Ezekiel is set during a devastating moment in Israel’s story, but its message is not without hope. Join Dr. Tim Mackie around the table as he explores the book of Ezekiel and God’s promise of hope on the other side of loss.
This is a free classroom study
What happens when God’s chosen people take the place God intended as a hub of his life-giving presence and corrupt it into a source of abuse and injustice? Walk with Ezekiel through the tragic loss of the temple in Jerusalem to see how God will bring restoration, hope, and new life on the other side of exile. 16 Hours 32 Minutes
An overview of the book of Ezekiel from 7 years ago from Bible Project.
After you complete this full class, you will be able to understand and communicate the following.
The literary design of the book of Ezekiel.
The historical and literary context of the book, including intertextual links, allusions, and references.
Ezekiel’s unique contributions to the prophetic mosaic as a priest and exile.
The connection between spiritual rebels and human empires.
How lengthy descriptions of the temple dimensions help us meditate on the place where Heaven and Earth are one.
The purpose of Ezekiel’s temple vision.
6 Hours 32 Minutes Lecture Time
6 Modules
29 Classroom Sessions
6 Quizzes
Your Teacher
Dr. Tim Mackie
Tim Mackie is a writer and creative director for BibleProject. He has a Ph.D. in Semitic Languages and Biblical Studies. He wrote his dissertation on the manuscript history of the book of Ezekiel, with a focus on the Septuagint and Dead Sea Scrolls. What a total nerd! He is a professor at Western Seminary and served as a teaching pastor for many years.
This 365-day devotional walks you through the Bible in a year, following a custom reading plan that delves into the stories of the Bible from five unique perspectives.
Sometimes we go through dark periods in our lives where the misery feels never-ending. Trial hits, pain hits, and just when we think life might get “back to normal,” we are hit by yet another difficulty. At times like these, we may feel forgotten by God.
In Psalm 88, we find one of the most utter prolonged cries of despair: “O Yahweh, God of my salvation, I cry out by day and through the night before you,” the psalmist begins (Psa 88:1).
This psalm never climaxes or hints of hope, and it ends even more desperately than it begins. The psalmist, feeling abandoned by God, has his loved ones taken from him. He is left to navigate the darkness alone (Psa 88:18).
How do we deal with our own misery when confronted by a tragic psalm like this? How should we respond to God?
We can start with what the psalmist, despite his prolonged suffering, acknowledges about God. Although his troubles are still present, he also recognizes God as his deliverer (Psa 88:6–9). He appeals to God’s reputation as a God of wonders, deserving of praise: “Do you work wonders from the dead? Or do the departed spirits rise up to praise you?” (Psa 88:10).
He appeals to God’s loyal love, faithfulness, and righteousness: “Is your loyal love told in the grave, or your faithfulness in the underworld? Are your wonders known in the darkness or your righteousness in the land of forgetfulness?” (Psa 88:11).
The psalmist never comes to a place where he expresses even a glimmer of hope. But through cries, questions, and torment, he holds on to what he knows to be true about God. In his very cry, the psalmist acknowledges that God will be present in his situation.
While the questions in this psalm remain unanswered, we see that the psalmist lives in the awareness that God cares and will eventually act. In the meantime, he places himself in God’s faithfulness.
We see a parallel situation in Paul’s letter to Timothy; Paul addresses the difficult days that will come. He says they will be difficult for one reason: disobedience. In those days, “people will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, arrogant, slanderers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, hardhearted, irreconcilable, slanderous, without self-control, savage, with no interest for what is good” (2 Tim 3:2–3).
The list goes on further, describes all types of disobedience against God—something that is absent from the psalmist’s cries. What’s most fascinating about the parallel is that it hints at the root of what the psalmist is experiencing: disobedience may not be acknowledged in his cry (he is innocent), but the world is a disobedient place. It is full of sin and oppression. Ultimately, it’s the sins of humanity that brought pain to the world.
