Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Ezekiel 33:11
Say unto them, [As] I live, saith the Lord GOD, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; but that the wicked turn from his way and live: turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways; for why will ye die, O house of Israel?
11. Jehovah’s answer to the people’s despondency and despair of “life.” These verses must be estimated from the point of view of the people’s despair of life, to which they are an answer. The passage is not directly an affirmation of the rectitude of God, although this is indirectly affirmed in answer to the people’s objection, founded on traditional ways of thinking, that the Lord’s ways are not equal. The divine rectitude is not the point of view from which the prophet looks; he speaks in answer to the people’s despondency. And his answer is twofold: first, God’s desire is that men should live; and secondly, the past is not irrevocable. Not according to what men have been but according to what they shall be or become, will God judge them.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
Eze 33:11
As I live, saith the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; but that the wicked turn from his way and live.
The sincerity of Divine expostulations
1. What a contrast are Gods thoughts of man to mans thoughts of God!
2. How opposite are Gods feelings towards man to mans feelings respecting God!
3. How different Gods estimate of man from mans estimate of God!
4. How unlike Gods purposes to mans! God says to man, Live; man says to God, Let Him die the death; crucify Him; this is the heir; come, let us kill Him.
5. How far asunder are Gods ways from mans!
I. The state of mans heart in reference to God.
1. He murmurs against God for not giving him life. God proclaims His willingness to give it. I have no life. Is He not mocking me? Christ promises rest. I have none. Can He be sincere?
2. Nay, more, he casts the whole blame of his death on God. He says, I see that I must just die; there is no help for it; the blame is not mine, but Gods. My fallen nature, my education, my circumstances, my temptations, these are my excuses.
II. The state of Gods heart in reference to man.
1. He has no pleasure in their death. He did not kindle hell in order to gratify His revenge. He does not cast sinners headlong into its endless flames in order to get vent to His blind fury. He will finally condemn the unbelieving, but not because He delights to do so, but because He is the righteous Lord that loveth righteousness.
2. His desire is, that the wicked shall turn and live. It is to life–life everlasting–that He points your eye, sinner. It is of life that He desires to make you partaker. And surely it is life that you need. For what one word more fully or more terribly describes your present state than death? Dead, not like the withered leaf or the uprooted tree; that would at least be unconsciousness of loss, and ignorance of what might have been won. But you are dead to all that is worth living for, and yet alive to all that makes life a burden and a woe. Do you say, If God wants me to live, why does He not at once give me life? In other words, why does He not force life upon my acceptance, and burst through every barrier? I ask in return, Is God bound to take your way in giving life? I ask again, Do you really suppose that a person is not sincere in his kindness because he does not carry out that kindness by every means, lawful or unlawful? Is it not possible that there may be a limit to that kindness compatible with the most perfect sincerity?
III. The expostulation, with which all this closes, is one of the most urgent importunity on the part of God, proving yet more Fully His real desire to bless. It is like one vehemently enforcing an invitation upon an unwilling listener,–making a last effort to save the heedless or resisting sinner. Is it within the remotest bounds of possibility or conceivability that He is insincere; that He does not really mean what He says? The ways from which He calls on them to turn are named by Him evil ways; and what He calls evil must be truly so,–hateful in His eyes, as well as ruinous to the soul. The end of these ways He pronounces to be death; so that sinners must either turn or die. (H. Bonar, D. D.)
Pleading and encouragement
(with Eze 18:23; Eze 18:32):–Notice, that in each of my texts the Lord declares that He has no pleasure in the death of the wicked; but in each following passage the statement is stronger. The Lord puts it first (Eze 18:23) as a matter of question. As if surprised that such a thing should be laid to His door, He appeals to mans own reason, and asks, Have I any pleasure at all, etc. In our second text (Eze 18:32), God makes a positive assertion. Knowing the human heart, He foresaw that a question would not be enough to end this matter, for man would say, He only asked the question, but He did not give a plain and positive statement to the contrary. He gives us that clear assurance in our second text: I have no pleasure, etc. But still, as if to end forever the strange and ghastly supposition that God takes delight in human destruction, my third text seals the truth with the solemn oath of the Eternal.
I. Notice, first, the assertion that God finds no pleasure in a sinners death. Really I feel ashamed to have to answer the cruel libel which is here suggested; yet it is the English of many a mans doubts. I will only bring forward certain evidence by which you who are still under the deadly influence of the falsehood may be delivered
1. Consider the great paucity of Gods judgments among the sons of men. There are such things, but they are wonderfully rare in this life, considering the way in which the Lord is daily provoked by presumption and blasphemy. Does not the Lord Himself say that judgment is His strange work?
