Ezra 10:30-44: a reflection

This passage is a plain list of names, the men, including priests and Levites, who had been unfaithful in their marriages and had to face it, ending with a sober note: all these had taken foreign wives, and some had children by them. What is striking is not the names themselves but the fact that Scripture records them at all, naming the failures of God's own people, its leaders included, without covering them over or pretending they did not happen. The Bible does not whitewash the record.

Notice the honesty of the account. Scripture could have quietly passed over this painful failure, especially involving priests and leaders. Instead it names it plainly, recording the sin of God's people without flattery or concealment. All through the Bible this honesty holds: it tells the failures of its heroes, the sins of its leaders, the unfaithfulness of God's people, unflinchingly. It does not present a polished, sanitized picture, but the truth.

That honesty is, in its own way, a comfort as well as a warning. It is a warning, because it shows that no one, not even priests and leaders, is beyond the reach of serious failure, and that we should not presume on our own standing. But it is also a comfort, because it shows that God works with flawed, failing people, not idealized ones, and that his grace operates in the real world of actual sin and failure, not a pretend one. Take both to heart. Do not presume you are beyond failure; and do not despair that your failures put you beyond God's grace. The God whose word honestly records the failures of his people is the God who works with flawed people still, and his grace meets us in the truth, not in pretense.