https://literalword.com/esv?q=Ezekiel+28
Observations from today’s readings and today’s S-WOD, Thursday, 1 October 2026:
Ezekiel 28:1-5 – “Because your heart is proud, and you have said, ‘I am a god….”
Chapter 27 showed us the magnificent city of Tyre; chapter 28 takes us inside the heart of the man who ruled it. The problem is not that the prince of Tyre possessed wisdom, influence, or wealth. God acknowledges that his wisdom and understanding had helped him accumulate great wealth. The problem is what success did to his heart: he began to think of himself as more than a man. Tyre’s position “in the heart of the seas,” its international influence, and its extraordinary prosperity had created the illusion that its ruler stood above the normal limitations of human life.
This is where pride ultimately takes us. Few people literally say, “I am a god,” but the heart can live that way whenever we begin acting as though our lives belong to us and we are qualified to rule them independently of God. We decide what is good, determine what matters, take credit for what we have accomplished, and expect life to operate according to our plans. That is the ancient temptation of Genesis 3:5 — “you will be like God.” Sin is not merely breaking God’s rules; beneath our individual sins is the desire to occupy a place that belongs to God alone, to de-throne God – “cosmic treason.”
Success makes this particularly dangerous because genuine ability can hide spiritual dependence. The prince really was wise. His economic success was real. But gifts received from God had become evidence, in his mind, that he no longer needed God. Moses warned Israel of exactly this progression: prosperity can lead a person to say, “My power and the might of my hand have gotten me this wealth,” forgetting that God is the One who gives the power to obtain it (Deuteronomy 8:17-18). The more capable we become, the easier it can be to live as though everything depends upon us.
The answer, however, is not to become less capable, less ambitious, or less responsible. God created humanity to exercise dominion under His dominion — to cultivate what He has entrusted to us while remaining dependent upon Him (Genesis 1:26-28). Scripture repeatedly holds these truths together. Joseph became an extraordinarily capable administrator while recognizing that his wisdom came from God (Genesis 41:16, 38-40). Daniel developed exceptional knowledge and skill while openly acknowledging that God gives wisdom and power (Daniel 1:17; 2:20-23). Paul could say, “I worked harder than any of them,” and immediately add, “though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me” (1 Corinthians 15:10). Grace does not make effort unnecessary; it puts effort in its proper place. As Dallas Willard famously expressed it, “Grace is not opposed to effort, it is opposed to earning.” We do not work to make ourselves worthy of God’s favor or less dependent upon Him. We work diligently because we have already received His favor in Christ and because He has given us abilities, opportunities, responsibilities, and work to do.
This means dependence upon God can never become an excuse for passivity. Paul tells believers to “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling,” precisely because “it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure” (Philippians 2:12-13). God’s work in us does not replace our effort; it enables and directs it. Jesus describes the same relationship when He says, “apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:5). The branch still bears fruit, but it bears fruit only because its life continually comes from the vine. Christian maturity therefore looks neither like self-sufficient striving nor passive waiting. We pray understanding we desperately need God, work with everything He has given us, and then entrust the results to Him.
Contentment must be understood the same way. Biblical contentment is not complacency. Paul could say, “I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content,” while also pressing forward toward what God had called him to pursue (Philippians 4:11; 3:13-14). Contentment says, I gratefully receive what God has given me today. Faithful ambition says, I will fully develop and use what God has given me for whatever He wants tomorrow. We can pursue excellence without demanding a particular outcome, work for advancement without needing advancement for our identity, develop our abilities without taking credit for their source, and accept closed doors without becoming passive. We have dominion, but always under His dominion.
