Warnings are Good for the Soul

Michelangelo's depiction of Ezekiel

Thousands of years ago God spoke to the prophet Ezekiel:

 

“Whenever you hear a word from my mouth, you shall give them warning from me. If I say to the wicked, You shall surely die,’ and you give him no warning, nor speak to warn the wicked from his wicked way, in order to save his life, that wicked person shall die for his iniquity, but his blood I will require at your hand. But if you warn the wicked, and he does not turn from his wickedness, or from his wicked way, he shall die for his iniquity, but you will have delivered your soul. Again, if a righteous person turns from his righteousness and commits injustice, and I lay a stumbling block before him, he shall die. Because you have not warned him, he shall die for his sin, and his righteous deeds that he has done shall not be remembered, but his blood I will require at your hand. But if you warn the righteous person not to sin, and he does not sin, he shall surely live, because he took warning, and you will have delivered your soul.”  (Ezekiel 3:17-21 ESV)

 

These are powerful words, and I think they have application for us today.  There are two aspects to this interaction.

 

Relating to the Wicked

People do evil things.  Some people make such a habit out of doing evil that they can rightly be called wicked.  When we see such people, we have two possible courses of action.  We could say something or say nothing.  If we say nothing, and they continue to be wicked, they will get what they deserve.  They may even die for their wickedness.  However, though we will not be accountable for their actions, we may be accountable for their death because we did not warn them.

On the other hand, if we do warn them and they do not turn from their evil ways, what follows is completely on them.  They did evil.  They knew they did evil.  They did not stop doing evil, and they got justice.  We tried to turn them from their wickedness, and they did not listen.  We are guiltless for what happened to them.

 

Relating to the Righteous

Sometimes people are less sinful.  Such people are referred to as “righteous.”  Keep in mind, these are not good people.  They are just less bad.  Jesus made this distinction in Mark 10:18 when he said, “No one is good but God alone,” and Paul made a significant distinction between the good and the righteous in his letter to the Church in Rome (Romans 5:7).  Righteous people are still sinful people.

 

As such, sometimes a righteous person sins.  Left unchecked this sin will lead to all his righteousness being forgotten.  This is where we come in.  We could say nothing.  In doing so, he starts down the path of wickedness that eventually might even lead to him dying for his evil deeds.  Though he is accountable for his actions, we, who said nothing, are accountable for his death.

The other option is that we could warn him.  Because he is righteous, he may well turn from his transgressions and do what is right again.  He could take warning at our admonishment and turn back to the right path.  If this is the case, we would have done both him and us a service.  We will have saved his life and our soul. 

 

Application

When we see evil happening, we should speak up, regardless of whether the person is (in our eyes) righteous or unrighteous.  They may or may not turn from their actions, but we will have fulfilled our responsibility.  More importantly we will have done the right thing.

 

There is another application as well.  Everyone reading this is either righteous or wicked.  Yet regardless of which group we are in, we still sin.  It may very well be that at some points someone will confront us because of our wrongdoing.  At that point we have a choice.  We could continue in our evil deeds or turn back to God and be restored.

 

Whatever we chose though, the one who warned us has done his part.  At that point, what happens to us in on our own heads.

 

Warn others when they do wrong, and listen to others when they warn you.  Both are good for the soul.