In this life, we’ll go through dark times and struggles that may never end. We may even feel forgotten. But despite what we think or feel, we can’t abandon what we know to be true of God. Even when our state or our emotions are contrary to the desire to worship Him, we are called to trust in Him and in His love.
If He was willing to abandon His only son on a cross to redeem you, then He is certainly trustworthy. If you trust in Him, He will not forsake you.
How are you trusting God through dark times?
How are you reaching out to someone who is struggling?
This commentary series is established on the presupposition that the theological character of the New Testament documents calls for exegesis that is sensitive to theological themes as well as to the details of the historical, linguistic, and textual context. Such thorough exegetical work lies at the heart of these volumes, which contain detailed verse-by-verse commentary.
13 This verse presents the notorious difficulty that Paul has spent the entire chapter expounding the eschatological permanence of love alone, only to conclude, apparently, that faith and hope also last forever. It would be easy to justify the theology of such a proposition. Just as love will never become obsolete, so where God is the living God his presence continues always to invite trust and confidence, as well as forward-looking hope in the living, ever-ongoing God who does new things, even in the perfection of heaven.
But does such a thought, even if it coheres with Paul’s theology (which it does), also cohere with the immediate context (which is doubtful)? Before we list the standard explanations, we may note what is at issue in the translation.
NRSV uncompromisingly translates νυνὶ δὲ μένει πίστις, ἐλπίς, ἀγάπη as And now faith, hope and love abide. REB is even more explicit: There are three things that last for ever: faith, hope and love. (AV/KJV and RV are similar to NRSV.) But NJB and NIV allow for a different understanding: As it is, these remain: faith, hope, and love (NJB; NIV is virtually the same, beginning And now …).
We also propose (with Collins) there remain, since Paul’s syntax allows for two possible meanings.
(i) One meaning is that of an eschatological assertion: these three abide or remain.
(ii) The other is that of a logical summary providing the stage setting for v. 13b (as Parry urges): So now (logical use) there remain, out of all the gifts and experiences compared and considered, faith, hope and love. These are still on the table. But the greatest of these (for reasons which include, among other things, its eschatological permanence) is love.
For translation, it is essential not to pre-judge by exclusion which of these two meanings Paul wishes to convey. Hence remain is preferable to abide, since without comment it allows for either or both meanings as the Greek μένει does. The singular of μένει may also suggest the list as a collective agenda.
(i) There appears at first sight to be a strong patristic tradition that all three dispositions or qualities abide in eschatological terms, but this impression is deceptive. Irenaeus rightly distinguishes theologically between that which is within human control and that which must be “left in the hands of God.” He then concludes that at the end, according to Paul, God will do away with everything except “these three; faith, hope, love shall endure.” Tertullian appears to make this point initially, but his subsequent comments demonstrate that he singles out love as that which alone endures after the eschaton. Tertullian quotes 13:13, and then comments: “Rightly [is love the greatest].
For faith departs when we are convinced by vision, by seeing God. And hope vanishes when the things hoped for come about. But love both comes to completion and grows more when the perfect has been given.” Chrysostom shares Tertullian’s view: “When the good things believed and hoped for have come, faith and hope cease.… ‘For hope that is seen is not hope’ (Rom 8:24).… So these cease when those appear, but then love becomes most exalted.… ‘The greatest of these is love’ (1 Cor 13:13).” Calvin also follows this view: “Faith does not continue after death.”
(ii) Meyer correctly argues that Paul cannot be using μένει to mean remains until the parousia, as if to distinguish this triad from spiritual gifts that fall away as the church matures, for then he would be omitting prophetic preaching, teaching, and knowledge, which the church needs throughout its history. Spicq’s exegesis of lasts in the Corinthian situation is not widely supported.
(iii) In what sense, then, would faith, hope, love, remain “on the table” in a logical or rhetorical sense? Reitzenstein floated the theory that Paul uses the triad in contrast to a “gnostic” quartet of faith, knowledge, love, and hope. He claims: “It was occasioned by the fact that such a four-part formula actually is found in a later pagan author, Porphyry (ad Marcellam, 24).”
