I can’t be reading through the Bible and just pass Ezekiel 36 and 37 without comment. It has to be among my favorite passages in Scripture because it so wonderfully captures the monergistic nature of God’s working in us as I understand our salvation from sin. The word comes from a Greek compound meaning “one” and “energy.” Applied to our salvation it simply means it is God’s work alone from beginning to end (1 Cor. 1:30, Jesus is our righteousness and our sanctification). It’s contrast is synergism which means combined or together energy, and it indicates salvation is a cooperative work between man and God. It’s hard to argue for synergism when you read these passages. I know most Christians are synergists, but that doesn’t make it true. Deep down all Christians are monergists because they know they didn’t and can’t save themselves. It is obvious that somehow our decision making and will are involved, but the degree to which those determine what ultimately happens is the issue.
These are deep and ultimately mysterious questions, so being too dogmatic gets us into trouble. I Corinthians 8:2 is a good verse to commit to memory when discussing or thinking about these things. None of us can come close to understanding the being or ways of an infinite God. It’s unwise to think we can. How does God’s sovereignty and man’s freedom work so God can decree and cause or allow something to happen (a distinction without a difference because he’s responsible for it either way)? Nobody has the faintest idea. We just know from the plain witness of Scripture both are true. People will often bring up the concept of “free will,” but such a thing doesn’t exist. I was once explaining Calvinist soteriology (the nature of salvation from sin) to someone who didn’t accept it, and she said, what about free will? I responded, there is nothing in the Bible about free will, not a single thing. It’s not a biblical concept. She was taken aback at first, but eventually had to agree with me. As I was thinking about this I decided I would write a separate post about that, so I won’t explain my thinking about it here.
The reason the Calvinist position is so powerful in these passages is because of the images God uses to reveal the nature of salvation through Ezekiel. The context is historical Israel and God’s judgement against their wickedness driving them out of the promised land, then bringing them back and transforming them in the process. It is important to understand in reading the prophetic testimony of Scripture that God is always weaving historical and eschatological realities into the text, and it’s often a challenge deciphering which is which. Much of the time it’s both, as in these passages. To say something only applies to historical Israel or only to those saved from their Sin by the risen Jesus leads to distorting the meaning of the text.
The first image from chapter 36 is one most Christians are familiar with, and the words and phrases God uses speak powerfully to the Isaiah 53 nature of our salvation from sin.
24 “‘For I will take you out of the nations; I will gather you from all the countries and bring you back into your own land. 25 I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols. 26 I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. 27 And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.
The contrast between stone and flesh could not be any greater, one inert, hard, lifeless, the other the center of beating life itself. God replaces the former with the latter, and does not ask our permission to do it. Once it’s done, we choose him, not before. Stone does not choose. A comparable image is death. As Paul says, “the wages of is death” (Rom. 6:23), a la God’s declaration to Adam if he eats of the tree he “will surely die.” Also, prior to Christ, we were “dead in trespasses and sins” (Eph. 2:1), and he “made us alive even when we were dead in transgressions” (Eph. 2:5). Dead people, hearts of stone, don’t make choices to raise themselves, hearts of flesh. Verse 31 confirms the nature of this change:
31 Then you will remember your evil ways and wicked deeds, and you will loathe yourselves for your sins and detestable practices.
It is only the Holy Spirit transforming the heart with the conviction of sin and the need of a Savior that confirms the transformation is real. God changes our affections from self and sin to Him and holiness, thus we loathe because we now know, and accept, how infinitely we fall short of the holiness of God required for a relationship to him. Because Jesus fully absorbed God’s wrath for our sins we are clean from all our impurities (I John 1:9).
The second image from chapter 37 is of a valley of dry, very dry bones God brings back to life. It’s a thrilling passage as you contemplate the almighty power of God, a God who raises the dead, including our dead spiritual selves, a God who does the impossible. As the Lord is leading Ezekiel back and forth in this valley he sees massive numbers of these very dry bones. He asks him a question with a seemingly obvious answer: “Son of man, can these bones live?” Of course not, they’re dead! Ezekiel gives the right answer, “O you Lord God know.”
4 Then he said to me, “Prophesy to these bones and say to them, ‘Dry bones, hear the word of the Lord! 5 This is what the Lord God says to these bones: I will make breath enter you, and you will come to life. 6 I will attach tendons to you and make flesh come upon you and cover you with skin; I will put breath in you, and you will come to life. Then you will know that I am the Lord.’”
Notice the power of our God who can simply decree what to us is an impossible thing, I will, I will, I will, and it happens! Notice also the echo of the you will the same perfectly biblical three times—when God wills, we will! Our Almighty God never tries. We see this same almighty power in Genesis 1 where our Creator God is revealed to us as the one who simply says, and it is.
Then Ezekiel describes how this bringing life out of death happens, watching as the bones make a rattling sound and come together, bone to bone, tendons and flesh magically appearing as skin covers them. He watches as the Lord sends a wind that breathes life into them “that they may live.” That is our God! He makes the dead alive, in his first advent spiritually, and when he returns he will raise all His people physically and bodily at the resurrection of the dead (I Cor. 15).
The Lord tells Ezekiel, “these bones are the people of Israel,” God’s people, us! I reference Matthew 1:21 here all the time because our God is a God who actually saves, not a God who tries to save or makes salvation possible. Jesus is given his name “because he will save his people from their sins.” There it is again, he will! Then to Ezekiel, the Lord says twice the exact same words, a promise to His People, that he will “open your graves and bring you up from them.” His will to raise us physically, bodily, as he raised Jesus from the dead is our forever hope. We can take that to the eternal bank!
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