Ezekiel 18:21 - Meaning and Application

Here God gives another rule by which he judges people, and it shows again how fair his government is. The earlier rule showed that God rewards or punishes according to what happens in a family line or inheritance, for good or evil. Here he shows that he also rewards or punishes according to what changes in the person himself, whether for better or worse. While we live in this world, we are on trial. Life is the whole time of testing, and how we are found at the end will shape our eternity.

The case is stated plainly, much as it was before (Ezekiel 3:18), and then repeated here (Ezekiel 18:21-24, 26-28) because it is so important. It is a matter of life and death, and of eternal life and death. God gives a gracious invitation to wicked people to turn from their sin. He promises that if the wicked person turns, he will surely live (Ezekiel 18:21, 27).

To show what true conversion is, we are told what must be true of the person who wants this pardon. The first step is thoughtful reflection (Ezekiel 18:28): “because he considers and turns.” Sinners keep going in evil ways because they do not think about where those ways lead. But if the prodigal son, the wasteful child in Jesus’ parable, comes to himself and thinks honestly about his condition, he will soon return to his father (Luke 15:17). In the same way, when people reflect on their sin and see how much better things could be, they may return to God.

That thinking must lead to hatred of sin. When a person considers, he must turn away from his wickedness. That means a change in the heart. He must turn from his sins and trespasses, which means a change in his life. He must stop his evil practices and decide to do them no more, out of real dislike for sin. What else should I want to do with idols? This turning from sin must also be complete. He must turn from all his sins and all his transgressions, with no favorite sin kept back, no hidden idol, and no tolerated compromise. We do not truly turn from sin unless we truly hate it. And we do not truly hate sin as sin if we do not hate all sin.

This turning from sin must also include turning to God and duty. He must keep all God’s statutes, for sincere obedience will be broad and whole. He must do what is lawful and right, what agrees with God’s word and will. That, and not the desires of the flesh or the customs of the world, must be his rule.

For those who turn this way, God gives a great promise. They shall save their souls alive (Ezekiel 18:27). They shall surely live, and not die (Ezekiel 18:21, 28). Though it was said, “The soul that sins shall die,” sinners must not despair if they repent in time. The death threatened can be kept away if they truly turn. When David confessed, “I have sinned,” he was at once assured of pardon: “The Lord has taken away your sin; you shall not die” (2 Samuel 12:13). That is, he would not die eternally. He will surely live, restored to God’s favor, which is the life of the soul, and no longer under God’s wrath, which is like the message of death to the soul.

Their forgiven sins will not rise up in judgment against them, and they will not even be reproached with them. All the wrongs they have done, though many, serious, and deeply offensive to God, will not be mentioned against them (Ezekiel 18:22). They will not be counted to ruin them, and in the great day they will not be brought back to shame or grief. They will be covered, sought for, and not found. This shows how full pardoning mercy is. When sin is forgiven, it is wiped away and remembered no more.

“In their righteousness they shall live.” This does not mean they earn pardon or blessing by their righteousness, as if their good works paid for their sins. It means they live in their righteousness, because that righteousness fits them for the blessings purchased by the Mediator, that is, the one who brings us to God, and it is itself one of those blessings.

A repenting sinner may still wonder how he can hope for pardon and life on this promise. He knows his future obedience can never make up for his former disobedience. But he can rest on this truth: God’s nature, character, and delight are merciful and ready to forgive. God asks, “Have I any pleasure at all that the wicked should die?” (Ezekiel 18:23). The answer is no. God has not given people any reason to think that he takes delight in the death of sinners.

It is true that God has decided to punish sinners. His justice requires it, and unrepentant sinners will remain under his wrath and curse forever. That is the will of his decree, or his settled plan. But it is not his delight. Though the righteousness of his rule requires that sinners die, the goodness of his nature rises against that ruin. “How can I give you up, Ephraim?” God does not take pleasure in the ruin of sinners. He is more pleased when his mercy is shown in saving them than when his justice is shown in punishing them.

There is also a fair warning to righteous people not to turn away from their righteousness (Ezekiel 18:24-26). An apostate, someone who falls away, turns from his righteousness. He was never truly righteous in his heart, as John says, “If they had belonged to us, they would have stayed with us” (1 John 2:19). He only seemed righteous. He had the name and outward marks of a righteous person. He may have thought so himself, and others may have thought so too. But then he throws off his profession, leaves his first love, denies and abandons God’s truth and ways, and turns from righteousness as if tired of it. In doing so, he shows the secret dislike he always had. Once he turns away from righteousness, he gives himself over to sin, becoming loose, ungodly, sensual, drunken, unjust, and in every way like the wicked. When the unclean spirit regains the heart, he brings seven other spirits worse than himself, and they settle there too (Luke 11:26).

What is the fate of such an apostate? Will he live because he was once righteous? No. What does not continue cannot rightly be counted as done. In his sin and because of his wrongdoing, which is the cause of his ruin, he shall die, and that means eternal death (Ezekiel 18:24, 26).

The backslider in heart will be filled with his own ways. But will his earlier words and actions help him in any way? Will they at least make his punishment lighter? No. All the good he once did, even if people praised it highly, will not even be mentioned for his credit or comfort. The righteousness of an apostate, one who turns away from God after seeming to follow him, is forgotten, just as the evil of a repentant sinner is forgotten.

Under the law, if a Nazirite was made unclean, he lost all the earlier days of his vow (Numbers 6:12). In the same way, those who begin by the Spirit and end by the flesh may count all their earlier service and suffering as wasted (Galatians 3:3-4). Unless we keep going to the end, we lose what we have gained (2 John 1:8).

Second, the Lord appeals to the conscience of the house of Israel, even though they are very corrupt, and calls them to judge his justice for themselves. He will be shown right, and sinners will be judged, by their own words. Their charge against God is blasphemous, as in Ezekiel 18:25, 18:29. The house of Israel dares to say, “The way of the Lord is not fair.” Nothing could be more foolish or more sinful.

He who made the eye, will he not see? Can the ways of the one whose will is the eternal rule of good and evil, right and wrong, be unfair? Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right? Yes, he surely will. He cannot do anything else.

God’s answers to them are very gracious and patient, because even these blasphemers he would rather convince and save than condemn. We might expect him to defend his honor at once by making such people lasting examples of his justice. Should those who have spoken such wicked words be allowed to draw another breath? Should a tongue that has said, “The ways of the Lord are not fair,” ever speak again anywhere except in hell? Yet this is the day of God’s patience, so he kindly reasons with them.

He asks them to admit what is plain and cannot be denied. His ways are fair. He never places on anyone more than is right. This is true in the present punishments of sinners, in the troubles of his own people, and in the eternal destruction of the unrepentant. The ways of the Lord are equal.

He also makes clear the wrong in their own ways. “Are not your ways unequal?” Yes, they are. The trouble they are in has come on their own heads. God has done them no wrong, but they have wronged themselves. Human foolishness twists a person’s path, makes it crooked, and then the heart complains against the Lord as if his ways were crooked too (Proverbs 19:3). In every dispute with God, and in every dispute he has with us, it will be shown that his ways are right and ours are wrong.