Do I take any pleasure in the death of the wicked? Declares the Sovereign Lord. Rather, am I not pleased when they turn from their ways and live?
Ezekiel 18:23 NIVUK
‘Therefore, you Israelites, I will judge each of you according to your own ways, declares the Sovereign Lord. Repent! Turn away from all your offences; then sin will not be your downfall. Rid yourselves of all the offences you have committed, and get a new heart and a new spirit. Why will you die, people of Israel? For I take no pleasure in the death of anyone, declares the Sovereign Lord. Repent and live!
Ezekiel 18:30-32 NIVUK
‘We didn’t start the fire
It was always burning since the world’s been turning
We didn’t start the fire
No, we didn’t light it, but we tried to fight it...
We didn’t start the fire
It's was always burning since the world’s been turning
We didn’t start the fire
But when we are gone
It will still burn on and on and on...’
So says Billy Joel’s classic 1989 song. As he told his biographer Fred Schruers, it was ‘an attempt to get young people to put the world events of today in their proper context. After will, no matter how bad things seem now, humanity has survived all the dramatic world events in the past... What does the song really mean? Is it an apologia for baby boomers? No. It’s just a song that says the world’s a mess. It’ always been a mess, it’s always gonna be a mess.’
Nowadays, just as back then, there are many who look at the state of the world and immediately blame their forebears for the mess.
Some of this is justified. Previous generations were ignorant and careless with the environment. In many situations, elder generations, politicians in particular, have saddled future generations with the results of their poor management and decision-making, knowing full well that someone else will pay the price. And this is short-sighted and wrong, not to mention contemptible and condemnable.
Bur simply pointing the finger at the previous generation and blaming them for all your problems will not do. Not at all.
There are very many adults who have done the same. Standards in child rearing and care vary from one generation to the next. We are very, very quick to point the finger at previous generations who only tried to do their best with what they knew.
Of course, there are situations when abuse has taken place and people are culpable.
But there are other situations where it did not, and we are far too quick to blame our parents for our own failings.
Ezekiel here is speaking into a situation just like that.
So here’s the thing for you. We like to think that generation-blaming is a new thing. It is not. The book of Ezekiel dates back to around 597 BC – so more than 2,600 years ago, yet we still see this contemporary proverb quoted:
The word of the Lord came to me: ‘What do you people mean by quoting this proverb about the land of Israel: ‘ “The parents eat sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge”?
Ezekiel 18:1-2 NIVUK
To put it in a more modern way: ‘the parents do the crime; the children do the time’
And why was this proverb being quoted?
Because every sinful generation in Judah and Israel took them one generation closer to the horrors of the Exile.
So what is Ezekiel saying?
The message of these verses is this: The soul who sins will die for their sin, and God does not want this to happen, so all people everywhere should repent.
There are four aspects to this teaching.
The first is righteousness, modelled effectively by these features of a righteous person:
‘Suppose there is a righteous man who does what is just and right. He does not eat at the mountain shrines or look to the idols of Israel. He does not defile his neighbour’s wife or have sexual relations with a woman during her period. He does not oppress anyone, but returns what he took in pledge for a loan. He does not commit robbery, but gives his food to the hungry and provides clothing for the naked. He does not lend to them at interest or take a profit from them. He withholds his hand from doing wrong and judges fairly between two parties. He follows my decrees and faithfully keeps my laws. That man is righteous; he will surely live, declares the Sovereign Lord.
Ezekiel 18:5-9 NIVUK
But I don’t believe Ezekiel is being exclusive here. These are not the only features of a righteous person. I believe Ezekiel spoke about these aspects because they were the areas in the Law where his people were constantly going astray.
You see, right from the beginning of the Jewish people, there has always been a constant and inescapable tension between those who wanted to keep their faith pure, and those who wanted to use God as a kind of insurance policy that would let them do what they want but still be blessed.