The danger is that neither pride nor irresponsibility usually announces itself suddenly. Pride can grow almost imperceptibly as competence increases: God helps us succeed, success builds confidence, confidence gradually becomes self-confidence, and eventually prayer and dependence begin to feel less necessary. The opposite can happen just as quietly. Dependence can become an excuse for inadequate preparation, contentment can become an excuse for avoiding difficult growth, and “trusting God” can become spiritual language for failing to exercise the abilities and responsibilities He has given us. Scripture protects us from both errors. “Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord” (Colossians 3:23), while remembering that even our ability to work is received from Him.
That is why humility must be cultivated most deliberately when things are going well. Failure naturally reminds us of our limitations; success can conceal them. Throughout Scripture, people often handled adversity better than prosperity. David depended desperately upon God while fleeing Saul, yet later used his royal power disastrously with Bathsheba. Solomon began by confessing his inadequacy and asking God for wisdom, but extraordinary wisdom, wealth, influence, and success eventually accompanied serious compromise. Uzziah was “marvelously helped, till he was strong,” but “when he was strong, he grew proud, to his destruction” (2 Chronicles 26:15-16). The warning is especially important because the transition from God-enabled strength to self-sufficient pride can be so gradual that we scarcely notice it happening.
The safeguard, then, is not shrinking from excellence but continually returning everything to its Source. Grow your abilities. Prepare thoroughly. Work hard. Accept responsibility. Pursue excellence. Take appropriate initiative. But remain quick to pray, quick to receive correction, quick to give God credit, willing to obey when His direction conflicts with your plans, and willing to accept an outcome different from the one your effort was intended to produce. Perhaps one of the best tests of whether excellence has become pride is what happens when God does not allow our competence to produce the result we expected. Can we work wholeheartedly and still say, “Your will be done”? Can we succeed without believing we are the source of our success, and fail without believing our identity has collapsed? That is dominion under His dominion, developing everything God has entrusted to us while increasingly recognizing that “from him and through him and to him are all things” (Romans 11:36).
Jesus shows us the exact opposite. Though truly God, He did not grasp at His divine status for His own advantage but humbled Himself, took the form of a servant, and became obedient even to death on a cross (Philippians 2:5-8). The prince of Tyre was a man trying to make himself god; Jesus is God who humbled Himself and became man to save us. Union with Christ therefore moves us away from self-exaltation toward His humility. The question is not simply, Am I proud? It is, Where am I living as though I am the final authority over my life? Where has success made me less dependent upon God rather than more grateful to Him?
Ezekiel 28:6-10 – “Will you still say, ‘I am a god,’ in the presence of those who kill you, though you are but a man, and no god, in the hands of those who slay you?”
God confronts the prince with reality. His wealth could make him feel untouchable, but it could not change what he was: a mortal man. God says foreigners would come against him, his splendor would be stripped away, and he would die like other men. Then comes the piercing question: when those killing him stand before him, will he still say, “I am a god”? Death would expose the illusion that prosperity had allowed him to maintain.
Death does that to every human claim to self-sufficiency. Money can change how we live, but it cannot keep us alive forever. Power can make other people obey us, but it cannot command death to leave us alone. Intelligence can solve extraordinary problems, but it cannot erase our accountability before God. Jesus tells of the rich fool who accumulated enough wealth to assure himself of many comfortable years, only to hear God say that his life would be required that very night (Luke 12:16-21). The man’s mistake was not planning or possessing wealth. He had built his security around a future he had no power to guarantee.
The Gospel begins by bringing us back to reality. We are creatures, sinners, dependent upon God for every breath, unable to save ourselves. But admitting that we are not God is not humiliation without hope; it opens the door to trusting the God who loves us. We do not have to control everything because our Father does. We do not have to know everything because He does. We do not have to secure our own eternity because Christ has already accomplished our salvation. Humility is not thinking that we are worthless; it is finally seeing ourselves rightly before God and gladly allowing Him to be God.
Ezekiel 28:11-17 — Your heart was proud because of your beauty….
