Though I say to the righteous that he shall surely live, yet if he trusts in his righteousness and does injustice, none of his righteous deeds shall be remembered, but in his injustice that he has done he shall die.
God speaks here to people who thought a good record would carry them. He answers by showing what His promise of life does not cover. Two hard questions follow: what happens to a man's past righteousness when he sins, and what death does God threaten?
When these words were spoken
These words were spoken to a nation already under judgment. One writer warns against reading a day of judgment as though it were a day of grace:
William KellyIt was a day of judgment, not a day of grace, though some strangely confuse the two. Despair would achieve nothing; repentance would. Past righteousness should not shield present sin, nor should past sin hinder turning away from it now. But let such people walk carefully. The ways of righteousness are unchangeable; the wages of sin, death.
Why each man is weighed alone
God has judged the nation as a whole, so now He deals with each person one by one. That is why the verse follows one man and not Israel's history:
The Bible TreasuryGod appeals to each person's conscience; each one must be judged by his own ways. Now that God has judged the nation, the condition of the individual before God is everything.
The fatal word: "trusts"
The man in the verse does not simply slip. He leans on his own past record while doing wrong. That trust is what makes the record count for nothing:
F. W. GrantIf even one who had been righteous trusted in this past righteousness of his and gave himself up to wickedness, none of his righteous deeds could be remembered. In the iniquity he had committed, he would surely die. But what is emphasized more is the mercy that awaits even the worst and vilest who turn to God.
Another writer brings the same danger closer to home. Real uprightness can itself keep a person away from Christ:
Hamilton SmithWatch that uprightness does not become a snare to you. The young man in the gospel might have been better, had he not been so good. His honesty and moral uprightness was his undoing — or rather, his high opinion of them. Better he had been a tax collector, driven to Christ by the sense of his sin, than a Pharisee, kept from Him by a good opinion of his own integrity.
How far "he shall die" reaches
Writers are careful about how far this death reaches. One of them marks off what it is not:
F. W. GrantThe death threatened to the wicked is not simply the death we are all under. Nor is it eternal death as the doom of every unrepentant soul, as people commonly suppose. It is a removal from earth under the government of God — a government that even now works for the blessing of those who walk uprightly with Him.
Another writer ties the language of dying in this book to life in the land:
J. N. DarbyEzekiel says, "the soul who sins shall die." Even so, the passage is dealing with a living man, responsible on the earth. It may be used as a warning and a threat, but it applies to life on the earth in the land of Israel.
Government and grace
People often use this verse to argue that a believer can be lost in the end. One writer answers that such passages belong to another subject:
C. H. MackintoshThese scriptures, and countless others like them in the Old Testament and the New, open up the deeply important subject of God's moral government. To be merely a subject of God's government is one thing; to be a subject of His unchangeable grace is another. We should never confuse them.
Another writer draws a second line, this time between two covenants:
Walter ScottBe careful to distinguish the Old Covenant from the New. The Old demanded righteousness; the New gives God's righteousness.
Summary
- Say. God says of the righteous, "he shall surely live." He says it in a day of judgment, not of grace. Despair achieves nothing; repentance does.
- Trust. The ruin is not the sin alone. It is leaning on a past record while sinning — uprightness itself can become a snare that keeps a person from Christ.
- Forget. Past righteousness shields no present sin, and past sin blocks no present turning. God does not remember a record used as cover.
- Die. Here the death threatened is God's open dealing with a man living on the earth, not the doom of eternity.
- Distinguish. Being under God's government is one thing; being under His unchangeable grace is another. The old covenant demanded righteousness; the new gives God's righteousness.