The Completed Task: A Report on Perfect Obedience Text: Ezekiel 9:11
Introduction: The Unswerving Will of God
We live in an age of negotiation. Everything is up for discussion, every command is a suggestion, and every truth is a preference. Men believe they can dicker with God, as though He were a merchant in a bazaar. We approach His holy law not as a binding covenant, but as a list of recommendations from which we may select the ones that suit our lifestyle. But the God of Scripture is not a negotiator. He is a sovereign, and His will is not subject to our amendments or our approval. His commands are not suggestions; they are decrees. And when He sends forth His word, it accomplishes precisely what He pleases, and it prospers in the thing for which He sent it.
The scene in Ezekiel 9 is one of the most terrifying and clarifying in all the prophetic literature. It is a vision of discriminating judgment. God is not dropping a blind, indiscriminate bomb on Jerusalem. He is sending forth His executioners with a very precise, twofold command: first, to mark the foreheads of the righteous remnant, those who sigh and groan over the abominations of the city, and second, to slaughter without pity all those who are unmarked. This is not a comfortable passage. It is not designed to be. It is designed to shatter our sentimental notions of a God who simply winks at sin. It is meant to show us that judgment begins at the house of God, and that holiness is a matter of life and death.
Our text today is the conclusion of this terrible work. It is a single verse, a simple report from the field. But in this one sentence, we find the bedrock of all cosmic history: the perfect, unswerving, meticulous obedience of God's chosen servant to God's declared will. This is the principle upon which the universe runs. It is the principle that was perfectly embodied in the Lord Jesus Christ, and it is the principle that must govern our lives as His people. If we misunderstand this, we misunderstand everything.
The Text
Then behold, the man clothed in linen at whose loins was the scribe’s case responded with a word, saying, “I have done just as You have commanded me.”
(Ezekiel 9:11 LSB)
The Messenger and His Mission
To grasp the weight of this verse, we must first understand who is speaking. The report comes from "the man clothed in linen at whose loins was the scribe’s case." This is a profoundly significant figure. Throughout Scripture, linen garments are associated with holiness, purity, and priestly or angelic service. The priests of Israel wore linen (Ex. 28:42). The angels at Christ's tomb were in dazzling apparel, described as white as snow (Matt. 28:3). In the book of Daniel, a similar figure, a man clothed in linen, appears as a glorious, powerful messenger from God (Dan. 10:5, 12:6-7).
This is no ordinary angel. Many commentators, and I believe rightly, see in this man a Christophany, a pre-incarnate appearance of the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. He is the one who stands between the executioners and the people. He is the one who bears the instruments not of judgment, but of preservation. He has a scribe's inkhorn, a tool for writing, for marking, for setting apart. His task is one of mercy in the midst of wrath. He is the one who seals the servants of God on their foreheads, distinguishing them from those appointed for destruction. This is a direct foreshadowing of the work of Christ, who seals His people with the Holy Spirit as a guarantee of their inheritance (Eph. 1:13-14) and protects them from the final wrath to come.
His mission was twofold, given to him by the Lord of glory from the threshold of the temple. First, "Pass through the city, through Jerusalem, and put a mark on the foreheads of the men who sigh and groan over all the abominations that are committed in it" (Ezek. 9:4). Second, by implication, he was to do only this. He was not to join the slaughter. His work was exclusively one of preservation and salvation. The six executioners were commanded to follow him, and to strike down everyone without the mark. The man in linen leads the way, not with a weapon of destruction, but with the ink of salvation.
The Flawless Report
Now we come to the report itself. It is breathtaking in its simplicity and its finality.
“I have done just as You have commanded me.” (Ezekiel 9:11 LSB)
There are no excuses here. No qualifications. No explanations for delays or partial failures. There is no, "I have done most of what you asked," or "I did my best under the circumstances," or "I ran into some unforeseen difficulties." The report is one of absolute, comprehensive, and perfect obedience. "I have done just as You have commanded me."