2. The length of Gods long-suffering before the Day of Judgment itself comes proves how He wills not the death of men.
3. Furthermore, remember the perfection of the character of God as the moral Ruler of the universe. Aversion to punishment is necessary to justice in a judge.
4. If any further thoughts were necessary to correct your misbelief, I would mention the graciousness of His work in saving those who turn from their evil ways. As if God were indignant that such a charge should be laid against Him that He delighteth in the death of any, He preferred to die Himself upon the tree rather than let a world of sinners sink to hell.
II. God finds no alternative but that men must turn from their wicked ways, or die. It is one or the other: turn or burn. God, with all His love to men, cannot discover any third course; men cannot keep their sins and yet be saved.
1. Be it known to you, first, that when God proclaims mercy to men upon this condition, that they turn from their ways, this proclamation is issued out of pure grace. God saves you, not because of any merit in your turning, but because He will have mercy on whom He will have mercy, and He has decreed to save all who turn from the paths of evil.
2. If there be no repentance, men must be punished, for on any other theory there is an end of moral government. The worst thing that could happen to a world of men would be for God to say I retract My law; I will neither reward virtue, nor punish iniquity; do as you like. Then the earth would be a hell indeed.
3. Sin must be punished; you must turn from it or die, because sin is its own punishment. Even the omnipotence of God cannot make an impenitent sinner happy. You cannot be married to Christ and heaven until you are divorced from sin and self.
4. I believe that every mans conscience bears witness to this if it he at all honest.
III. God finds pleasure in mens turning from sin. Among the highest of the Divine joys is the pleasure of seeing a sinner turn from evil. When your heart is sick of sin, when you loathe all evil, and feel that though you cannot get away from it, yet you would if you could, then He looks down on you with pitying eye. When there is a new will springing up in your heart, by His good grace–a will to obey and believe, then also the Father smiles. When He hears within you a moaning and a sighing after the Fathers house and the Fathers bosom; you cannot see Him, but He is behind the wall listening to you. His hand is secretly putting your tears into His bottle, and His heart is feeling compassion for you. When at last you come to prayer, and begin to cry, God be merciful to me, a sinner, God is well pleased; for here He sees clear signs that you are coming to yourself and to Him. His Spirit saith, Behold, he prayeth! and He takes this as a token for good. When you unfeignedly forsake sin God sees you do it, and He is so glad that His holy angels spy out His joy. I will tell you what pleases Him most of all, and that is when you come to His dear Son, and say, Lord, something tells me that there is no hope for me, but I do not believe that voice. I read in Thy Word that Thou wilt cast out none that come unto Thee, and lo, I come! I am the biggest sinner that ever did come, but, Lord, I believe Thy promise; I am as unworthy as the devil himself, but, Lord, Thou dost not ask for worthiness, but only for childlike confidence. Cast me not away–I rest in Thee.
IV. God therefore exhorts to it and adds an argument. Turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways; for why will ye die, O house of Israel? He perceives His poor creature standing with his back to Him, looking to idols, looking to sinful pleasures, looking towards the city of destruction, and what does God say to him? He says, Turn! It is a very plain direction; is it not? Turn. or Right about face! That is all. Turn ye, turn ye. See, the Lord puts it twice. He must mean your good by these repeated directions. Suppose my man servant was crossing yonder river, and I saw that he would soon be out of his depth, and so in great danger; suppose I cried out to him, Stop! stop! If you go another inch you will be drowned. Turn back! Turn back! Will anybody dare to say, Mr. Spurgeon would feel pleasure if that man were drowned? It would be a cruel cut. What a liar the man must be who would hint such a thing when I am urging my servant to turn and save his life! Would God plead with us to escape unless He honestly desired that we should escape? I trow not. Turn ye, turn ye. He pleads each time with more of emphasis. Will you not hear? Then He finishes up with asking men to find a reason why they should die. There ought to be a weighty reason to induce a man to die. Why will ye die? This is an unanswerable question in reference to death eternal. Is there anything to be desired in eternal destruction from the presence of the Lord, and the glory of His power? (C. H. Spurgeon.)
God has no pleasure in the sinners death
I. What the death spoken of is not.
1. Manifestly this death cannot be merely the death of the body; for all will die this death, whether they turn to God or not, and whether they live a spiritual life or not.
2. The death spoken of cannot be spiritual, or a state of sinfulness; for God represents them as being already in this state.
