In my cycle of reading through Holy Scripture I am now currently in the book of Ezekiel. Usually I look forward to reading the books of the Old and New Testaments, but not Ezekiel. Why? Because the Lord is so relentless in his judgment and condemnation of the people of Jerusalem’s wicked behavior in late 7th and early 6th century B.C. Judah. Their chief sin is the worship of various idols (idolatry) that has corrupted them thoroughly as God’s holy and chosen people, and turned them into something that God never intended; they had become just like the nations they were called to help redeem. Take the following passages for example (and there are dozens like them throughout Ezekiel):

⁵ “This is what the Sovereign Lord says: This [the sign-act in Ezekiel 5.1-4] is an illustration of what will happen to Jerusalem. I placed her at the center of the nations, ⁶ but she has rebelled against my regulations and decrees and has been even more wicked than the surrounding nations. She has refused to obey the regulations and decrees I gave her to follow.
⁷ “Therefore, this is what the Sovereign Lord says: You people have behaved worse than your neighbors and have refused to obey my decrees and regulations. You have not even lived up to the standards of the nations around you. ⁸ Therefore, I myself, the Sovereign Lord, am now your enemy. I will punish you publicly while all the nations watch. ⁹ Because of your detestable idols, I will punish you like I have never punished anyone before or ever will again. ¹⁰ Parents will eat their own children, and children will eat their parents. I will punish you and scatter to the winds the few who survive.
¹¹ “As surely as I live, says the Sovereign Lord, I will cut you off completely. I will show you no pity at all because you have defiled my Temple with your vile images and detestable sins. ¹² A third of your people will die in the city from disease and famine. A third of them will be slaughtered by the enemy outside the city walls. And I will scatter a third to the winds, chasing them with my sword. ¹³ Then at last my anger will be spent, and I will be satisfied. And when my fury against them has subsided, all Israel will know that I, the Lord, have spoken to them in my jealous anger.
¹⁴ “So I will turn you into a ruin, a mockery in the eyes of the surrounding nations and to all who pass by. ¹⁵ You will become an object of mockery and taunting and horror. You will be a warning to all the nations around you. They will see what happens when the Lord punishes a nation in anger and rebukes it, says the Lord (Ezekiel 5.5-15, NLT)

Or this passage:

Then this message came to me from the Lord: ² “Son of man, this is what the Sovereign Lord says to Israel:

“The end is here!
    Wherever you look—
east, west, north, or south—
    your land is finished.
³ No hope remains,
    for I will unleash my anger against you.
I will call you to account
    for all your detestable sins.
⁴ I will turn my eyes away and show no pity.
    I will repay you for all your detestable sins.
Then you will know that I am the Lord.

²⁴ I will bring the most ruthless of nations
    to occupy their homes.
I will break down their proud fortresses
    and defile their sanctuaries.
²⁵ Terror and trembling will overcome my people.
    They will look for peace but not find it.
²⁶ Calamity will follow calamity;
    rumor will follow rumor.
They will look in vain
    for a vision from the prophets.
They will receive no teaching from the priests
    and no counsel from the leaders.
²⁷ The king and the prince will stand helpless,
    weeping in despair,
and the people’s hands
    will tremble with fear.
I will bring on them
    the evil they have done to others,
and they will receive the punishment
    they so richly deserve.
Then they will know that I am the Lord.” (Ezekiel 7.1-4, 24-27, NLT)

This is tough stuff, folks, made tougher by the realization that while the historical context focuses on the people of Jerusalem, it also points to the day when the Lord God will finally come to judge his good but corrupted creation along with his image-bearing people, and this kind of judgment and wrath will fall on every human being on earth, me included. This is very unsettling because I know my transgressions against God and my sin is ever before me (cf. Ps 51.3), and passages like these quite simply make me shudder. And if you think you are exempt from God’s wrath because you are a “good person,” you are only deluding yourself. You may well be a good person in some sense, but you are not perfect in God’s holy eyes (nobody is), and that won’t go well for you on the Day of the Lord. In other words, Ezekiel’s story could very well be my story and yours without some serious help from a Power greater than the power of Sin! To repeat: reflecting on these passages in this way is no easy matter.

But then last week in the midst of reading Ezekiel, the Lord reminded me of something important: that while his wrath and judgment are real and he will one day come to right all wrongs and address all kinds of injustice, wickedness, and evil, the kind we are all guilty of committing—because a perfect, Holy, and loving God cannot allow any form of sin into his Presence (what kind of justice permits these things?)—his justice is always tempered by his love and mercy. We can see hints of it in the text, most notably when God tells his prophet that he takes no pleasure in the death of anyone, not even his enemies (Ezekiel 18.32).

Accordingly, the Lord showed me that I was to read the “hard passages” in Scripture through the lens of his Son’s Cross because on the Cross God the Father has poured out his terrible justice and judgment on himself, allowing his terrible wrath and judgment to fall on his beloved Son, God himself, so that we no longer have to bear it ourselves or live in fear that one day we will, even though we are the only ones who deserve his wrath and judgment. Christ never sinned but he bore willingly the full weight and judgment of God’s perfect justice for the collective sins of the whole world on our behalf to spare us (cf. Romans 8.1-4 et al.). It’s hard enough for us to deal with the weight of our own sins; try bearing the weight of everyone’s sins who has ever lived or will live! What greater love is there than that? What greater mercy? How can anyone be more gracious? That is the miracle and beauty of the Incarnation (God become man in Christ): it manifests God the Father’s unfathomable love for us. None of us will ever be able to completely wrap our minds around this love, but we can still appropriate it in and through the power of the Holy Spirit and be grateful.

We all would be recipients of God’s wrath just like the people of Jerusalem were, but now we who belong to Christ don’t have to fear that anymore because now we can humbly go and kneel at the foot of the cross in inexpressible gratitude and thanksgiving for God saving us from ourselves and his justice. This kind of love and mercy is worthy of our best and highest reflection and devotion; that is why a good theology of the Cross is so important and fundamental to the Christian Faith. More importantly it demands a response from us. Yes, we can only be saved by faith in Christ, but our faith is made known to God and others by our actions, actions which are consistent with our Lord Jesus Christ. In other words, we can’t say we have faith in Christ and then continue to act like his enemies and keep on wallowing in our sin. That’s not faith, that’s living a lie.

Armed with this knowledge and grace, I no longer dread reading the book of Ezekiel as I once did. Yes, it’s still tough reading, but now I am reminded what an unbelievable gift we all have been given when I realize that the Lord God loves even one like me, that he loves me enough to do what he needed to do to spare me from eternal death and separation from him by dying on my behalf. That’s not about me, it’s about the unfathomable love and mercy of God. He will do the same for you as well if you let him.

For those with ears to hear, listen and understand.