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Observations from today’s readings and today’s S-WOD, Saturday, 12 September 2026:
Ezekiel 9:3-4 — Now the glory of the God of Israel had gone up from the cherub on which it rested to the threshold of the house. And he called to the man clothed in linen, who had the writing case at his waist. And the LORD said to him, “Pass through the city, through Jerusalem, and put a mark on the foreheads of the men who sigh and groan over all the abominations that are committed in it.”
Ezekiel 9 continues the vision of the idolatry exposed in the previous chapter, but now God begins to act. Six executioners appear with weapons, accompanied by a seventh man clothed in linen carrying a writing case. Before judgment begins, however, God commands that a mark be placed on those who “sigh and groan” over the sin around them. Even when corruption appears to have consumed Jerusalem, God knows exactly who belongs to Him. There is still a faithful remnant hidden within an unfaithful people.
They are not identified by wealth, position, religious office, or outward association with the temple. They are marked because their hearts grieve over what grieves God. They have not become comfortable with the idolatry around them. Their sorrow is more than disgust with other people’s behavior. They understand that sin dishonors the God they love and destroys people made in His image. Their hearts remain aligned with God’s heart even while the surrounding culture moves increasingly away from Him.
That should challenge the way Christians respond to sin in the world. It is possible to condemn evil without grieving over it. We can become angry, sarcastic, politically combative, or even secretly pleased that the sins of others make us appear righteous by comparison. Ezekiel describes something different. God’s people “sigh and groan.” Jesus showed this same heart when He wept over Jerusalem even while pronouncing judgment upon it (Luke 19:41-44). Paul likewise spoke with “great sorrow and unceasing anguish” over fellow Israelites who remained separated from Christ (Romans 9:2-3). Christlike holiness does not make us indifferent to sin, but neither does it make us self-righteous toward sinners. It produces grief because we love God and love people.
The mark also develops a theme that runs throughout Scripture. On the night of the Passover, blood distinguished the homes of God’s people when judgment passed through Egypt (Exodus 12:7, 12-13). Here God marks His faithful remnant before judgment falls upon Jerusalem. Revelation later describes God’s servants sealed on their foreheads and ultimately standing with the Lamb with His name and His Father’s name written there (Revelation 7:3; 14:1). In contrast, those who give their allegiance to the beast bear another mark (Revelation 13:16-17). The imagery repeatedly communicates ownership and allegiance. Ultimately there are two kingdoms, and every person belongs to one or the other.
For the Christian, our security does not come from literally possessing a visible mark. We belong to God because we belong to Christ. Having heard and believed the Gospel, believers are “sealed with the promised Holy Spirit,” who is the guarantee of our inheritance (Ephesians 1:13-14). Jesus knows His sheep, gives them eternal life, and promises that no one will snatch them from His hand (John 10:27-29). The Gospel therefore gives us far greater assurance than merely escaping an earthly catastrophe. Christ has taken upon Himself the judgment our sin deserves so that those united with Him are marked out as God’s own, not because we were more righteous than everyone around us, but because His righteousness has become ours through faith.
That identity inevitably becomes visible in the way we live. Many Christians imagine some future moment when they may have to make an unmistakable choice between Christ and the world. Scripture reminds us that this choice is already being expressed every day. We reveal our allegiance when following Christ costs money, advancement, popularity, relationships, comfort, or approval. Jesus said, “Whoever is not with me is against me” (Matthew 12:30). We cannot represent Christ faithfully while continually adjusting our convictions to remain comfortable with a world that rejects His rule. As ambassadors for Christ, our first allegiance is never to a nation, employer, political party, social group, or institution, but to the King whose name we bear (2 Corinthians 5:20).
Ezekiel 9:5-6 — And to the others he said in my hearing, “Pass through the city after him, and strike. Your eye shall not spare, and you shall show no pity. Kill old men outright, young men and maidens, little children and women, but touch no one on whom is the mark. And begin at my sanctuary.” So they began with the elders who were before the house.
