Scripture Daily

Context No. 1562 of 4322 · Ezekiel

Context · Reflection

Ezekiel 36:31-38: in context

31“‘“Then you will remember your evil ways, and your deeds that were not good; and you will loathe yourselves in your own sight for your iniquities and for your abominations. 32I don’t do this for your sake,” says the Lord GOD. “Let it be known to you. Be ashamed and confounded for your ways, house of Israel.” 33“‘The Lord GOD says: “In the day that I cleanse you from all your iniquities, I will cause the cities to be inhabited and the waste places will be built. 34The land that was desolate will be tilled instead of being a desolation in the sight of all who passed by. 35They will say, ‘This land that was desolate has become like the garden of Eden. The waste, desolate, and ruined cities are fortified and inhabited.’ 36Then the nations that are left around you will know that I, the LORD, have built the ruined places and planted that which was desolate. I, the LORD, have spoken it, and I will do it.” 37“‘The Lord GOD says: “For this, moreover, I will be inquired of by the house of Israel, to do it for them: I will increase them with men like a flock. 38As the flock for sacrifice, as the flock of Jerusalem in her appointed feasts, so the waste cities will be filled with flocks of men. Then they will know that I am the LORD.’”

God promises to cleanse his people and restore them, and yet he adds a striking qualification. When you are cleansed, he says, you will remember your evil ways and loathe yourselves for your sins. But understand this: I am not doing this for your sake; be ashamed of your ways. And he pictures the restoration: the desolate land will be tilled and become like the garden of Eden, the ruined cities rebuilt and filled, so that the nations will know it was the LORD who did it.

The words that must not be missed are God's own: I am not doing this for your sake. In the middle of a great promise of cleansing and restoration, God is careful to make clear that his people have not earned it. He is not restoring them because they deserve it, because they have finally become worthy, because their goodness has moved him; he says plainly, not for your sake. He acts for his own name's sake, for his own glory, out of sheer grace, and he wants them to know it, so that they will not imagine they have merited his mercy. This is a humbling and a freeing truth at once. It humbles any claim of merit; we cannot congratulate ourselves on our restoration, cannot suppose God has blessed us because we earned it. God's grace is precisely grace, undeserved, given not for our sake. But it is also freeing, because it means our standing does not rest on our worthiness, which would always be uncertain, but on God's grace, which is sure. If God restored us because we deserved it, we could never be confident, for our deserving is always in doubt; because he restores us for his own name's sake, by grace, our standing is secure, resting on him and not on us. And notice the effect the cleansing produces: not pride but a deeper shame over sin, a loathing of the evil we now see clearly. Grace received rightly does not make us complacent about sin; it makes us see its ugliness more clearly and hate it more, precisely because we know we were forgiven without deserving it. Not for your sake: that is the humbling and freeing ground of all God's mercy.

Do I imagine God's grace toward me is somehow deserved, or can I receive the humbling and freeing truth that he acts not for my sake but for his own name's sake, so that my standing rests on his grace and not on my worthiness?

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