None of the sins that he has committed shall be remembered against him. He has done what is just and right; he shall surely live.
Ezekiel speaks here to exiles who have watched national judgment fall and concluded that their sins have sealed their fate. Against that despair God shows how He deals with people one by one. The man who turns and makes things right will live, and God will not hold his past against him.
A new ground: each one judged by his own way
Chapter 33 marks a shift. God had already judged the nation as a whole. Now He sets out a different basis for dealing with the people still left.
J. N. DarbyIn view of these judgments, God sets up a completely new principle. What each person does now becomes the ground of God's dealings, instead of the results of national sin (v. 10, 11). So the door was still wide open to personal repentance, resting on a testimony that spoke to each person, whatever the national judgment might be.
The chapter keeps the same order. One man is sent to warn, and each hearer then answers for himself.
William KellyIt is individual responsibility that becomes now the ruling principle, though this does not take away, as we see, the call and duty of one man to warn many.
Repentance that gives back what it took
Verse 15 sets the terms that verse 16 rewards: the pledge given back, the stolen goods repaid. The same demand stood in the law of the trespass offering.
A. J. PollockWhere fraud had taken place, paying it back was a very healthy test of repentance. Any try to dodge it would mean that the priest could not offer the trespass offering, because the offering and the repayment had to go together.
Why God frames it as an appeal, not a sentence
The words just before this verse are God's own answer to the despair of the exiles.
Arno C. GaebeleinThe exiles knew that the just wrath of God rested upon them as a nation and that their sins were unforgiven. So they asked, "Surely our transgressions and our sins are upon us, and we rot away because of them. How then can we live?"… What a wonderful declaration verse 11 records! "As I live, declares the Lord GOD, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live; turn back, turn back from your evil ways, for why will you die, O house of Israel?" What compassion and mercy! … The wicked confessing and forsaking his sin would find mercy and forgiveness, while those who refused to repent would surely die and not live. This gracious promise was given in view of the work of the cross, the redemption by the blood of Christ, through which God declares His righteousness in passing over the sins of Old Testament believers who turned to Him (Romans 3:25).
Sins not remembered — in what sphere
The promise cuts both ways. A past record of righteousness will not shelter a man who turns to evil.
F. W. GrantFormer sin, or former righteousness, cannot be remembered. The sin of the past will not make useless the present righteousness a person has turned to. And the righteousness of the past will not cancel the present sin. In all this God is not speaking of the final account in eternity. He is speaking of entering now into His favour, or coming now under His judgment in government. And the grace of God's mercy, as the gospel shows it to us, is not in view here at all.
The word "die" in Ezekiel is often stretched further than it goes.
J. N. DarbyPeople quote Ezekiel 18 for this all the time, and good people mean well when they do. But it speaks only of death in this world — present judgment here, and not for a father's sins but for our own.
A caution about how the verse gets used
Verses like this one get used in arguments about whether a believer can be lost. One writer answers that such arguments mix up two different things.
C. H. MackintoshThese scriptures, and countless others in the Old Testament, open up the deeply important subject of God's moral government. Similar passages in the New Testament do the same. Now 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.
Summary
- Turn — the door. National judgment had fallen, yet God opened a door no ruin could shut. He now dealt with each person by his own conduct, so anyone could still repent.
- Turn — the proof. Returning the pledge and repaying what was stolen shows the turning is real. The offering and the repayment belong together.
- Turn — the welcome. God swears He takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked, and calls the guilty to turn back and live.
- Turn — the result. God does not raise the past again. Earlier sin does not cancel present righteousness, and earlier righteousness does not cancel present sin.
- Turn — the sphere. The "life" and "death" here belong to God's present government on earth, not to the final account in eternity. So do not turn the verse into a rule about a believer's standing in grace.