The most striking example of this is at the foot of Mount Sinai, while Moses is on the mountain communing with God, and Aaron has just made the golden calf from melted down jewellery:
He took what they handed him and made it into an idol cast in the shape of a calf, fashioning it with a tool. Then they said, ‘These are your gods, Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt.’ When Aaron saw this, he built an altar in front of the calf and announced, ‘Tomorrow there will be a festival to the Lord.’ So the next day the people rose early and sacrificed burnt offerings and presented fellowship offerings. Afterwards they sat down to eat and drink and got up to indulge in revelry.
Exodus 32:4-6 NIVUK
The Israelites have their sacrifices to God. They worship Him. They then have their fill of holiness, rise from the table of fellowship, and get involved in ‘play’, as the word truly means – certainly here alluding to light-hearted partying and fooling around with a pagan element. As the commentators Steven Cole puts it, ‘The verb translated play suggests sex-play in Hebrew… and therefore we are probably to understand drunken orgies.’
So this is truly shocking. They first got the ‘God-bit’ out of the way in order to cover the sin they were already planning in their heads, and then sinned as hard as they could, just like the pagan nations around them.
This behaviour, which theologians euphemistically call ‘synchretistic’, continued throughout the generations and is one of the many sins that contributed to the Exile (Ezekiel 5:9).
The point God is making here is absolutely clear and irrefutable: there is an absolute standard for righteousness. There is absolute standard for how we should live. That much is clear.
It is the law. Because the law points to the righteousness and holiness of God.
And the one who breaks the law will be punished, as Paul states in Romans 2:5-16.
There is no exception.
There is a theory among some commentators that the three generations Ezekiel referred to here could correspond to three actual Kings of Judah: Hezekiah, Manasseh and Josiah.
But whether it does or it doesn’t, the message is clear: we are not made righteous or reprobates by our forebears. It is our sin that is the problem.
Similarly, we cannot claim righteousness hereditary, culturally, nationally or religiously. We cannot claim that we are righteous because of our parents, or because of growing up in a culture with a Christian heritage, or because of growing up in a country with a religious history, or because we keep certain religious rites or rituals.
Ezekiel is plain: these are nothing.
It is only if we are actually righteous in our dealings with God and other people. Nothing else will do.
After righteousness, then, we see responsibility:
The one who sins is the one who will die.
Ezekiel 18:4 NIVUK
In other words, we all stand before God and are called to account for our own sin.
There can be no deflection to past generations.
There can be no passing the blame to our culture or our heritage.
We can have no counter-claim to our religious practice.
God will not be fooled or mocked or bribed.
He will be just.
If we sin, then we pay the price for that sin.
But that leaves us with a huge problem:
As it is written: ‘There is no-one righteous, not even one; there is no-one who understands; there is no-one who seeks God. All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no-one who does good, not even one.’ ‘Their throats are open graves; their tongues practise deceit.’ ‘The poison of vipers is on their lips.’ ‘Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness.’ ‘Their feet are swift to shed blood; ruin and misery mark their ways, and the way of peace they do not know.’ ‘There is no fear of God before their eyes.’
Romans 3:10-18 NIVUK
We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do – this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it. So I find this law at work: although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death?
Romans 7:14-24 NIVUK
for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,
Romans 3:23 NIVUK
There is no human being alive, never has been and never will be, except for Jesus Christ Himself, who can ever claim to be righteous.
We all sin. As individuals. We all bear the consequences of that sin. As individuals.
Which is all ironic, because as well as righteousness and responsibility, Ezekiel talks of reward: such a person will live – truly live. In the Hebrew, the word for ‘live’ is repeated twice for emphasise. In other words, such a righteous person will have a life worth living, both here and in Heaven. They will have a ‘life in all its fullness’ (John 10:10).
And the ‘reward’ of those who live an unrighteous life?
Death.
Again, the Hebrew word for ‘death’ is repeated twice for emphasis. So this person will be ‘really dead’ – Revelation talks of them experiencing a ‘second death’, an eternal death (Revelation 20:13-15).
