https://literalword.com/esv?q=Ezekiel+22
Observations from today’s readings and today’s S-WOD, Friday, 25 September 2026:
Ezekiel 22:2-4 – “…the bloody city?…declare to her all her abominations…. You have become guilty….”
Jerusalem is called “the bloody city.” God does not allow His people to hide behind their identity as His chosen nation, their history, their temple, or their religious practices. He tells Ezekiel to expose what the city has actually become. Bloodshed and idolatry stand together at the beginning of the indictment because both reveal a people who have rejected God’s rule. Idolatry turns the heart away from God, and once we stop seeing God as Lord, we eventually stop seeing people as those made in His image. False worship never remains merely a private spiritual problem; what rules the heart eventually shapes how we treat others.
This is why God’s judgment is not an overreaction to human weakness. Jerusalem had become guilty by what she had repeatedly chosen to do. Yet the Gospel forces us to begin in a different place than simply condemning the sins around us. Romans 3:23 tells us that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” The same sinful heart that corrupted Jerusalem lives naturally in us. We may not shed blood or bow before carved idols, but whenever something becomes more important to us than God, or we use people to get what we want rather than loving them as Christ loves us, the same rebellion is at work. Repentance becomes real when we stop speaking primarily about the sins around us and allow God’s Word to confront the sin within us.
Ezekiel 22:6-12 – “…every one according to his power…. Father and mother are treated with contempt…. but me you have forgotten….”
God now moves from the general charge to specific evidence. The list is devastating because corruption has spread through virtually every part of life. Leaders use their power to harm rather than protect. Parents are dishonored. Foreigners are exploited. Widows and orphans are mistreated. God’s holy things are despised. Sexual boundaries are ignored. Money is gained through bribery, interest, profit, and extortion at the expense of others. But an important phrase comes at the beginning: “every one according to his power.” People sinned according to the power and opportunity available to them. Those with greater power could do greater harm, but the problem beneath their actions was the same sinful heart shared by everyone.
That should make us very careful when judging the sins of others. It is easy to look at someone who has abused power, wealth, influence, or opportunity and imagine that we would never do what they have done. We should condemn what is evil and protect those who are harmed, but we should not confuse being without the opportunity to commit a particular sin with being incapable of it. Those who are victimized in one circumstance are not necessarily immune from becoming victimizers if the roles are reversed. Given the same power, temptation, fear, resentment, opportunity, or lack of accountability, what might our own hearts do? “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). Jesus therefore warns us to deal with the log in our own eye before presuming to remove the speck from another’s (Matthew 7:3-5).
Jesus exposed this same self-deception in the Pharisees. They honored the tombs of the prophets and insisted that if they had lived in their fathers’ days, they would never have joined in killing them. Yet when God sent His Son and later His messengers, they revealed the same heart by rejecting and persecuting them (Matthew 23:29-36). Their mistake was assuming that they were morally superior to people whose circumstances they had never faced. We can do the same whenever we look backward at the sins of previous generations or outward at the failures of other people and confidently say, “I would never do that.” Apart from the restraining grace and providence of God, we know far less about what we might do than we think. Humility recognizes that whatever faithfulness is present in us is itself evidence of God’s grace.
The sins in this passage are therefore not disconnected. God gives the underlying diagnosis at the end: “but me you have forgotten.” Forgetting God does not mean they had intellectually forgotten that God existed. They still had priests, prophets, religious practices, and the temple. They had forgotten God in the way they lived. He no longer governed their relationships, sexuality, money, leadership, or treatment of the vulnerable. The answer is not merely to give sinful people less opportunity to sin, though wise restraints matter. We need hearts brought back under the rule of God. The Gospel humbles us because we come to Christ not as morally superior people who avoided the sins of others, but as sinners saved entirely by grace. And as we abide in Christ, His Spirit changes how we use whatever power, influence, money, opportunity, and responsibility God entrusts to us. The question is not simply, What would I do if I had their power? It is also, What am I doing with the power God has already given me?
Ezekiel 22:17-22 – “…the house of Israel has become dross to me…. I will…melt you….”
God compares Israel to metal that has become dross. The image is especially striking because silver is valuable, but dross is what remains when the valuable metal is corrupted by impurities. God had chosen Israel to display His holiness among the nations, but instead His people had become so thoroughly corrupted that Jerusalem would become a furnace of judgment.
The image forces us to ask what God values compared with what we value. We can polish the outside of our lives while allowing impurities to remain within: pride beneath achievement, greed beneath ambition, lust beneath secrecy, bitterness beneath politeness, self-righteousness beneath religion. God is not satisfied merely with appearances because His purpose is to make His people holy. Hebrews 12:10 says that He disciplines His children “that we may share his holiness.” His goal is not simply to make our circumstances comfortable but to make us increasingly like Christ.
– Matthew 23:25-28 — “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. You blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and the plate, that the outside also may be clean. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people’s bones and all uncleanness. So you also outwardly appear righteous to others, but within you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.”
There is also an important difference between Israel’s furnace here and the believer’s relationship with God through Christ. Jesus has already borne the condemnation our sin deserves. “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1). God’s refining work in His children is therefore not punishment intended to satisfy His wrath; Christ has satisfied that for us. It is the loving work of a Father who refuses to leave His children enslaved to what Christ died to free them from. Union with Christ means we can allow God to expose and remove what does not resemble Jesus rather than protecting it, excusing it, or hiding it.
