the first statement in the text, in God’s declaration regarding Himself. It tells us that such is the character of God, as revealed in the gospel, that it is impossible for Him to find pleasure in the death of the wicked.
Now it is not by ignoring the stern aspect of His character, presented by the law, that you can have before your mind the view of His character given in the text. Whatever the character of God was and is, He can never cease to be all He was revealed as being in the days of old. He reveals Himself by the law now, just as He did then. You, as a sinner, have to do with Him under the same aspect of His character and in the same relation, as Lawgiver and Judge, as they who were under the Old Testament dispensation. And only in a way which is quite consistent with all He was, and with all He claimed, and with all He threatened, as the God of Sinai – only when His name is thus before you – can you recognise Him by the same glory which made awful the place of His presence on “the mount that might be touched, and that burned with fire”. Only then can you possibly attain to hope in His mercy.
Nor is it by concluding that God loves all, because He is love, that you can have before you the view of His character presented in the text. Beware of being content with a hope that springs from believing in a love of God, apart from His Christ and outside of the shelter of the cross. It may relieve you of a superficial fear; it may excite a feeling of joy and gratitude in your heart; it may beget in you what you may regard as love to God. This love too may be the mainspring of very active movements in the bustle of external service but it leaves you, after all, away from God, ignoring His majesty and holiness, dispensing with His Christ, and enjoying a peace that has been secured by a cheating, instead of a purging, of your conscience.
The time was when men openly preached an uncovenanted mercy as the resort of sinners, and laid the smoothness of that doctrine on the sores of the anxious. Universal love, in these days when evangelism is in fashion, is but another form in which the same deceit is presented to the awakened. This is something from which an unrenewed man can take comfort. It is a pillow on which a stranger can lay his head and be at ease far off from God. It keeps out of view the necessity of vital union to Christ and of turning unto God, and the hope which it inspires can be attained without felt dependence on sovereign grace and without submitting to the renewing work of God the Holy Ghost.
“God is love”, but when you hear this, you are not told what must lie behind the declaration that He loves all, and that therefore He loves you. The words quoted here tell us what He is, as revealed to us in the cross, and what all who come to Him through Christ will find Him to be. It is on this that faith has to operate. You have no right to believe that the love, which is commended in the death of the Son, embraces you if you have not yet believed. In the first instance, you have to do only with the character of God, not at all with His purpose. What right have you to say that He loves all? Have you seen into the heart of God, so that you should say He loves you until you have, as a sinner, reached the bosom of His love in Christ through faith?
But, you ask, may I not think of God loving sinners without ascribing to Him any purpose to save? God loving a sinner without a purpose to save him! The thing is inconceivable. I would reproach a fellow sinner if I so conceived of his love. Love to one utterly ruined, and that love commanding resources that are sufficient for salvation, and yet no purpose to use them! Let not men so blaspheme the love of God.
But may I not conceive of God loving men to the extent of providing salvation and purchasing redemption for them, without this taking actual effect in their salvation? No indeed. For the love of God is one; it is the love of the Three in One. The one love of the one God is the love of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost. If that love generated in the person of the Father a purpose to provide redemption and in the person of the Son a purpose to redeem, it must have generated in the person of the Holy Ghost a purpose to apply redemption. You cannot assign one set of objects to it as the love of the Father, and a different set of objects to it as “the love of the Spirit”. And Jehovah can have no unaccomplished purpose; “My counsel shall stand,” He says, “and I will do all My pleasure.” “The world” which the Father loved and the Son redeemed shall be convinced by the Spirit of sin, righteousness and judgement,” and thus the Father’s pleasure shall prosper, and the Son’s “travail” be rewarded, through the efficient grace of God the Holy Spirit.
You have no right to attempt to look in on the relation of God’s love to individuals, till first you attain, through faith, a place among His children. “Secret things belong unto the Lord.” Do not try to share them with Him. In considering the doctrine of the text, you have nothing to do with the question: Does God love the wicked? It is on the character of God that you are called to look, as He has revealed this in the cross of His dear Son. You have no right to be influenced, when judging God’s procedure, by preconceived ideas of His counsels or of God Himself, but only by the glory of His name as He has been pleased to reveal it. He does not tell me that He loves the wicked man; but I am assured, when I look on Him as He is love, that He has no pleasure in his death. The fullest exhibition of His character, and the overwhelming proof that He has no pleasure in the death of the wicked, are given to us in the cross of Jesus Christ.
Yes, you say, but it is in fulfilling a sovereign purpose of grace that He has revealed Himself there. True, but it is infinite love which He has revealed. It is by this display of His love that you are to judge the way in which it shall fare with you, if you come to Him in response to His call. Faith has infinite love on which to operate, in order to encourage you. For, whatever His purpose may be, it is abundantly evident that “God is love”. That is the character of Him to whom you are called to return. That is the view presented to you of Him to whom you are called to return, and this is what you have to do with.
When you think of the special purpose He fulfilled, in which He has so revealed Himself, you may be all the more encouraged to return. This is what assures you that a salvation both free and sure awaits you when you come. The “purpose . . . according to election”, while casting no shadow on the infinity of the love, is a guarantee for the certainty of the salvation which you are called to accept. For, in providing salvation for a people whom He accounted worthy of death, He gave His only begotten Son for them, so that, buying them by His blood, He might save them by His power. You are called to meet that love in the Son as Jesus the Christ, and to present yourself, for the sake of His blood as a suppliant for all the blessings of the covenant of grace. What more can you desire? What element of encouragement is lacking in this form of doctrine, which any system of evangelical theology, or all of them together, can supply?