The severity of this judgment is difficult to read, and it is intended to be. Ezekiel is seeing in prophetic vision the coming destruction of Jerusalem after generations of covenant rebellion and repeated warnings. The passage does not authorize God’s people to imitate this violence. Judgment belongs to God, who alone knows every heart and judges with perfect knowledge and righteousness. The Babylonian destruction that Ezekiel has repeatedly warned about will become the historical instrument through which this judgment falls.
The most sobering words may be “begin at my sanctuary.” The people apparently assumed that proximity to the temple provided protection. Instead, judgment begins there because that is where rebellion against God had become particularly offensive. Ezekiel had just seen elders practicing hidden idolatry and men turning their backs on God’s temple to worship the sun. Religious privilege did not shelter them from accountability; it increased their responsibility.
Peter later draws directly on this principle when he writes that “it is time for judgment to begin at the household of God” (1 Peter 4:17). God takes holiness among His people seriously because His people bear His name. That should make the Church very cautious about becoming preoccupied with condemning the sins outside while tolerating pride, sexual immorality, greed, dishonesty, bitterness, division, abuse, or idolatry within. Jesus taught us to remove the log from our own eye before concentrating on the speck in another person’s (Matthew 7:3-5). Before asking what is wrong with the world, God’s people should continually ask what Christ desires to purify in us.
Yet even here the mark reminds us that God does not lose His people in the confusion. His preservation does not mean believers will never suffer when societies experience the consequences of widespread sin. Jeremiah belonged to God and still endured the siege and destruction of Jerusalem. Christians experience wars, persecution, economic hardship, disease, and death along with everyone else. The promise is deeper than exemption from suffering. Nothing can finally separate those who are in Christ from the love of God (Romans 8:35-39). We may lose possessions, freedom, health, reputation, or even earthly life, but our life is hidden with Christ in God (Colossians 3:3). God’s people are ultimately secure because Christ is secure.
Ezekiel 9:8 — And while they were striking, and I was left alone, I fell upon my face and cried, “Ah, Lord GOD! Will you destroy all the remnant of Israel in the outpouring of your wrath on Jerusalem?”
Ezekiel’s response reveals the heart of a faithful servant. He has spent chapter after chapter announcing judgment, yet when he sees it unfolding, he does not celebrate. He falls on his face and pleads for his people. He understands that God’s judgment is righteous while still grieving for those facing it.
That combination is essential for Christlike engagement with a sinful world. We should never become so eager for God to judge evil that we stop longing for sinners to be saved. Jesus did not minimize sin or deny judgment, yet He came “to seek and to save the lost” (Luke 19:10). Even from the cross He prayed for those crucifying Him (Luke 23:34). Stephen followed His example while being stoned, asking God not to hold the sin against his killers (Acts 7:60). The closer we grow to Christ, the more seriously we will take both holiness and mercy.
This guards us from confusing courage with hostility. Christians must sometimes oppose evil, speak unpopular truth, refuse compromise, and accept the consequences of standing with Christ. John the Baptist confronted Herod’s sin even though it eventually cost him his life (Mark 6:17-29). But Christian opposition to sin should still be driven by love for God and concern for the sinner. We do not stand against people as though they are the enemy we hope God destroys. We proclaim reconciliation because “God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself” and has entrusted to us the message of reconciliation (2 Corinthians 5:19). We stand firmly against what destroys people while pleading with those same people to come to Christ and live.
Ezekiel 9:9-10 — Then he said to me, “The guilt of the house of Israel and Judah is exceedingly great. The land is full of blood, and the city full of injustice. For they say, ‘The LORD has forsaken the land, and the LORD does not see.’ As for me, my eye will not spare, nor will I have pity; I will bring their deeds upon their heads.”
God answers Ezekiel by returning to the seriousness of the people’s sin. The land is filled with blood and the city with injustice. The idolatry of chapter 8 has produced the moral corruption of chapter 9. When people reject God’s authority, they eventually distort the way they treat one another because love for God and love for neighbor cannot finally be separated (Matthew 22:37-40).