Ezekiel’s language now becomes extraordinary. The king of Tyre is described with images of Eden, precious stones, the holy mountain of God, and an anointed guardian cherub. He was created, magnificently endowed, and then fell when unrighteousness was found in him. Christians have long debated whether Ezekiel is speaking only poetically about the human king of Tyre or whether the description intentionally reaches behind that king to the fall of Satan. The immediate subject is clearly “the king of Tyre,” and the chapter itself connects his downfall to pride, beauty, wisdom, wealth, and corrupt trade. Yet the Eden and guardian-cherub imagery is so striking that many Christians have also seen here a pattern reflecting the larger spiritual rebellion against God. We should not force the passage to answer questions it does not explicitly answer, but its central truth is unmistakable: extraordinary privilege becomes spiritually deadly when the recipient begins worshiping himself rather than the God who gave it.
Notice the progression: beauty leads to pride, and pride corrupts wisdom. That is important. Pride does not merely make us unpleasant; it changes the way we see reality. The king’s wisdom had helped make him successful, but eventually his success corrupted the very wisdom that produced it. Once the heart becomes committed to its own greatness, intelligence often stops serving truth and begins serving self. We become skilled at explaining why we are right, defending what we want, minimizing our sin, and interpreting circumstances in ways that protect the image we have created of ourselves.
This reaches back to Eden. Adam and Eve already possessed extraordinary gifts from God, yet the serpent convinced them to reach for something more—to become “like God” on their own terms (Genesis 3:1-6). Pride says that what God has given is not enough because we want His place as well as His gifts. The same pattern continues whenever we take beauty, intelligence, position, ministry, wealth, influence, reputation, or accomplishment and turn it into a reason to exalt ourselves.
Jesus reverses Eden’s rebellion. Where Adam grasped, Christ surrendered. Where humanity seeks exaltation through independence from God, Jesus lived in perfect dependence upon His Father. He said, “I seek not my own will but the will of him who sent me” (John 5:30). And through His obedience, death, and resurrection, He does more than forgive proud people; He gives us a new life in which His own humble character is increasingly formed in us (Romans 8:29).
That means spiritual maturity should make us increasingly amazed by grace rather than increasingly impressed with ourselves. The more clearly we see God, the harder it becomes to take ultimate credit for anything good in us. Our abilities are gifts. Our opportunities are providence. Our salvation is grace. Even the fruit growing in our lives comes from abiding in Christ (John 15:5). Has anything God has given me—success, knowledge, appearance, position, possessions, even spiritual maturity—quietly become a reason for me to think more highly of myself?
Ezekiel 28:18-19 — … in the unrighteousness of your trade….
The same commerce that produced Tyre’s greatness had become corrupted by unrighteousness. This connects chapter 28 directly with the massive trading network described in chapter 27. Wealth itself was not condemned, nor was wisdom in business. The problem was that prosperity had become joined to pride, violence, and unrighteousness. What looked magnificent from the outside had become corrupt within. The fire that destroyed Tyre’s greatness is even pictured as coming “from your midst.”
Sin often works this way. We naturally look outside ourselves for what threatens us, while Scripture repeatedly directs us inward. Jesus says that evil proceeds “from within, out of the heart of man” (Mark 7:21). James explains that sinful desire conceives and eventually brings forth death (James 1:14-15). Tyre’s greatest danger was not ultimately the foreign army approaching from outside but the pride and unrighteousness already growing inside.
That should change the way we examine our own lives. We can spend enormous energy protecting ourselves from external threats while ignoring what is happening in our hearts. We can blame circumstances, culture, other people, temptation, pressure, or opposition while allowing pride, greed, resentment, lust, envy, or self-reliance to grow within us. The Gospel calls us to something deeper than managing appearances. Christ came to cleanse us from the inside and give us new hearts. As we abide in Him and walk by His Spirit, He exposes what is hidden and increasingly replaces our character with His own.
Ezekiel 28:20-24 — I will manifest my glory in your midst….
