But the fulness of Ezekiel’s prophecy is not realised until Jeremiah’s prophecy of the new covenant is brought to pass.  Nor does the state of the militant church on earth exhaust it.  Future glories gleam through the words.  They have a ‘springing accomplishment’ in the Israel of the restoration, a fuller in the New Testament church, and their ultimate realisation in the New Jerusalem, which shall yet descend to be the bride, the Lamb’s wife.  The principles involved in the prophecy belong to the region of purely spiritual religion, and are worth pondering, apart from any question of the place and manner of fulfilment.

First comes the great truth that the foundation, so far as concerns the history of a soul or of a community, of all other good is divine forgiveness (v. 25).  Ezekiel, the priest, casts the promise into ceremonial form, and points to the sprinklings of the polluted under the law, or to the ritual of consecration to the priesthood.  That cleansing is the removal of already contracted defilement, especially of the guilt of idolatry.  It is clearly distinguished from the operation on the inward nature which follows; that is to say, it is the promise of forgiveness, or of justification, not of sanctification.

From what deep fountains in the divine nature that ‘clean water’ was to flow, Ezekiel does not know; but we have learned that a more precious fluid than water is needed, and have to think of Him ’who came not by water only, but by water and blood,’ in whom we have redemption through His blood, even the forgiveness of our sins.  But the central idea of this first promise is that it must be God’s hand which sprinkles from an evil conscience.  Forgiveness is a divine prerogative.  He only can, and He will, cleanse from all filthiness.  His pardon is universal.  The most ingrained sins cannot be too black to melt away from the soul.  The dye-stuffs of sin are very strong, but there is one solvent which they cannot resist.  There are no ‘fast colours’ which God’s ‘clean water’ cannot move.  This cleansing of pardon underlies all the rest of the blessings.  It is ever the first thing needful when a soul returns to God.

Then follows an equally exclusively divine act, the impartation of a new nature, which shall secure future obedience (vs. 26, 27).  Who can thrust his hand into the depths of man’s being, and withdraw one life-principle and enshrine another, while yet the individuality of the man remains untouched?  God only.  How profound the consciousness of universal obstinacy and insensibility which regards human nature, apart from such renewal, as possessing but a ‘heart of stone’!  There are no sentimental illusions about the grim facts of humanity here.  Superficial views of sin and rose-tinted fancies about human nature will not admit the truth of the Scripture doctrine of sinfulness, alienation from God.  They diagnose the disease superficially, and therefore do not know how to cure it.  The Bible can venture to give full weight to the gravity of the sickness, because it knows the remedy.  No surgery but God’s can perform that operation of extracting the stony heart and inserting a heart of flesh.  No system which cannot do that can do what men want.  The gospel alone deals thoroughly with man’s ills.