Their excuse is the same lie exposed in the previous chapter: “The LORD has forsaken the land, and the LORD does not see.” If God is absent and does not see, people can define good and evil for themselves. Once that belief takes root, power increasingly replaces righteousness. People begin asking not, “What is right before God?” but “What can I get away with?” Yet the God they believed was absent had seen everything.
That warning reaches into our private lives as much as into societies. Every secret sin depends in some measure upon acting as though God does not see or as though His presence does not matter. The Gospel does not simply frighten us into behaving because God is watching. It brings us into a new relationship in which we increasingly want to live before His face. United with Christ, we no longer need hidden rooms where we protect our sin from Him. We can bring sin into the light, confess it, receive forgiveness, and walk in fellowship with Him (1 John 1:7-9).
God says He will bring “their deeds upon their heads.” Sin is not merely the breaking of arbitrary rules; it is choosing a path that ultimately leads away from the God who is life. The Gospel announces that Jesus entered that judgment for us. At the cross, our deeds did not fall upon our heads but upon His. “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree” so that we might die to sin and live to righteousness (1 Peter 2:24). Grace therefore does not make sin less serious. It shows us how serious sin is and how astonishing God’s mercy is.
Ezekiel 9:11 — And behold, the man clothed in linen, with the writing case at his waist, brought back word, saying, “I have done as you commanded me.”
The chapter ends quietly after all the violence: “I have done as you commanded me.” The man sent to mark God’s people has completed his assignment. Not one whom God intended to mark has been overlooked. The scene gives Ezekiel assurance that even in judgment God knows and preserves His own.
We should be cautious about identifying the man clothed in linen directly as Christ; the text does not explicitly do so. But his completed mission points us naturally toward the One who perfectly accomplishes everything the Father gives Him to do. Near the end of His earthly ministry Jesus prayed, “I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do” (John 17:4). At the cross He declared, “It is finished” (John 19:30). And concerning those entrusted to Him, Jesus says that He loses none of those the Father has given Him (John 6:39).
That is the deepest security behind Ezekiel’s vision. Christians are not saved because we managed to distinguish ourselves sufficiently from a corrupt world. We are saved because Christ has claimed us as His own, paid for our sins with His blood, united us to Himself, and sealed us with His Spirit. Yet belonging to Him changes us. His people increasingly grieve what He grieves, love what He loves, reject what competes with Him, and willingly bear His name before the world.
Ezekiel 9 therefore forces a question of allegiance. There is no permanent neutral ground between God’s kingdom and the kingdoms organized in rebellion against Him. Revelation takes Ezekiel’s imagery forward until humanity is pictured as bearing either the name of God and the Lamb or the mark of the beast. But that final distinction is anticipated in countless smaller choices now. Whose approval governs me when obedience becomes costly? Where am I tempted to compromise because I want money, security, acceptance, influence, friendship, or comfort? Does the sin around me produce Christlike grief and loving action, or merely anger and self-righteousness? Am I more eager to defeat people who oppose God or to see them reconciled to Him? Does my life clearly identify me as belonging first and finally to Jesus Christ?
“Cross” Fit S-WOD (Spiritual Workout of the Day) — 12 September 2026: Identify one situation today in which following Christ costs you something—approval, comfort, money, convenience, opportunity, or avoiding conflict—and make one specific choice that clearly reflects your allegiance to Jesus rather than protecting what you might lose.
Pray: “Father, You know those who are Yours, and You see every compromise of my heart. Thank You that my security rests in Jesus, who bore my judgment, accomplished the work You gave Him, and sealed me with His Spirit. Forgive me when comfort, approval, security, or worldly allegiance competes with my loyalty to Christ. Give me His heart to grieve over sin without becoming self-righteous toward sinners. Make me courageous in truth, compassionate toward the lost, faithful in obedience, and unmistakably Yours. Amen.”
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