NOTES for Иез 18:21-28

We very often blame God. We blame Him for our troubles and believe that He directed us down the wrong path, that we should not have obeyed Him, although the Russian verb “to be mistaken” is always reflexive: no one else can make the mistake in our place; we are always mistaken ourselves.

Or, which is no better, when something goes wrong in our lives, we think that God is punishing us. That is not true either. Most often, we make mistakes, and the failures in our lives are simply the results of those mistakes. Does this mean that we must constantly fear mistakes and punish ourselves for every misstep? Of course not. We can entrust to God the mistakes we made in the past, and He will change our past. God will not make what has already happened cease to have happened—that would be violence against us and against our memory—but He can deliver us from the consequences of sin that would otherwise follow it inexorably and that we would regard as God’s punishment. If we trust God, repent, and allow Him into our lives, He will deliver us from the consequences of the sins and mistakes we have committed, thereby healing our past and changing both it and us. Therefore we need not fear the future or be afraid of stumbling. We are free and need fear nothing.