II. Positively the death spoken of must be the opposite of the life here referred to. This life cannot be natural life; for all, both saint and sinner, are conceived of as being alike in natural life. Of course, the life must be salvation–eternal life–that blessedness which saints enjoy in the favour and love of God, begun here, prolonged forever hereafter. Now, if such be the life alluded to, the death, being, in contrast with it, must be eternal death; the misery experienced by all Gods enemies,
III. Why has God no pleasure in the sinners death?
1. The death of saints in which God takes a special interest is only the death of the body; but the death of the wicked is the death of both soul and body together. Both together are involved in misery and ruin.
2. God has no pleasure in the sinners death, because He is a moral being, and it is contrary to the nature of moral beings to delight in suffering for its own sake.
3. God cannot have pleasure in the sinners death, because His character forbids it. God is not only by nature a moral agent, but He is in character a good moral agent–a being of infinite benevolence. God pities the self-ruined sinner; never rejoices in his dreadful doom, for its own sake.
4. It must be that God regards the death of the sinner, viewed in itself, as a great evil. No finite mind can begin to conceive how great and dreadful this evil is. It needs the sweep of an infinite mind to measure its length and breadth, its depth and its height.
5. God can have no pleasure in the death of sinners, because it is a state in which He can wisely show them no more favour. Mercy has had its day; simple justice must henceforth have unimpeded exercise.
6. Another reason still is that when sinners have out-lived their probation and are cut off in their sins, their depravity will be thenceforward restrained. How shocking it must be to the pure and holy God to see His creatures giving themselves up to utter and unrestrained depravity–to see them giving boundless scope to the most odious and horrible rebellion!
IV. Why does not God prevent the death of the wicked? If He takes no pleasure in it, why should He suffer it to be?
1. You are aware that men have often inferred from Gods benevolence that He will not suffer the wicked to be lost. But who has any right to infer this? How does it appear that benevolence cannot inflict a lesser evil for the sake of preventing a greater?
2. God does not prevent the death of the wicked, for the good reason that He cannot wisely do it. For God to act otherwise than with wisdom must be wrong.
3. God could not have prevented their destruction by refusing to create them. He saw it would be wise to create moral agents who would sin, and some of whom would be lost; and how could He act other than wisely without forever condemning Himself for wrongdoing?
4. God could not wisely have done more than He has done for the sinners salvation. It is plain that God could not wisely abridge the liberty of moral agents, nor indeed could He save them, even if He should, for the very idea of the salvation of a moral agent implies his own voluntary turning from sin.
5. God cannot save men without their concurrence; in the nature of the ease, they could not be holy without their own concurrence; how, then, could they be happy without it?
6. Another reason why God does not prevent the death of the wicked is that He regards it as a less evil than to interpose in any way possible to Himself, to save them. If they would turn under such influences as He can wisely use, He would rejoice; but He is already going to the utmost limit of His discretion, and how can He go further?
7. Yet another reason is that, although the evil of the sinners death is great, yet He can make a good use of it. He can overrule it for important good to others and to various interests in His kingdom.
V. The only possible way in which the sinners death can be avoided, is for the sinner himself to turn from his evil ways and live. Gods government being what it is, repentance and faith in Jesus Christ are natural and necessary means of the sinners salvation. He might as well ask Jehovah to come down from His throne, as ask Him to do anything more or anything different from what He is doing to save sinners. Remarks–
1. The goodness of God is really no encouragement to those who continue in sin.
2. The goodness of God is not the security of the impenitent sinners salvation, but the guarantee of his damnation.
3. The death of the wicked is not inconsistent with Gods happiness.
4. God will have the eternal consciousness of having laid Himself out to the utmost to save sinners.
5. The death of the wicked will not be inconsistent with the happiness of heaven. When saints reach heaven they will have more confidence in God than many people have now. With enlarged views they will see most clearly that God has done right, perfectly and infinitely right. (C. G. Finney.)
The death of the wicked not pleasing to God
I. The purposes of God. Before He exercised one act of creating power, He saw all the consequences of His creation, knowing then, as perfectly as now, and as perfectly as he ever will know, all the results of felicity and wretchedness that would ever be realised in heaven, earth, and hell, And with all these before Him, as the certain consequences of that constitution of things He was about to establish, and that creative energy He was about to exert, still He resolved, that under such a constitution, such a creation should rise. He spake and it was done.
