The Individual
H. E. Lewis. 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. It would be too much to say that Ezekiel discovered the individual, for no true prophet could ever have lost him. However clear-cut a unity the State may have appeared to earlier prophets, they read life too soberly, too earnestly to imagine it had any guilt or glory that was not contributed to it by its individual members. No preacher preaches to his ideal, but to someone whom he is anxious to direct towards it. It was the dissolution of the Hebrew State that helped Ezekiel to realise and formulate his new message. At first he, like his predecessors, spoke to the people as a chosen whole. He had come to Tel-Abib, to "them of the captivity," he had sat among them for a week "astonished," when the Lord came to him, appointing him to be a watchman, to hear the word of warning at God's mouth, and deliver it unrevised to the wicked and to the righteous, one by one (Ezekiel 3:16-21). Then the individual seems to disappear, and the State stands before him: "For they are a...house (Ezekiel 3:26). His signs and his parables are for the house of Israel. So, again, his Thus saith the Lord God unto the land of Israel" has in it a personification of the State that is peculiarly intense. 2. So the prophet seems, in sign after sign, in parable after parable, to cling to the old phrase of a sacred collectivism. But the new individualism suddenly, and more intensely, reappears (chap. Ezekiel 18). The people tried to make an excuse of heredity: "The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge." In our own days, as in those of Ezekiel, no doctrine has been more inconsiderately abused than that of heredity. The prophet attempts, to undo the harm done through the proverb by a profound statement in God's name: "All souls are Mine." God can never be careless of His possessions. To Him their intrinsic value never changes. The prophet does not so much deny the fact of hereditary transmission as deny its relevancy to the consideration of personal guilt. He takes, for illustration, three generations: a good father, a wicked son, a good grandson. Whatever advantages the wicked son inherits, they do not save him from the consequences of his personal wrong-doing; nor does the grandson's legacy of disadvantages rob him of the fruit of his right-doing. The just "shall surely live"; the wicked, between a just father and just son, shall "die in his iniquity" (vers. 5-18). If every soul is equally related to God, that relation overrides the relation of one soul to another. We are judged, not at the circumference, but from the centre. Heredity, at most, is only one of the modes of our mutual relation as created beings; it cannot affect the Creator's mind. To Him the father stands as distinctly apart from the son as if there were no son, and the son as distinctly apart from the father as if he were fatherless. Men may act together, and act one upon another, but each of them will have to God an individual worth. A soul is forever His soul. The accountability of a soul, its guilt or redemption, lies supremely in its relation to God. "All souls are Mine." The prophet proceeds to declare that life's present may be cut clear from life's past. A tradition of righteousness cannot save a soul that has fallen into actual wickedness; a tradition of wickedness cannot undo a soul that strives after righteousness. What the world does impulsively, often blindly, God does with due regard to the moral secret of the "thousand victories" and the "once foiled." He watches for the throb of new beginnings: He sees the "imperfect substance" of our desires and deeds. And yet we must be careful not to force the prophet's teaching. A man may suffer for his father's sins, or for the sins of his own past life; he may suffer, and yet not be deprived of the privileges of the new kingdom. The inviolable relation is not that of a soul to another, or to its own past, but to God. "All souls are Mine." 3. The vision grows upon the prophet, and so he comes to make his still more ample announcement: "Have I any pleasure in the death of the wicked? saith the Lord God: and not rather that he should return from his way, and live?" It would seem as if the despair of man won from God His profoundest secret, His most healing revelation. The State was failing to pieces, Israel was scattered and unbrothered; but God met each individual son and daughter of Israel with this great message — repeated later on, and confirmed "with an oath," to use the language of the Epistle to the Hebrews (Hebrews 6:13, 17) — "As I live, saith the Lord, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked" (Ezekiel 33:11). Though our "dim eyes" are unable, after all our endeavours, to comprehend the place of what seem to us finite emotions in the Infinite Mind, we will still cherish the tender, the brave Gospel, that God has "no pleasure" in the death of the wicked. 4. We need Ezekiel's teaching today in many ways. The individual is always tempted to hide from himself, or hide from his brother. He is more and more tempted to rely upon the State, or upon the Church. Man belongs to himself and to God, and to no other, in the final issue. "Bear ye one another's burdens" — in his relation to his fellow creatures, "for each man shall bear his own burden" — in his relation to God. Whatever a man may suffer from one or the other, or both, his hell is not from his parents or from his past, while he has the power, by God's help, any moment — any brief, immeasurable moment — to cut his soul loose from the things that are behind, and set sail for the Paradise of God. "The son shall not bear the iniquity of his father," etc. (vers. 20, 27, 28). A man is master of his fate the moment he lets the mercy of God find him. It was not the discussion, for its own sake, that concerned the prophet. He wanted to come close to the soul of each individual, in order to make his fervent appeal: "Make you a new heart and a new spirit: for why will ye die, O house of Israel?" So earnest is he in emphasising man's share in his own renewal, that he seems almost to forget God's share; but the reverse would be true regarding the vision of the Valley of Dry Bones. It is this ineffaceable signature of the Eternal Spirit in man that makes him worthy for God to contend with in holy mercy (Ezekiel 20:35, 36). No soul meets its final fate before somewhere, somehow meeting God face to face. There is no mere accident in the damnation of any soul. It is a deliberate choice, after an ultimate controversy (Isaiah 1:18-20). "As I live, saith the Lord, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked." (H. E. Lewis.) 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. WEB: Behold, all souls are mine; as the soul of the father, so also the soul of the son is mine: the soul who sins, he shall die.