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. 1. The immediate occasion of this word of the Lord by the prophet was a powerful objection made against the moral government of God. Punishment was not dealt out to the transgressor, and to him only; but his children were made to suffer too. 2. This misbelief of the people was very alarming; all the more so that an element of truth was at the base of it. Doubt is never more serious than when it questions the righteousness of God; and it is often easy to offer some show of reason for such a suggestion. Ezekiel had to do with a kind of misbelief which is not so very uncommon in our own time. 3. He met it, as such belief must always, I think, be met, not by denying the half-truth on which the objection rests; but by affirming the complementary truths of man's individual responsibility and God's absolute fairness. We do belong to the race, and we do inherit the consequences of other men's actions; but, none the less, each of us is a unit, dwelling in "the awful solitude of his own personality"; each of us is responsible for his own conduct, and must give his own account to God. 4. This rests on the fundamental truth that "all souls are God's." Men have a relation to God as well as to one another; and this is true not only of some men, but of all. We all live in God. What we inherit from our ancestors is not more important than what we receive, and may receive, from God, — it is vastly less important. The supreme fact in every human life is, not heredity, but God. 5. "All souls are God's." Every man lives in God, is sustained and preserved by God, is dealt with by God in his own individual personality; and that, not only in reference to material things, but in reference to the moral and spiritual aspects of life. As the all-embracing air is around each, so is the presence of God, and that is the guarantee for the government of each with perfect fair play, in mercy and righteousness and love. 6. The truth before us, then, is that every human soul is an object of God's care. In every man God has a personal interest. He deals with us, not in the mass, but one by one; not simply through the operation of unbending, universal law, or as a blind, impersonal force, but by a direct and vital contact. 7. I know that many among us find it almost impossible to share this belief, and it may be confessed freely that many things which we see around us are hard to reconcile with a strong faith in the truth which I am seeking to establish — the truth that God has a personal and individual care for every man — dealing with "all souls" in perfect wisdom, righteousness, and love. We find life full of glaring inequalities — surfeit and starvation side by side; Dives feasting luxuriously, and Lazarus longing for the wasted crumbs; bounding health that counts mere life a joy, and lingering sickness that prays for death as gain; happiness that scarcely knows an unsatisfied desire, and exquisite misery that hardly remembers a day's unbroken peace. We find the same inequality extending to spiritual privileges. Here men live in the full light of the Christian revelation, in a land of churches and Bibles, where helps to holy living are abundant. Yonder men dwell in pagan darkness, ignorant of Christian truth, destitute of Christian influence, surrounded by all that tends to degrade and deprave. 8. What, then, is our proper course in the presence of these difficulties? What can it be but to follow the example of Ezekiel in strongly affirming the fact? Let the fact of God's personal, individual, universal care be firmly grasped, and the difficulties will fall into their right place of comparative unimportance. 9. If you have any momentary difficulty in accepting this as true, reflect, I beseech you, what a horrible theory would be involved in its denial — the theory that for some of His children God has no kind thought, no tender feeling, no purpose of mercy and love; that for some men He does not care at all. He gave them life, and preserves them in being; but He does not love them. They have the same powers and capacities as ourselves, are made capable of trusting, loving, obeying, rejoicing in Him; but He has no merciful regard for them, He withholds the enlightening truth, the saving grace, the redeeming message; He shuts up His heart of compassions, and leaves them, as orphans in the wild, to perish miserably for lack of ministers of love. But this is infidelity of the very worst kind, the grossest and most mischievous. 10. Moreover, we may question if the sure signs of God's gracious care are absent from any life. They do not lie on the surface, and we may miss them at the first glance; but they are there, and larger knowledge would correct the thought that anyone has been neglected. For any right understanding of this matter we must get beyond the superficial reading of life which sees signs of Divine love in what is pleasant, and signs of anger in the unpleasant. The pruning of the tree shows the gardener's care, just as much as the supply of its obvious wants; and we should remember that in the education of life and character, the best results are sometimes secured by the most painful processes. It is with apparently neglected lives as it is with apparently neglected races and nations: a fuller acquaintance with them proves that they also have been objects of the Divine care. When Mungo Park, travelling in Central Africa, was ready to give himself up as lost, his failing courage was revived by a bit of moss on which his eye chanced to fall; and that reminded him that God was there. And if some leaf of grass or tiny flower is a witness to the nearness and active energy of God, is not such witness to be recognised in every devout thought, every idea of right and truth and duty, every effort to attain to a knowledge of God and to render to Him acceptable service? 11. And if, look where we will, in every land and among all people, we may find some witness to God's care of the individual life, it is only in the Gospel of Christ that we find the full measure of His care adequately set forth. As might naturally be expected, since He came to reveal the Father, there is no such witness to the care of God for His children as Jesus Christ. His doctrine, His life, and His death constitute a three-fold testimony, so clear, so ample, so emphatic that one could scarcely wish for more. (1) He taught that God loves the world; is gracious to the wicked, merciful to the undeserving, kind to the unthankful and the evil. (2) His life also gave emphasis to the same great truth — the truth of God's care for the individual soul. Though a mighty Teacher, having the ear of multitudes, He devoted a large part of His time to the instruction of men and women one by one. (3) And since there was no greater thing He could do to show the Father's care — no greater sacrifice that He could make in His unspeakable love that imaged God's great love — He gave Himself to die upon the Cross a ransom for our sins. He died, the Just for the unjust, to bring us to God. He suffered for you and me, for each because for all, for the whole world; therefore, for every soul that is in the world. (G. Hill, M. A.) 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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