Read Time: 8 minutesEzra 9
Ezra’s prayer over the mixed marriages is one of the great confessions of Scripture, and its first note is shame — a leader who blushes to lift his face to his God for a sin that was not even his own. He learns that the people, priests, and Levites have not separated themselves from the peoples of the land but have taken their daughters, so that the holy seed have mingled themselves. Ezra rends his garment, plucks his hair, and sits down astonied until the evening sacrifice. The holy seed mingled is the wound he mourns — the line set apart for Yahweh blurred into the nations around it.
At the evening sacrifice he rises and prays — and there is a twin to point across to. Daniel prayed at the evening oblation too, in the same posture, on his knees, and used the same pronoun: we have sinned, and have committed iniquity. Ezra 9 and Daniel 9 are the same prayer in two mouths — the one man in the empire and the one man in the ruins, neither of them personally guilty of the thing they confess, both refusing to say they. It is the priestly instinct, and the great High Priest carried it to its end: numbered with the transgressors he had not joined.
The prayer owns the sin as his own people’s and therefore his. O my God, I am ashamed and blush to lift up my face to thee, my God: for our iniquities are increased over our head. He confesses standing in the gap — not they sinned but our iniquities, a shepherd identifying with the flock’s guilt the way the great High Priest would carry his people’s. The intercessor does not stand above the people but among them.
Yet the prayer is shot through with grace remembered. And now for a little space grace hath been shewed from Yahweh our God, to leave us a remnant to escape, and to give us a nail in his holy place… a little reviving in our bondage. A remnant, a nail, a little reviving — the survival itself is mercy, a tent-peg of stability driven into the holy place by grace alone. They deserved consuming; they were given a remnant.
And the confession refuses to presume on that grace. Should we again break thy commandments, and join in affinity with the people of these abominations? wouldest not thou be angry with us till thou hadst consumed us? Grace received is not licence to sin again — the remnant left by mercy dare not trade on the mercy. Ezra ends not with excuses but flat on his face before God, weeping, casting the people on a righteousness not their own.
Confess standing in the gap, not above it; the remnant you are is pure grace — a nail in the holy place — and grace is never a licence to mingle the holy seed again.
Hosea 10
Hosea 10 calls Israel an empty vine and then, in the middle of the judgment, opens a door: break up your fallow ground, for it is time to seek Yahweh. Israel is an empty vine, he bringeth forth fruit unto himself — and empty is a strange rendering: the Hebrew carries the sense of luxuriant, running riot, a vine boastful with leaf and bare of grapes. Empty, then, not of growth but of fruit — all foliage. It is the fig tree in the roadway with leaves on it and nothing under them, cursed by the Lord on his way into Jerusalem. A religion can be luxuriant and empty at the same time, and the more Israel was blessed the more altars it built to its idols. The empty vine is fruit spent on self — abundance that feeds no one but the vine, religion bent entirely inward.
The heart is divided, and a divided heart cannot stand. Their heart is divided; now shall they be found faulty. And Hosea will not call the place by its name any more. Jacob called it Bethel, house of God, where the ladder stood and the covenant was made; Hosea calls it Beth-aven, house of vanity — one letter of difference in the sense and a whole apostasy in the fact. The house of God has become the house of nothing, and its calves will be carried to Assyria as tribute. When they say we have no king, because we feared not Yahweh, they are two words from the cry of another crowd on another day: we have no king but Caesar. The high places, the sin of Israel, shall be destroyed, the thorn and the thistle shall come up on their altars. And then the cry that Luke and the Apocalypse will borrow for the day of wrath: they shall say to the mountains, Cover us; and to the hills, Fall on us. The altars of sin grow thorns, and the people who built them beg the hills to hide them.
But the prophet will not leave them without a summons to plough. Sow to yourselves in righteousness, reap in mercy; break up your fallow ground: for it is time to seek Yahweh, till he come and rain righteousness upon you. Break up the fallow ground — the hard, unploughed heart must be torn open before the seed of righteousness can go in, and the rain of righteousness will not fall on ground that has not been broken. The same Yahweh who tears in judgment offers the plough of repentance.
The figure is exact and hopeful. Sowing in righteousness reaps in mercy; the fallow ground broken now receives the rain till he come — language that reaches past Israel’s moment to the coming of the One who rains righteousness, the latter rain of the Spirit on a people made ready. The hard heart broken is the field the rain is waiting for — judgment is not the last word where there is still ground willing to be ploughed.
Do not be an empty vine spending its fruit on itself; break up the fallow ground of the heart, for it is time to seek Yahweh till he come and rain righteousness on you.