Ezekiel 22:23-29 – “…Her priests have done violence to my law…. Her princes…are like wolves…. The people…have practiced extortion….”
The corruption reaches every level of society. Prophets, priests, princes, and people have all failed in different ways. The prophets claim to speak for God when God has not spoken. The priests no longer teach people to distinguish between what is holy and what is common. The princes use authority for personal gain. The people imitate their leaders through oppression, robbery, and injustice. What began as individual rebellion has become a culture in which nearly everyone participates.
The failure of the priests is particularly serious because they were supposed to help people know God and understand His Word. Instead, God says, “I am profaned among them.” Spiritual leadership can never be separated from the character of God we represent. Those who teach God’s Word must not soften what God has said merely to make people comfortable, nor add to His Word in order to advance their own desires. Jesus repeatedly confronted religious leaders who burdened others while failing to live faithfully themselves (Matthew 23:1-36). James therefore warns that teachers “will be judged with greater strictness” (James 3:1).
But Ezekiel does not allow the people to blame everything on their leaders. The prophets lied, the priests compromised, and the princes exploited, but “the people of the land” also practiced injustice. Bad leadership influences people, but it does not remove personal responsibility. Ezekiel 18 has already made that clear. Each of us stands before God for how we respond to His Word. We cannot excuse disobedience by pointing to our culture, our leaders, our parents, our church, or the failures of other Christians. Christ calls us to follow Him.
Jesus is everything these leaders were not. He is the true Prophet who speaks only what He receives from the Father (John 8:28), our great High Priest who brings us into God’s presence (Hebrews 4:14-16), and the King who lays down His life for His people rather than consuming them for His own gain (John 10:11). Where every human category in Ezekiel 22 fails, Christ does not. Our hope ultimately cannot rest in finding perfect human leaders. It rests in belonging to the perfect Prophet, Priest, and King and then allowing His life to shape how we lead and serve others.
Ezekiel 22:30-31 – “…stand in the breach before me for the land…but I found none.”
The chapter reaches its heartbreaking conclusion. God looked for someone who would “build up the wall and stand in the breach” before Him for the land, but He found no one. The picture is of a broken defensive wall with someone willing to step into the opening. God was looking for someone who would resist the corruption, intercede for the people, and faithfully stand before Him when nearly everyone else had surrendered to sin.
This should make us examine the places God has already put us. It is easy to complain about what is wrong with our families, churches, workplaces, communities, and culture. Ezekiel 22 asks a much more personal question: Will I stand faithfully where God has placed me? Standing in the breach does not mean becoming self-righteous, angry, or convinced that we are the righteous person surrounded by everyone else’s sin. Ezekiel’s message begins by exposing sin and ends by revealing that no adequate person could be found. We need someone greater.
And here the chapter points us toward Christ. Where God found no one able to stand in the breach for Jerusalem, He ultimately provided His own Son to stand between holy judgment and guilty sinners. Jesus did far more than warn us about judgment or intercede from a safe distance. He took our place beneath it. “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin” so that in Him we might receive the righteousness we could never produce ourselves (2 Corinthians 5:21). The cross reveals both the seriousness of our condition and the greatness of God’s love: the One we sinned against provided the One who would save us.
Now, united with Christ and filled with His Spirit, we are called to become the kind of people Ezekiel could not find in Jerusalem — people who remain faithful when compromise becomes normal, speak truth without pretending to be better than others, intercede rather than merely criticize, protect the vulnerable rather than use them, and accept personal cost rather than simply protecting ourselves. We do not stand in the breach as saviors; Jesus alone saves. We stand there because we belong to the Savior.
Where have I allowed something other than Christ to govern the way I handle money, sexuality, relationships, power, or ambition? Where have I become more skilled at recognizing corruption around me than recognizing sin within me? Is there anything God has repeatedly exposed that I continue to excuse, protect, or hide? Where has God placed me where faithfulness may require me to stand against what everyone else has accepted as normal? When I see sin and brokenness around me, am I primarily criticizing people, or am I praying for them, loving them, speaking truth, and being willing to enter the breach myself?
“Cross” Fit S-WOD (Spiritual Workout of the Day) – 25 September 2026: Identify one “breach” God has placed directly in front of you—a relationship, responsibility, injustice, compromise, or spiritual need where you have been tempted merely to criticize, ignore, or leave the problem to someone else. Pray specifically for that situation and take one concrete action today to bring the truth, love, protection, reconciliation, or faithful leadership of Christ into it.
Pray: “Father, You are holy and righteous, and nothing in my heart is hidden from You. Forgive me for the ways I forget You while still claiming to follow You. Expose the pride, selfishness, compromise, and hidden sin that do not resemble Jesus. Thank You that when no one could stand in the breach for sinners, You gave Your Son, who bore the judgment I deserved and brought me near to You. Keep me abiding in Christ and make His character visible in me. By Your Spirit, give me courage to stand faithfully wherever You have placed me—not condemning others from a distance, but speaking truth, loving people, protecting the vulnerable, praying for those around me, and obeying You whatever it costs. Amen.”
