Ezekiel 23:28-34: a reflection

28“For the Lord GOD says: ‘Behold, I will deliver you into the hand of them whom you hate, into the hand of them from whom your soul is alienated. 29They will deal with you in hatred, and will take away all your labor, and will leave you naked and bare. The nakedness of your prostitution will be uncovered, both your lewdness and your prostitution. 30These things will be done to you because you have played the prostitute after the nations, and because you are polluted with their idols. 31You have walked in the way of your sister; therefore I will give her cup into your hand.’ 32“The Lord GOD says: ‘You will drink of your sister’s cup, which is deep and large. You will be ridiculed and held in derision. It contains much. 33You will be filled with drunkenness and sorrow, with the cup of astonishment and desolation, with the cup of your sister Samaria. 34You will even drink it and drain it out. You will gnaw the broken pieces of it, and will tear your breasts; for I have spoken it,’ says the Lord GOD.

This is a hard passage, part of an extended and deliberately shocking image of Israel's unfaithfulness portrayed as prostitution, and its consequences. Set the disturbing imagery aside and notice the central figure the passage uses for those consequences: a cup. You shall drink your sister's cup, God says, a cup deep and large, filled with sorrow and desolation, and you shall drink it and drain it. The bitter results of persistent unfaithfulness are pictured as a cup that must be drunk to the dregs. It is a sobering image of sin's consequences.

Notice the image of the cup, which runs through Scripture as a picture of the judgment that sin deserves. To drink the cup is to bear the full, bitter consequences of turning from God. And this passage, hard as it is, presses the seriousness of those consequences: the cup is deep, it is full, and it must be drained. Sin, persisted in, has real and bitter results, pictured here as a cup that cannot be avoided.

But the image of the cup finds its resolution in the gospel. On the night before he died, in the garden, Jesus prayed, Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours. The cup he faced was the cup of judgment that our sin deserved, and he chose to drink it, draining to the dregs the bitter cup that should have been ours. The sobering truth of this passage, that sin's consequences are a cup that must be drunk, is answered by the astonishing grace of the gospel: Christ drank that cup in our place. When the seriousness of sin's consequences weighs on you, remember the garden. The cup you deserved, Christ drank for you.

Lord, this hard passage pictures the bitter consequences of sin as a cup, deep and full, that must be drained to the dregs. Let it teach me the seriousness of sin's results, which are real and bitter. But thank you, Lord Jesus, that in the garden you faced the cup of judgment my sin deserved, and prayed, not my will but yours, and drank it in my place. The cup I should have drunk, you drained for me. When the weight of sin's consequences presses on me, turn my eyes to the garden and the cross, where you took the bitter cup that was mine. Thank you for so great a grace; help me never take lightly what it cost you to drink that cup for me.