Scripture Daily

Context No. 4316 of 4322 · Ezekiel

Context · Reflection

Ezekiel 33:12-16: in context

12“You, son of man, tell the children of your people, ‘The righteousness of the righteous will not deliver him in the day of his disobedience. And as for the wickedness of the wicked, he will not fall by it in the day that he turns from his wickedness; neither will he who is righteous be able to live by it in the day that he sins. 13When I tell the righteous that he will surely live, if he trusts in his righteousness and commits iniquity, none of his righteous deeds will be remembered; but he will die in his iniquity that he has committed. 14Again, when I say to the wicked, “You will surely die,” if he turns from his sin and does that which is lawful and right, 15if the wicked restore the pledge, give again that which he had taken by robbery, walk in the statutes of life, committing no iniquity, he will surely live. He will not die. 16None of his sins that he has committed will be remembered against him. He has done that which is lawful and right. He will surely live.

God gives Ezekiel a word about righteousness and repentance that cuts against presumption in both directions. The righteous who turns to sin will not be saved by his past righteousness; but, wonderfully, the wicked who turns from his sin will not die for it. If the wicked restores what he took, walks in the ways of life, and commits no more iniquity, then, God says, none of the sins that he has committed will be remembered against him. He will surely live.

What stands out is the hope held out to the one who repents: none of his former sins will be remembered against him. When a person genuinely turns from sin to God, his past is not held over his head; the record is not tallied against him. God does not drag up the forgiven past of the one who has truly turned. The slate is wiped clean; the sins are remembered no more.

When we genuinely turn from our sin to God, he does not keep a ledger of our former wrongs to hold against us; none of our sins, he says, will be remembered against us. This is the mercy of God toward the penitent, fulfilled fully in Christ, in whom our sins are not counted against us but carried away. The past that haunts us need not define us; the God who remembers our sins no more offers a clean slate to all who turn to him.

Am I weighed down by a sinful past, and will I take hold of the hope God offers the penitent, that when we truly turn from sin to him, none of our former sins will be remembered against us, so that the past need not define me before the God who remembers it no more?

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