Therefore I will judge you, O house of Israel, every one according to his ways, saith the Lord GOD. Repent, and turn yourselves from all your transgressions; so iniquity shall not be your ruin.
Therefore ... As God is to judge them "according to their ways" (Proverbs 1:31), their only hope is to "repent;" and this is a sure hope, because God takes no delight in "judging" them in wrath, but graciously desires their salvation on "repentance." I will judge you. Though ye cavil, it is a sufficient answer that I, your Judge, declare it so, and will judge you according to my will; and then your cavils must end.
Repent-inward conversion (Revelation 2:5. "Repent and do the first works"). In the Hebrew х shuwbuw (H7725) wªhaashiybuw (H7725)] there is a play of like sounds, 'Turn ye and return.'
Turn yourselves ... - the outward fruits of repentance. Not as margin, 'turn others;' for the parallel clause (Ezekiel 18:31) is, "cast away from you all your transgressions." Perhaps, however, the omission of the object after the verb in the Hebrew implies that both are included: Turn alike, not only yourselves (as in the English version), but also all whom you can influence.
From all your transgressions. Not as if believers are perfect: but they sincerely aim at perfection, so as to be habitually and willfully on terms with no sin (1 John 3:6-9).
Iniquity shall not be your ruin - literally, shall not be your snare, entangling you in ruin.
Verse 31. Cast away from you all your transgressions - for the cause of your evil rests with yourselves; your sole way of escape is to be reconciled to God (Ephesians 4:22-23).
Make you a new heart and a now spirit. This shows, not what man can do, but what he ought to do: what God requires of us. God alone can make us a new heart (Ezekiel 11:19; Ezekiel 36:26-27). The command to do what men cannot themselves do is designed to drive them (instead of laying the blame, as the Jews did, elsewhere, rather than on themselves) to feel their own helplessness, and to seek God's Holy Spirit (Psalms 51:10; Psalms 51:12). Thus the outward exhortation is, as it were, the organ or instrument which God uses for conferring grace. So we may say with Augustine, 'Give what thou requirest, and (then) require what thou wilt.' Our strength (which is weakness in itself) shall suffice for whatever He exacts, if only He give the supply (Calvin).
Spirit - the understanding: as the "heart" means the will and affections. The root must be changed before the fruit can be good.
Why will ye die? - bring on your own selves your ruin. God's decrees are secret to us; it is enough for us that He invites all, and will reject none that seek Him.
Verse 32. I have no pleasure in the death of him that dieth - (Lamentations 3:33; 2 Peter 3:9). God is "slow to anger;" punishment is "His strange work" and "His strange act" (Isaiah 28:21).
Remarks:
(1) How common it is for men to lay the blame of their sin on others rather than on themselves; and when the penal consequences of their guilt overtake them, to consider themselves hardly dealt with, as though they were unfortunate rather than guilty. So the favourite proverb with the Jews in Ezekiel's time was, "The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge" - that is, We undeservingly pay the penalty, not of our own, but of our fathers' sins. No doubt God does often "visit the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation." But this cannot be the result of caprice or injustice, for the Judge of all the earth cannot but do right. As 'all souls are His,' He can have no reason to make any difference between one and another, except in accordance with His own unchangeable justice. We cannot with our finite minds always see the reasons of His dealings, but we do see that the curse descending from the father to the son assumes guilt in the son, which he shares in with the father. There is obvious to all a natural tendency in the child to follow the parent's sin, and hence, his sharing in the parent's punishment is just. It is only in so far as the children of the third and fourth generation "hate" God, as their fathers did before them, that God in the second commandment threatened (Exodus 20:5) to "visit the iniquities of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate" Him.
(2) The inherited guilt of sin in infants is an awful reality, proved by their liability to death; but it is done away with, perhaps, in all infants as such, and certainly in the children of a believing parent, through the atonement of Christ (1 Corinthians 7:14). In the case of adults, whatever penalties fall on communities, on account of the sins of particular members of the community in past times, all the individuals of them who repent shall escape.