1. We have no right to conclude that the Almighty is the sole cause of the miseries of His creatures, from the fact that He is the Author of their existence, that He knew, before He created, all the consequences of His creating, and that none of His expectations and purposes are frustrated. Before we can apply the purposes of God to particular things–to our conduct, our destiny, or the pleasure of the Deity–we must know the method of application; we must know the particular character of the purposes; we must be able to understand how they affect the particulars.
2. If it is lawful for us to infer, from the purposes of God, that He has pleasure in the destruction of the wicked, then it is lawful for us, on the same principle, to infer that He has pleasure in that wickedness itself, which leads to destruction. We may conclude, therefore, on this principle of reasoning, that God is pleased with sin! This is the result of attempting to reason from the secret purposes of God.
3. The consideration which should correct this error is, the narrow limits of our understandings. We have not the least knowledge of the nature of the connection which exists between the purposes of Jehovah and the actions of His creatures.
4. But though we are incapable of unfolding the Divine purposes, and proving thereby, that the Deity has no pleasure in the destruction of the wicked, and that these purposes do not render sin and death unavoidable, yet we have other methods of showing this. He who alone knows perfectly those purposes and the dispositions of the wicked, has told us, and we have, therefore, the strongest of all possible evidence.
(1) He has told us in the text if the purposes of God were of such a nature as to compel the wicked to his wickedness, and thus bring him to eternal death unavoidably, this declaration could not be true.
(2) He has told us so in those explicit declarations which charge our destruction upon ourselves: Oh, Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself. Now, if the Divine purposes forced men to sin, or placed insurmountable obstacles in the way of their salvation, I can conceive of no sense in which this declaration could be true.
(3) He has told us so in those numerous passages which expressly declare that He is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.
(4) He has told us so in those tender expostulations and earnest entreaties, which He employs to win sinners to Himself.
(5) He has told us so in those lamentations which He utters over the doom of the wicked.
(6) He has told us so when He calls us to contemplate those attributes with which He clothes Himself–attributes of mercy, forbearance, long-suffering, and tender compassion.
II. The nature of religion. Those whose minds have surmounted one difficulty in religion often meet with another. When we have learnt that the purposes of the Deity do not infringe upon our liberty, and oblige us to be lost, the nature of religion comes up to lend to our mistake a lame apology. But let us hush the murmur with two reflections–the one humbling to our pride, the other complimentary to our nature. The first is, that the difficulties which beset us in our attempts after religion are mostly, if not altogether, placed there by ourselves, through our own wickedness and folly. The other is, that that very characteristic of our nature which renders us capable of religion, or of sensibility to its difficulties, is the very characteristic which distinguishes us from the lower order of creatures. Our Creator, in forming us such as we are, has given us an exaltation. And if we still complain that we have so much to do in the religion that God requires, let us remember that this activity is absolutely to the enjoyment of that felicity which religion proposes. We are moral beings, and religion treats us as such.
1. Its mysteries perplex you. But what have you to do with its mysteries? Are you required to understand them? No, not at all–you have simply to believe what is recorded concerning them. Are you required to regulate your practices by them? Not any further than they are plainly revealed, and have thereby lost (so far) the character of mysteries.
2. I grant that the Bible contains some things hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable do wrest, as they do also the other Scriptures, unto their own destruction. But everything necessary for us to know is fully revealed, as far as it is necessary that we should know it.
3. Christian morality is extremely plain. All those things which concern our present and immediate conduct are not difficult to be understood.
4. There is self-denial in religion. Men often think it too severe. But whence does the necessity of this self-denial arise? It arises wholly and in every part of it from sin. It is benevolence, therefore, which imposes it. For what purpose? To preserve the whole man from hell. The necessity of it arises from corruption alone. Would you have a religion proposed to you which should leave you at liberty to sin? which should impose no restraint? which should plunge you into immorality and vice? which would multiply your crimes thick upon you, and promise to take you to heaven at last? You would reject such a religion.
5. Perhaps you are troubled with the humility of our religion. But why should this trouble you? Does the requiring of this prove to you that the Deity would confine you in sin, taking pleasure in your destruction? The very aim of this humility is to exalt us.
6. Men must repent; and this troubles you. What, then, is repentance? It is sorrow for sin–hatred, abhorrence of it, and forsaking of it. Very well: if you have sinned, erred, done wrong, should you not be sorry for it?
7. You are troubled because God requires you to trust in His mercy–to believe in Jesus Christ. But if you cannot trust in Jesus Christ for salvation, where can you trust?
8. Do not the motives of religion compel you to believe that God has no pleasure in your death? What can you soberly and really desire, that religion does not offer to you?
