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The gospel in Ezekiel

Today I stumbled across a passage of Scripture that made me curious. It relates to the Gospel of Christ. As most of you know, the Hebrew word basar means “gospel, good news, good tidings.” This is how it is translated in Isaiah 61:1, which says, “The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news [basar] to the afflicted.”

Jesus quoted this verse in Luke 4:18, where the Greek word is translated “gospel.” Jesus applied the passage to Himself at the start of His earthly ministry. The “gospel” is the “good news.”

We also note that basar has a double meaning, because it is also translated “flesh” most of the time. See, for example, Genesis 2:21 and 23. I have pointed out in the past that this is why Jesus said in John 6:56 that we are to eat His flesh. This is not to be taken literally, of course. He meant that we were to believe and assimilate the Gospel, which is His flesh.

Today I ran across Ezekiel 11:19, 20, which is a promise of God given to Israel after the Assyrians had brought the Israelites into exile near the Caspian Sea. The passage reads,

¹⁹ And I will give them one heart and put a new spirit within them. And I will take the heart of stone out of their flesh [basar] and give them a heart of flesh [basar], ²⁰ that they may walk in My statutes and keep My ordinances and do them. Then they will be My people, and I shall be their God.

Essentially, this is God’s promise to bring them the gospel, to give them Christ’s “flesh,” by which the Holy Spirit could be given to them. Their “heart of stone” would be removed and replaced by a “heart of flesh.” In other words, their hardened hearts would become pliable through the gospel of Christ.

The purpose of this is so that “they will be My people, and I shall be their God.” The divine intent could not be achieved through the Old Covenant (Exodus 19:8), for this covenant depended upon the will of man and his ability to keep his vow. But the second covenant forty years later was based on the will of God alone, saying in Deuteronomy 29:12, 13,

¹² that you may enter into the covenant with the Lord your God, and into His oath which the Lord your God is making with you today, ¹³ in order that He may establish you today as His people and that He may be your God, just as He spoke to you and as He swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

The oath which God swore to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, was a New Covenant oath or promise, based fully upon His ability to make them His people and to be their God. All of God’s promises are based on the New Covenant.

So when God cast out the Israelites from the land and hired the Assyrians to bring them into exile, it was because they had failed to fulfill their Old Covenant vow in Exodus 19:8. For this reason, they needed a reminder that God had also instituted the New Covenant which was based on “His oath” and His ability to fulfill it by the counsel of His own will.

In Ezekiel 11:19, 20, the prophet reminded them of this New Covenant, described here in terms of the Holy Spirit and a change of heart. In other words, God's oath will indeed be fulfilled, and the heart of the people will indeed be changed at some point in time. How? By means of the gospel (basar). The people will indeed eat Christ’s flesh, believing the gospel, the good news that Jesus Christ came to preach to the afflicted.

At the present time, only a remnant has fulfilled the promises of God (Romans 11:1-7), because the purpose of the present age is to call the few to bless the many. After the great White Throne judgment, the rest of humanity will be raised. Every knee will then bow, and every tongue will then confess (exomologeo, “profess”) Christ (Philippians 2:9-11). They will begin to eat His flesh, and the gospel will then transform their hearts until all creation is “set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God” (Romans 8:21).

I have covered these topics many times in the past, so I will not elaborate further on this here. The point is that Ezekiel 11:19, 20 gives us another piece of the puzzle. It shows the effect of the gospel in transforming hardened hearts (of stone) to hearts that reflect the gospel of Christ. The prophet makes it clear that the people will indeed become God’s people through the gospel. God can guarantee this, because it is based upon His promise and not upon the promises of men.

We will be His people, and He will be our God, because God is able to make this happen in spite of the failures of men and their natural enmity toward God. Ezekiel set forth the promise of God at a time when all hope seemed to be lost. That, of course, is the time when the people were in the greatest need to hear a word of hope.