Emphasis Preaching Journal

It is easy to have an intellectual discussion about the justice of God, and completely avoid the issue of personal responsibility! Ezekiel simply will not let his people make this mistake. They have argued that they are simply prisoners of the past, and cannot be responsible for their own actions in the present.

We are accustomed to thinking it is God who is our judge. It is he who offers the final verdict on our lives. But Ezekiel and later John suggest it is we ourselves who are the judges. The judgment is contained within our saying yes or no to Christ. Suddenly the responsibility is thrust back on us. The demonic implication which has crept into our lives with the advent of modern psychology is we are always the products of our environment and we do not bear the responsibility for our actions. A teenager plagued with a record of behavior destructive to her life, glibly excused her actions on the basis of her background. "My parents did not discipline me as they should have when I was a child."

Her counselor had to force the girl to take up responsibility for her own life. As long as she could pass that responsibility off onto her parents, she could never make the decisions which would redirect her life along more constructive paths. The writers of the Bible force us to take responsibility for our own lives by their insistence that we are our own judges.