NOTES for Eze 18:1-32
In chapter 18, through the mouth of the prophet Ezekiel, the Lord once again opposes the human idea that guilt and punishment for sin are inherited. This idea, so widespread and understandable among people, likens God to ourselves, because it is we who do not distinguish between people, but judge them by categories. God tells us instead that He builds His relationship personally with each one of us; each person is judged separately according to his own deeds. This Revelation anticipates the New Covenant, which people will enter not as whole nations, but one by one.
The Lord speaks of this in great detail, examining specific cases. If the father is righteous and the son is wicked, the father has found favour with God, while the son will perish in his sins. How unwilling the Jews are to hear this! When other prophets, and Christ Himself, say the same thing, it provokes a fit of rage in them. Look, we had such wonderful holy ancestors, yet we ourselves will be judged according to our deeds, without any allowance for heredity... This is why they hated the prophet Jeremiah, John the Baptist, and the Lord Jesus Himself. It should be noted that our convulsive exclamations about Holy Rus' also often fit this logic. Yet much more important for each of us is the Lord's promise of His favour to the righteous person even if his ancestors were wicked: this applies to us who live in the post-Soviet world far more than nostalgia for past greatness does.
But the Lord does not limit Himself to these genealogical definitions. In the second half of the chapter He proclaims the great Revelation of mercy towards those who repent. The repentant sinner will be accepted by God, and all his transgressions, the Lord says, will not be remembered against him. And here for the first time the great words are heard: “Do I desire the death of the wicked?... Is it not rather that he should turn from his ways and live?” This is said of every human being, because, as the word of God repeatedly says, all of us are in one way or another guilty before the Creator's love. But He desires the salvation of everyone, even the most hardened sinner. At the same time the Lord also speaks of the other side of the principle that people are responsible for their actions: evil must be answered for, and repentance for it is necessary for salvation. No merits will cover evil deeds; only a contrite heart can deliver a person.
Chapter 18 ends with a sorrowful exclamation that the house of Israel does not agree to such mercy from God, because it does not wish to bear responsibility and repent of its transgressions, relying instead on past merits. This is denied both to them and to everyone who comes to God. In the final verses, once again repeating that He does not desire people's destruction but wants them to find salvation, the Lord addresses an appeal to the people: “Make yourselves a new heart and a new spirit... why will you die?”
On the one hand, this is a call to change one's life, to the very repentance of which God said that it would blot out all transgressions; it is a call to draw near to God with all the strength of one's heart. At the same time, however, this call sounds profoundly ambiguous, because it is hardly possible to fulfil it. The Lord had said practically the same thing, though in somewhat different words, a little earlier through the prophet Jeremiah, and the prophet exclaimed bitterly: “Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard his spots? Then may you also do good who are accustomed to do evil” (Jer. 13:23). Who can make himself a new heart and a new spirit? Even if a person's heart seeks repentance, how can he uproot sin from within himself? These words reflect the tragic hopelessness of the age and pose the most important question: “What is to be done if this is impossible for human beings?” In the second half of the book, the prophet Ezekiel will answer this question when he speaks of the coming of Christ and the establishment of the New Covenant, when God Himself will give the repentant person a new heart and a new spirit.