God then turns from Tyre to Sidon. Again the repeated purpose of judgment appears: “they shall know that I am the LORD.” God will manifest both His glory and His holiness. The nations may ignore Him, reject Him, or organize their societies as though He does not exist, but they cannot make Him cease to be God. His holiness means that evil will not ultimately be allowed to stand forever.
That is both frightening and comforting. It is frightening because none of us can stand before God’s holiness on the basis of our own righteousness. But it is deeply comforting because evil does not have the final word. God sees every injustice that escapes human courts, every act of cruelty hidden from public view, and every wrong His people suffer. We do not need to become consumed with vengeance because judgment belongs to God (Romans 12:19).
At the cross, God’s holiness and mercy meet in the most astonishing way. God does not simply overlook sin; Christ bears judgment for sinners. The same Gospel that tells us God takes evil seriously enough to judge it tells us He loves sinners enough to bear that judgment Himself. “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin” so that in Christ we might receive His righteousness (2 Corinthians 5:21). Knowing God’s holiness should therefore produce neither casualness about sin nor self-righteousness toward sinners, but gratitude, repentance, worship, and mercy.
Ezekiel 28:25-26 — Then they will know that I am the LORD their God.
The chapter ends with a remarkable change of direction. After all the pride, corruption, judgment, and destruction, God speaks about gathering His scattered people. Israel had sinned terribly and was experiencing God’s discipline, yet God had not abandoned His covenant purposes. He promises to gather them, manifest His holiness through them, return them to the land, and give them security. The nations will know that He is the LORD, but Israel will know something even more personal: “the LORD their God.”
That contrast may be the deepest message of the chapter. The prince of Tyre tried to become god. Israel’s hope is that the true God chooses to become “their God.” One is humanity reaching upward in pride; the other is God reaching down in grace.
The Gospel takes that promise even further. We do not become secure by becoming powerful enough to control life. God comes to us in Christ and brings us into relationship with Himself. Jesus describes eternal life as knowing “the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent” (John 17:3). Through Christ we are reconciled to God, adopted by the Father, indwelt by His Spirit, and brought into a relationship no earthly success could ever produce.
Ezekiel 28 therefore presents two completely different ways to live. One says, I will build enough, know enough, possess enough, accomplish enough, and control enough that I can become master of my own life. The other says, You are my God. Everything I have comes from You. Everything I am belongs to You. My wisdom is limited, my life is temporary, and my security is found in Christ. Pride continually pulls us toward the first; the Gospel continually brings us back to the second.
Perhaps the most revealing question is not whether we would ever say, “I am a god,” but whether we are actually living as though God is our God. Do I seek His will before my own? Do I depend upon Him when I am capable as well as when I am desperate? Does success make me more grateful or more self-sufficient? Can He interrupt my plans without my acting as though something has gone terribly wrong? Am I using the gifts He has given me for His glory, or have His gifts gradually become the foundation of my identity? The answer to pride is not learning to think poorly of ourselves. It is seeing God so clearly, knowing Christ so deeply, and living so completely from His grace that we no longer need to occupy the center.
“Cross” Fit S-WOD (Spiritual Workout of the Day) – 1 October 2026: Identify one area today in which your competence, success, resources, or position has allowed you to operate largely without conscious dependence upon God. Before doing anything further in that area, spend ten uninterrupted minutes acknowledging specifically what God has provided, surrendering the outcome to Him, and asking His Spirit to show you how to use what He has entrusted to you for His glory rather than your own.
Pray: “Father, You alone are God, and everything I have comes from You. Forgive me for taking Your gifts and using them to build confidence in myself. Expose the pride that I cannot see and the places where I live as though my wisdom and strength are enough. Thank You that Jesus humbled Himself to save me and has brought me into relationship with You. Teach me to abide in Christ, depend upon Your Spirit, receive every gift with gratitude, and use everything You entrust to me for Your glory. You are my God; make that truth increasingly visible in the way I live. Amen.”
