Ezekiel 20:9

I wrought for My name’s sake.

The glory of God, His principle of action

It is an admitted axiom of all enlightened legislation, that with man as a moral agent human lawmakers have nothing to do; that they must overlook many considerations of natural infirmity and educational bias, to which due weight will nevertheless be given in the merciful estimate of Heaven, confining their attention solely to what will most uphold the majesty of the law, and thus secure “the greatest good of the greatest number.” Now with some difference in form, this is the very thing which takes place with the great rule of the Divine procedure. What the honour of the law is to earthly govermnents, the honour of His own great name is to Almighty God. Every decree that goes forth from the court of heaven is referred to this one rule.

I. Some reasons for this rule of the Divine procedure. The steps of the reasoning, whereby a moral necessity (as it were) is imposed upon God, to consult first the glory of His own name, as distinguished from anything He should see in His creatures, appear to us to be both simple and conclusive. For what is a part of God must have more glory than that which comes from God, seeing that the glory of the one is original and the glory of the other is derived. Another reason to be offered for this rule of the Divine procedure is, that God designs to show to us, that in all the deliverances He has hitherto wrought, or any which He may be expected hereafter to work, He could be influenced by no considerations foreign to Himself: to show that He would put forth or withdraw His arm, according as He did or did not apprehend dishonour would be charged upon the rectitude of His government, or “His name be polluted in the sight of the heathen, from whom He brought them forth.” We have yet another reason to urge why the glory of His own name should be chosen by God as the governing principle of His administration, in preference to seeking for that governing principle in anything that man does, or in anything that man is: that by so choosing He gives to men themselves the only security they can have, that the administration of heaven shall be free from all inconstancy, from all fluctuation, and from all change. It would not, however, we think, be sufficient that we should merely justify the principle laid down in our text, that in all which God hath done He hath “wrought for His name’s sake”; the solemnity and frequency with which we see it repeated seem to require from us a distinct recognition, that it is designed to exert some direct influence on our faith and practice. And this influence we take to be, that in all our judgments of His ways, and in all our petitions for His help, we should have a uniform regard to that end, which He avows to be the ruling principle of the heavenly administration, namely, the glory of His own name. It is good to give back something of glory, for what hath been so largely bestowed of grace; and on all occasions of perplexity and of doubt which may arise, it will ever afford us comfort in the retrospect, to have known that we acted neither from ourselves, nor for ourselves, but that we “wrought for His name’s sake.” There is, however, another reason why we think God so frequently insists on the glory of His own name, as being the ruling principle of His government; and that is, because He would teach us that what is to Him the rule of action should be to us both a measure and a plea of prayer.

II. A few observations in evidence of this.

1. God had an eye to His glory in the works of creation. It is obvious, that had the necessities of man been the only motive to the Divine beneficence, Deity might have provided for man a less noble theatre for the exercise of his powers, and a less gorgeous home for the place of his rest. His design in creation is to lead us from the seen to the unseen; from the measured to the infinite; from the top of heights, which sense would apprehend and scale, to the loftier pinnacle of “His own eternal power and Godhead.”

2. God has never lest sight of this great end in the various departments of His providence. It may be true--it must be true--that seeing as we do only a part of our Maker’s ways, the mere fragments of the stupendous plan, the detached pieces of providence, we shall be prone to ask, Wherein is God’s name exalted here? But ye must wait to see these pieces of providence put together; ye must wait to see all the wheels and springs of the great Timepiece adjusted and fitted in; and then shall ye find that the most inscrutable act of the Divine administration formed one of the letters of His own great Name.

3. It was with a view to the glory of His own great name that the Creator of all the ends of the earth devised, effectuated, and wrought out the plan of man’s redemption. (D. Moore, M. A.)

The Divine motive of action

The conception that Jehovah acts only for His own name’s sake, to sanctify His great name, is capable of being set in a repellent light. It seems to make the Divine Being egoistic, and His own sense of Himself the source of all His operations. The way too in which He brings the nations to know that He is Jehovah, through judgments mainly, invests the idea with additional harshness. The conception is not found in the earlier prophets, but is familiar in the age of Ezekiel. Perhaps two things, if considered, would help to explain the prophet’s idea. One is his lofty conception of Jehovah, God alone and over all, and his profound reverence before Him. The “child of man” cannot conceive the motive of Jehovah’s operations to be found anywhere but in himself. But that name for whose sake he works is a “great name” (Ezekiel 36:23) and a “holy name” (Ezekiel 39:25), it is that of Him who is God. The prophet thinks of Jehovah as one of his predecessors did. “For Jehovah your God is the God of gods, and Lord of lords, the great God, the mighty and the terrible, which regardeth not persons, nor taketh reward” (Deuteronomy 10:17). And the second thing is this: the conception arose out of the conflicts of the times. There were antagonisms within Israel, and more powerful antagonisms without, between Israel and the nations. The conflicts on the stage of history were but the visible forms taken by a conflict of principles, of religions of Jehovah God with the idolatries of which the nations of the earth were the embodiments. The prophet could not help drawing up this antagonism into his conception of God; and not unnaturally he inflicted his own feeling upon the mind of God, and conceived Him thinking of Himself as he thought of Him. If it was but half a truth, it was perhaps the half needed for the age. When the fulness of time was come, the centre of Divine motive was shifted. God so loved the world, etc. Coming from the bosom of the Father, and knowing Him, the Son’s mind was altogether absorbed in the positive truth the stream of which was so broad and deep that all antagonisms were buried beneath it. (A. B. Davidson, D. D.)