But “later” is the operative word. There is no evidence for a fourfold formula around ad 55. On the other hand, as Weiss and Craig urge, Paul himself has already begun to group faith, hope, and love in 1 Thess 1:3 and 5:8. “The triad is a favourite one with Paul: it is found in his earliest preserved letter [as cited] and also in one of his latest (Col 1:4, 5).” Wolff insists again that the polemic remains: faith, hope, and love are in view; prophecy, speaking in tongues, and knowledge no longer feature in the agenda.
(iv) In practice, in theological terms, as we have noted, the views of Tertullian and Chrysostom have relative but not compelling force. Confident trust in God and appropriation of his grace remains an aspect of faith which is to be distinguished both from faith in contrast to sight, and from infectious, robust faith as a special charismatic gift. Similarly, after the resurrection new hopes concerning fresh creative purposes need not be excluded.
As I have strongly argued elsewhere, faith and hope are “polymorphous concepts”: depending on their contextual currency as meaning more than one thing, they both “cease” and “abide.” Our question is, rather, Paul’s meaning in this present context. Barrett assists us here. Faith ceases, he argues, if the context is that of what he calls “miracle-working faith” in 13:2.
But in the sense used when Paul asserts “whatever is not of faith is sin” (Rom 14:23), “the life of the age to come will rest on faith as completely as does the Christian life now.” Similarly, unless we conceive of heaven as a “closed” or static state, the openness of the heavenly life towards the future maintains the relevance of hope. Heinrici similarly holds together the two aspects. (v) Granted all this, then, does νυνὶ δὲ μένει return to a temporal or eschatological status rather than a logical one?
Conzelmann tentatively, Lange with qualifications, and Parry and Strobel with conviction, even with passion, argue for the logical meaning. For Lange, there remain in the sense that this triad is constitutive for “being-in-Christ.” But love still abides when faith and hope have reached their fullness. Parry first shows why νυνὶ δέ must be logical, not temporal. So far, Parry continues, the entire chapter has set love in contrast to all other dispositions and gifts.
There is “something of disappointment and even of bathos in putting as a climax to these contrasts the statement that in this present state faith, hope, love abide.” Strobel insists that the now of v. 13 is one of “logical conclusion.” However, if νυνὶ δὲ μένει means “taking all into account,” Paul does not yet quite part with the importance of faith in the God revealed and “hope in the ever-growing revelation.” τὰ τρία ταῦτα, these three things, “will just hold the mind for a moment,” though not in this context as “abiding qualities,” even if they are “constitutive” ones (Lange).
The comparative μείζων, regularly used as a superlative (which is virtually obsolete in later hellenistic Greek), has been defined by all that has gone before. Love reflects the concern for others and the Other of which Christ is the paradigm case (cf. 1:18–25), and it will never become obsolete, for it is the very stuff of the heavenly life and the good of heavenly maturity. Barth concludes his study of these verses by taking up a closely related theme.
Love is “the future eternal light shining in the present. It therefore needs no change of form.” In one sense faith and hope abide also, but in forms in which faith becomes assimilated into sight, and hope absorbed into the perfect, even though this is an active perfection. Thus in a subtle sense love alone abides forever in the form in which Christ and the cross has revealed it: “it is that which continues.” Thus, if there is any heavenly counterpart to the qualities and dispositions of the earthly life of the church, its worship, its understanding, its faith, and its hope will all undergo modification under new conditions.
The teacher, theologian, pastor, and evangelist become redundant in the sense in which their work is currently carried out. But learning to love, to have respect and concern for the Other above the self, is grounded in the nature of God as revealed in Christ, and this will never become redundant, obsolete, or irrelevant. The future thus provides the model for the present in working out priorities at Corinth and in the church at large. agapē is much more than a “moral virtue.”
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