This reveals the nature of all true heavenly service. The angels who serve God do not operate on their own initiative. They are messengers, and a messenger's glory is to deliver the message exactly as it was given. They are servants, and a servant's honor is to carry out the master's will without deviation. There is no ad-libbing in the angelic realm. There is no creative disobedience. This is why the Lord taught us to pray, "Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven" (Matt. 6:10). In heaven, God's will is done instantly, joyfully, and perfectly.
This man in linen, this type of Christ, has fulfilled his mission to the letter. Every single person in Jerusalem who sighed and groaned over the rampant idolatry and injustice has been marked. Not one was missed. The seal of God was applied with divine precision. And by the same token, not one person who was complacent, who celebrated the sin, or who was indifferent to it, received the mark. The separation was perfect. The judgment that followed, therefore, was perfectly just. The executioners did not have to make any discerning calls themselves; they simply had to look for the mark. The work of discrimination had already been completed by the one who is the ultimate Judge.
The Greater Obedience of the Antitype
As glorious as this vision is, it is a shadow. It points to a far greater reality. This perfect report from the man in linen is a dim echo of the report that the Lord Jesus Christ, the true Man in Linen, gave to His Father. His entire life was a fulfillment of this principle. He said, "For I have come down from heaven, not to do My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me" (John 6:38). And again, "My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me and to accomplish His work" (John 4:34).
When the Father gave the Son a mission, a mission far more terrible and glorious than that of the man in Ezekiel, He gave Him a list of names. He gave Him a people to save, a remnant chosen in Him before the foundation of the world. The Father's command was that He should lay down His life for these sheep, that He should mark them not with ink, but with His own blood, and that He should lose none of them, but raise them all up on the last day (John 6:39).
And what was Christ's final report from the cross? "It is finished" (John 19:30). That is the ultimate echo of Ezekiel 9:11. "I have done just as You have commanded me." He drank the cup of wrath to the dregs. He satisfied divine justice completely. He secured the salvation of every single person the Father had given Him. His obedience was not just comprehensive; it was active and passive. He perfectly kept the law in our place, and He perfectly paid the penalty for our lawlessness in our place. His work was flawless. There were no loose ends. No incomplete assignments. He did it all.
Our Commission and Our Report
This brings us to our own lives. We too have received a commission. As those who have been marked by Christ, we are now sent out as His messengers into a world that is ripe for judgment. And the command given to us is not to negotiate with the world, but to proclaim the terms of surrender that God has already established in the gospel. We are to "make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you" (Matt. 28:19-20).
Notice the emphasis. We are to teach them to observe all that He commanded. Not some. Not the parts we find convenient. All of it. Our task is one of faithful transmission. We are not called to be creative, but to be faithful. We are not called to be popular, but to be obedient. The temptation in our day is always to soften the message, to edit the commands, to make the gospel more palatable to a rebellious culture. But to do so is to fail in our mission. It is to be an unfaithful messenger.
One day, each of us will stand before the judgment seat of Christ and give an account. We will have to make a report. What will we say? Will we be able to say, with a clear conscience, "I have done just as You have commanded me"? Will we be able to say that we fought the good fight, we finished the race, we kept the faith (2 Tim. 4:7)? Our obedience will not be perfect like Christ's. We know that. Our righteousness is found in Him alone. But the evidence of that imputed righteousness is a life of grateful, striving, determined obedience. It is a life that takes God's commands seriously. It is a life that sighs and groans over the abominations of our culture, and refuses to make peace with them.
The man in linen returned his report, and then the judgment fell. His work was the necessary prelude to the final settlement of accounts. In the same way, the work of the Church in this age, the work of marking the remnant through the preaching of the gospel and the administration of the sacraments, is the necessary prelude to the final judgment. The Lord is patient, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance (2 Pet. 3:9). But the day is coming when the man in linen, the Lord Jesus, will return His final report to the Father. He will present His bride, the Church, holy and blameless. And on that day, the command will go forth to the angelic executioners, and the final, terrible separation will occur. Our only safety, our only hope, is to be found with His mark upon us, a mark received by grace through faith, and evidenced by a life that seeks, however imperfectly, to say, "I have done just as You have commanded me."