(3) This principle always existed in God's moral government of Israel: for God had commanded, in Deuteronomy 24:16, that the fathers should not be put to death for the children, nor the children for the fathers, but that every man should be put to death for his own sin. But, now that the Jews had so misinterpreted God's dealings as to maintain that He made themselves, the innocent children, to suffer for their fathers' sins, God declares anew, and more explicitly, the righteous principles of His rule.
First, The just man, whose righteousness and charity toward his fellow-man flow from living faith toward God; one who refrains not merely from the act, but from the thought of sin (Ezekiel 18:6; Job 31:1), who not only does no wrong to his neighbour, but is his active benefactor from the principle of love, shall surely live (Ezekiel 18:9) before God, partaking of His grace here and His glory hereafter (Ezekiel 18:5-9).
Secondly, The ungodly child of a godly parent shall not escape the wrath of God because of his parent's piety, but, on the contrary, shall be punished the more severely because he sinned against light and high spiritual privileges (Ezekiel 18:10-13).
Thirdly, If a child walks not in the steps of an ungodly parent, but, considering seriously the fatal consequences of such a course, turns from it to the paths of faith righteousness, and charity, giving his bread to the hungry, and covering the naked with a garment, from genuine love to God and man worked in him by the Holy Spirit, he shall live before God, and not be condemned for his father's iniquity (Ezekiel 18:14-18).
Fourthly, The sinner who penitently turns from his sin to God shall have none of his past transgressions imputed to him, but in his righteousness shall live before God (Ezekiel 18:21-22). Not that he shall be accented for his righteousness, but in it, as the fruit of faith and the effect of real conversion. His righteousness is the evidence of his being already in favour with God through the atonement made by Messiah in due time for all the sin of the world, past, present, and to come. It is a gross slander on the loving character of our gracious God to suppose for a moment that He has any pleasure in the perdition of the ungodly (Ezekiel 18:23). So far is God from laying on the children the penalty of their father's sins, that He will not even impute to them their own sins if they will but turn from them to righteousness. What encouragement this assurance gives to the repenting sinner to have an assured hope of pardon, peace, and life! Why should any be lost with such a promise held out to all? The only barrier in the way of any man's salvation is that mentioned by the Lord Jesus (John 5:40, "Ye will not come to me, that ye might have life").
Fifthly, The once righteous man who turneth from his righteousness to iniquity shall die in his sin, nor will his former righteousness avail him (Ezekiel 18:24; Ezekiel 18:26). Not that the elect shall ever apostatize utterly for Christ's word is pledged for their salvation (John 10:28-29): but Scripture here speaks of men according to their outward appearance and acts before their fellow-men. One who, as far as man could judge, was righteous, may nevertheless prove in the end never to have had the root of righteousness in him, though having done many acts of righteousness. It is only by enduring to the end that a man can be known by his fellow-men to have been one of the elect saints. Even an inspired apostle could only predicate the spiritual churchmanship and final salvation of himself and his readers, "if," saith he, "we hold fast the confidence and the rejoicing of the hope firm unto the end" (Hebrews 3:6). The lesson to be learned hence is distrust of ourselves, watchfulness against sin, and undoubting trust in the faithfulness of God to His promises to His people. True believers watch and pray, and so persevere to the end, and are saved. Self-deceivers presume on their own safety, walk carelessly, fall finally, and are lost.
(4) The commencement and progress of repentance is traced in Ezekiel 18:28. The sinner, who had been heretofore living without regard to the will of God, or to the interests of the immortal soul, now for the first time stops to consider his self-destroying ways: then he turns from, not merely some, but all his transgressions, even his bosom-sins. Since he cannot do this without an entire renewal of heart, he "makes him a new heart and a new spirit" by obtaining from God, through prayer, the new heart and spirit which God requires, and which God alone can impart. God's command that we should make us a new heart teaches us, in the painful sense of our own inability, to seek the Holy Spirit, which he has promised freely to give to them that ask Him (Ezekiel 18:31). While we know not God's decrees, we do know His willingness and power to save to the uttermost all who come to God in His appointed way. Let us so come, and we shall never find His ways unequal (Ezekiel 18:29), or that He will send empty away any who hungers and thirsts after His righteousness (Matthew 5:6).