Ezekiel 3:16-27
"Warning to Israel"
Ezekiel begins this passage with a message from God (like most of the prophets). In this passage, God lays downs some pretty hard stuff for Ezekiel personally. God says to him that if he [God] says to a wicked man "you will die!" then it is Ezekiel's responsibility to warn him. if he doesn't, then he will be accountable for the man's blood. If Ezekiel does warn the man, however, but the man does not change and then dies, the fault is not Ezekiel's. This is actually kind of like modern law - If you know one person's going to kill another and you do nothing to warn the other or stop it, then you become an accessory to murder. in a similar fashion, God tells Ezekiel that he should not become an accessory to spiritual murder, but speak out against the wrongdoing that angers God. For us, this means trying to save people from their sin - if we know a person isn't a christian and we do nothing, we have just become, in a way, an accessory to murder.
God then uses this image of warning people of God's punishment and their sin being related to Ezekiel to show another example of how to save a life, whether it's your or theirs. When a righteous man turns away and sins and God punishes him, he will die. If ezekiel, or any of us, does not warn him and he dies because of his sin, the guilt is, once again, on us.
quickly, before the regular pew-sitters jump up and lynch me let me explain the sentence before last. Firstly, you have to remember that this was before the new covenant - in which case the man would die spiritually in addition to physically (if God chooses to literally kill him). secondly, any man can be, to a degree morally righteous, just not righteous enough for God - in which case he would die spiritually. Thirdly, if the man was Christian and truly righteous, in the sense that Christ paid for his sins, then either he would be convicted of his sin by God and would hopefully seek restitution or fellow Christians would confront him about his sin encouraging atonement. unfortunately, not all those who call themselves Christian are actually Christians - therefore they fall into the second group, which is what can cause a bit of worry and possible uproar. rightly so. so, if you aren't sure if someone's a christian, ask them. if they say yes, define christian using a definition of what a christian is (see the nicene creed for a good, unsummarized definition) and see if they say yes again. If they say no at any point, start preaching :)
okay, tangent over...
This whole redefinition of blood-guilt is only a build-up. God then tells Ezekiel to prepare himself to give a message to the Israelites, a rebellious nation who provokes God's wrath and is in need of punishment. remember what God said earlier? yeah, Ezekiel, if you value your life and don't want the deaths of thousands of your countrymen on your heavenly tab, then get ready to start talking... kind of. Ezekiel was told, by God, to shut himself in isolation inside his house. he will be bound with ropes and mute except whenever God had a message for him to speak. (really not that much fun, but hey, you gotta do what you gotta do...)
Key point here is: (aside from don't mess with the Big Man) there needs to be a sense of urgency to our evangelizing, and I'm preaching to myself here, too. as christians who know the truth, we need to be spreading the Gospel to those who don't know it. if it weren't for the atonement given by christ, we would have multiple people's deaths on our heads; i would probably have 5 or 10, maybe even more, and I've only been alive for 19 years. I think we sometimes get a bit too cozy in our salvation blanket as we sit by the fireplace of God's love and we forget that out in the freezing, deathly cold of sin's night, where we used to be, live many more people who are unaware of or are wanting to come inside (either actually seeking Christ or seeking the answer to the hole in life) the church of Christ.
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