God is love. But He is also just. A loving God must punish evil, for the sake of those He loves and cares for.
There must be justice for there to be love.
And that is the argument in this chapter. The idea that the youth pay the price for the crimes of their fathers had been so ingrained in their culture and mindset that they believed God would not be just in punishing them for their own sin! What a perversion!
And that us exactly the point. If we get so wrapped up in blaming someone else for our problems, then we will be so wrapped up in our anger that we stop taking responsibility to fix them ourselves. That’s why God is clear here: the law us clear; the way back up is clear; the need to change is clear. If we refuse to take it and don’t accept the just reward fir a changed life, then that is on us, not God.
Ezekiel tells us the key to obtaining this reward: repentance.
‘Therefore, you Israelites, I will judge each of you according to your own ways, declares the Sovereign Lord. Repent! Turn away from all your offences; then sin will not be your downfall. Rid yourselves of all the offences you have committed, and get a new heart and a new spirit. Why will you die, people of Israel? For I take no pleasure in the death of anyone, declares the Sovereign Lord. Repent and live!
Ezekiel 18:30-32 NIVUK
That is, if there is a set standard for what righteousness looks like, if we are responsible for meeting that standard, and if there is a reward for achieving it, but we realise we are short of it, then what should we do?
We should repent. We should change. We should be converted.
I remember when the company I was working for at the time brought out a new bonus system. I wasn’t happy about it. It pitted me against my colleagues. That didn’t seem right to me.
One of my colleagues complained bitterly, and often, to our manager. That was something of a waste of time. He hadn’t brought in the bonus system. He couldn’t change it. Railing against it did her no good – it only reduced his bonus.
The best approach was to realise the criteria that they were judging the bonus against and seeking to meet those criteria.
Is that coercion?
No.
You realise that something will provide you with a better outcome, so you do it.
Is it therefore coercion when Christians issue the call to repent?
No.
Because the call to repent, as Ezekiel points out, produces far better outcomes, in the form of a better relationship with God and each other.
But maybe you look at this and think, ‘Well, this is all very “Old Testament-y”. Where’s the grace in this? Where’s the love in this?’
That assumes that there us somehow an enormous gulf between the Old Testament and the New.
Let me tell you, there is not. Not one bit. On we move into the New Testament, you will see this. It’s the same call to repentance. It’s the same call to converted. It doesn’t change.
But what about grace? What about love?
This is based on the serious misunderstanding that God’s grace and God’s love give us a free pass to live life on our terms. It does not, as Romans 6:1-14 and Ephesians 2:8-10 both explain, among a myriad of others.
And it can never mean that. Otherwise, God’s grace and God’s love would lead to the eventual destruction of everything good.
No, God’s grace and God’s love transform us and create the desire inside us to repent. As the Psalmist says:
If you, Lord, kept a record of sins, Lord, who could stand? But with you there is forgiveness, so that we can, with reverence, serve you.
Psalms 130:3-4 NIVUK
In this chapter in Ezekiel, the Lord’s grace and love are evident because He pleads with His sinful people to repent, when they far from deserve the opportunity.
So the call here is far from an intrusion or a restriction of their liberty. It is, instead, a loving call to help the people of God get out of the way of a massive national disaster that is building against them.
And that is why the call to repentance should always be heard and headed.
Because it is always for our good.
Prayer
Lord Jesus, I thank you that your judgement is righteous and holy. You have every right to hold me responsible for my own sins. But Lord, I don’t want to live that way anymore. I repent of them. I want to follow You and You alone. Amen.
Questions
1. Why does God command His people through Ezekiel to repent? How is this relevant to us?
2. What does this passage say about those who would try to blame their sins on someone else? Why is this important?
3. How can God’s people avoid the impending danger happening around them? Did they do this? What dangers await us? How can we avoid them?
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