Here God speaks to Ezekiel and declares Ezekiel’s responsibility to speak God’s warning to the Israelites.
18 “When I say to the wicked, ‘You will surely die,’ and you do not warn him or speak out to warn the wicked from his wicked way that he may live, that wicked man shall die in his iniquity, but his blood I will require at your hand.
19 “Yet if you have warned the wicked and he does not turn from his wickedness or from his wicked way, he shall die in his iniquity; but you have delivered yourself.
20 “Again, when a righteous man turns away from his righteousness and commits iniquity, and I place an obstacle before him, he will die; since you have not warned him, he shall die in his sin, and his righteous deeds which he has done shall not be remembered; but his blood I will require at your hand.
21 “However, if you have warned the righteous man that the righteous should not sin and he does not sin, he shall surely live because he took warning; and you have delivered yourself.” Ezekiel 3:18-21 NASB-
This is sobering when we apply this principle to ourselves. If you are a believer, you have the saving knowledge of the Gospel message. Within that biblical message there is a warning. A person must be born again otherwise he will not see the kingdom of God (John 3:3) and there is a day of judgment coming (Revelation 20:11-15). But if you do not declare that message to those that are perishing, you bear a level responsibility for their fate. Matthew Henry says regarding this passage: “And, if it contract so heinous a guilt as it does to be accessory to the murder of a dying body, what is it to be accessory to the ruin of an immortal soul?”
We must proclaim the Gospel; all of it including the warnings. Because without the warnings, the Good News is not good. It’s just news. It becomes another gospel and is not the saving Gospel of Jesus Christ. Let us be found faithful to our King, relying on the grace of God, to proclaim the entire Gospel which is the power for salvation.
