Ezekiel 18:30,31 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

Therefore will I judge you, O house of Israel, every one according to his ways, &c. You complain of the injustice of my ways or proceedings; but if I judge you according to the desert of your ways, you will certainly be all found guilty: and nothing but repentance, and a real turning to God in heart and life, can avert that ruin to which your sins have exposed you. Cast away from you all your transgressions Here God, in a most tender and pathetic manner, exhorts the Israelites, and in them all sinners, to comply with those terms on which alone he could or can take men into favour, and save them from destruction, namely, the casting away or forsaking all their sins, whether of omission or commission, all their sinful tempers, words, or works; and giving up themselves sincerely and heartily to his love and service. And to show that a mere attendance on modes of worship, and an external obedience to the precepts of God's law, are not sufficient, nor can be accepted without internal purity and holiness, he adds, Make you a new heart and a new spirit Which words imply, both that a new heart and a new spirit are absolutely necessary in order to salvation, and that means must be used by us in order to the attainment of these blessings. It must be well observed, that what is here commanded as our duty, to show the necessity of our endeavours in the use of means, is elsewhere promised as God's gift, (see Ezekiel 36:26; Ezekiel 11:19,) to show man's inability to perform this duty, without the special grace of God, which, however, will not be denied to those who sincerely and earnestly seek it, in the way God has prescribed, namely, the way of prayer, watchfulness, self-denial, attention to and faith in the word and promise of God, assembling with his people, and carefully shunning the appearance of evil. For, as Lowth well observes, the difference of expression is thus to be reconciled, “that although God works in us to will and to do, and is the first mover in our regeneration, yet we must work together with his grace, and not quench or resist its motions:” see notes on Jeremiah 31:18; Jeremiah 31:33-34. To the same purpose are the words of Calmet here: “We can do nothing well of ourselves; we have of ourselves nothing but sin: all our power comes from God, and with the aid of his grace we can do all things. But if, on the one hand, we ought to humble ourselves on account of our impotence, on the other hand we ought to hope in him, who giveth to all liberally, and who willeth not our death, but our conversion. He informs us of our freedom of will, by enjoining us to make us a new heart: he would have us to do what we can, and to ask of him what we cannot.”