Colossians 1
Colossians 1 lifts the eye from the empty vine of Israel to the firstborn of a new creation — Christ the image of the invisible God, the head of a body that bears real fruit. Paul gives thanks that the gospel bringeth forth fruit in all the world, and prays the Colossians be fruitful in every good work — the fruitful vine that Israel failed to be. And the three words he thanks God for stand together as they always do: their faith in Christ, their love to all the saints, and the hope laid up for them in heaven. It is the triad of 1 Corinthians 13, and it is how Paul opens his letter to Thessalonica too — work of faith, labour of love, patience of hope. The empty vine had none of the three. He names the great rescue: who hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son: in whom we have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins.
One phrase in that rescue has been argued over, and it is worth flagging: translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son. The concern behind the argument is right — the kingdom is future; no saint is reigning yet. But the usual solution, that eis here means only toward, is weaker than the concern deserves, since the verb is a plain past tense and eis after a verb of transferring means into. The better answer is the one Paul gives elsewhere: the transfer of allegiance is done; the inheritance is not. He has already moved us out from under the jurisdiction of darkness and into the Son’s — our citizenship is registered in another country (Phil 3:20) — and we wait to be there. Rescued now; crowned then.
Then the towering description of the Son. Who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature. The image is the visible showing of the unseen Father — Christ is the one in whom the invisible God is made visible, the perfect manifestation, he that hath seen me hath seen the Father. And firstborn is the language of rank and inheritance, the heir and head, read by its own twin a few lines down: the firstborn from the dead. The firstborn of the creation and the firstborn from the dead are the same title — he is head of the new creation by being the first raised to incorruptible life.
The all things created and reconciled in him are the new order, not the old. By him were all things created… thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers… and he is before all things, and by him all things consist. And the chapter says plainly what the all things are: having made peace through the blood of his crucifixion, to reconcile all things unto himself. The new heavens and new earth are built in him — the reconciled order of the age to come, headed up in the Son, of which his resurrection is the first stone.
The fulness and the reconciliation are the Father’s good pleasure, not a second God beside him. It pleased the Father that in him should all fulness dwell — the Father chose to dwell in the Son, to manifest the whole of himself in him, and through him to reconcile the alienated. The fulness dwells in the Son by the Father’s pleasure — manifestation, not a rival deity; the one God showing himself wholly in the one Man.
And the reconciliation is by sharing the flesh and dying in it, not by a price paid to a third party. In the body of his flesh through death, to present you holy and unblameable. The mystery is summed in a phrase that holds the whole hope: Christ in you, the hope of glory. Christ in you is the hope of glory — the indwelling of the risen Lord by the Spirit and the Word, the pledge of a glory still to be revealed when he appears.
Christ is the image of the unseen Father and the firstborn of a new creation raised from the dead — and Christ in you is the hope of a glory not yet seen.
Synthesis and Exhortation
The day moves from the remnant of grace and the broken fallow ground to the firstborn of the new creation. Ezra confesses a people preserved only by mercy — a nail in his holy place, a little reviving in our bondage. Hosea calls the empty vine to break up the fallow ground… till he come and rain righteousness. And Colossians 1 reveals the One the rain was always pointing to: Christ the image of the invisible God, the firstborn from the dead, in whom the new creation is reconciled and made fruitful. The hard heart ploughed in Hosea is the field; the indwelling Christ is the seed and the rain; the new creation is the harvest.
The contrast of vines runs through it. Israel is an empty vine, fruit spent on itself, altars grown over with thorns; the ecclesia in Colossians bringeth forth fruit in all the world, the new creation vine headed by the firstborn. The difference is not effort but union — the empty vine drew its life inward and died; the fruitful body draws its life from the Head, from which all the body… having nourishment ministered, increaseth. Fruitfulness is not something the vine manufactures; it is what flows from being joined to the risen firstborn.
And the reconciliation is the Father’s own work in his Son, not a transaction between rivals. It pleased the Father that in him should all fulness dwell, and through the Son’s death in the body of his flesh the alienated are brought home and presented holy. This is the at-one-ment the whole canon has been building toward — not a price extracted by an angry God, but the one God manifesting himself in a Man who shared our nature, condemned sin in it, was raised, and now indwells his people as the hope of glory. The remnant Ezra wept over and the empty vine Hosea mourned are gathered up into a body that cannot fail, because its Head has already been raised.
So break up your own fallow ground and let the firstborn live in you. Do not be the empty vine, fruitful only for itself; do not presume on the grace that left you a remnant. You have been translated into the kingdom of his dear Son — walk as those who belong to the new creation, fruitful in every good work, rooted in the Head, holding Christ in you as the hope of a glory that will be revealed when he appears. The ground broken now is the field the rain is waiting for.
Break up the fallow ground and let the firstborn of the new creation live in you; the empty vine spends itself, but the body joined to the risen Head bears fruit, and Christ in you is the hope of glory.