III. The condition of man is called in as an excuse or plea for irreligion. This condition is alleged to be of such a nature that the individual cannot extricate himself from it, and attain salvation.
1. The first characteristic of this apology for irreligion is, that it is altogether hasty. How does this irreligious man know that his depravity is invincible? What right has he to conclude that his condition is such, that he cannot accept religion, repent, and be saved? If he had tried–if he had made a full experiment in the matter, and, after doing all he could do (as sinners sometimes say they have), had found all his efforts unavailing, then there would be some ground for his conclusion. But he has not tried. (Men do err when they say so.) Some little, feeble, unfrequent attempts perhaps he may have had. But he has not done all he could. There are three proofs of his hasty conclusion gathered from the experiment itself which he affirms he has made.
(1) It was an unwise one.
(2) It was a feeble one.
(3) It was a short one.
2. The second characteristic of this apology is its illegitimate application. Impotent as the unrenewed man may be for bearing the fruits of the Spirit, he is under no necessity, from that impotence, of running into those courses, or those vices and crimes, which so rapidly sear his conscience, and degrade his nature, or those vanities which take off his mind from everything good. He resembles a prisoner furnished with a key to unlock his prison, who, instead of using it, flings it away. He resembles a man in a gulf, from which he is unable to extricate himself, and who, instead of availing himself of the aid proffered for his deliverance, turns from the hand that would lift him out, and plunges still deeper down the chasm that stretches its unfathomable abysses beneath.
3. The third characteristic of this apology is its tendency to excuse from moral virtues. Because external conduct is not internal grace, because the moral virtues have not necessarily the nature of evangelical religion (though such religion invariably leads to them), sinful men often mistake the bearing of these virtues. The man who lives in the neglect of them (virtues of which by nature he is capable) is taking the most direct course to render himself insensible and inaccessible to the motives and means of an evangelical religion. Those who have learnt to be shameless before man, have taken one step toward being fearless before God.
4. The fourth characteristic of this apology is its direct irreligious tendency: it is taken as an excuse for the neglect of those religious duties which every irreligious man is capable of performing. The external duties of religion lie quite within the scope of his ability, and if these are neglected, what shall show that it would not be the same with all spiritual duties if they lay as much within the range of his power? And if he is unable, while not born of the Spirit, to render spiritual worship and service, surely there is the more urgent reason for coming as near to it as he can.
5. The fifth characteristic of this apology is the idleness attending it. Hope is an active principle. Despondency is an inactive one. Where has God told us that we can accomplish nothing in working out our salvation? Where has He told us to rest contented, or rest discouraged, till He converts us? Where has He said, that striving to enter in at the strait gate will be of no avail? Where is the Christian who ever became a Christian in his idleness?
6. The most strange perversion of all, is the argument from the depravity of nature, for not seeking the aids of grace–the saving efficiency of the Holy Spirit. Aside from the Holy Spirit, his case is just as hopeless as if judgment had already proceeded upon him. And this is the great reason why he should besiege the throne of grace, as standing upon the very borders of the pit, that God would save him from going down to eternal death! This he can do. His condition does not prohibit it. This he ought to do. His condition demands it. (L. S. Spencer, D. D.)
God does not delight in the ruin of sinners
I. This appears from the creation of man and the original constitution of his nature. God created man in His own image. This is the only law, so far as we know, according to which rational creatures can enjoy happiness. Only, he was created mutable–he had power to stand, but he was also liable to fall–he might obey and live, or he might transgress and die.
II. This is evident from the plan of recovery he has formed. Although eternal death had passed on all who sinned; it would have been impossible to have affirmed that God delighted in the death of sinners. But in the redemption by Christ, the character of God comes forth in brighter glory,–a glory that shines without a cloud, a proof so overwhelming of the character of God, and of His designs of mercy to our family, that it requires only to be stated that its force may be felt. Where is the man who will affirm that God finds pleasure in the death of angels? and yet what has He done for them compared with what He has done for us?
III. It is evident from the means God employs to carry this plan into effect.
1. The means which is obviously of first importance is the incarnation, the obedience, and the death of His Son. Every sorrow of His humbled estate, every word He spake, and every action He performed on our world, is a proof of our text.
2. The ordinances of grace. Many of the blessings of God are so common, that we have ceased to prize them, and never think what our condition would be were they to be taken from us. The air we breathe, and the sun that shines on us, are instances of this in the natural world. The same may be said of the ordinances of grace. We have enjoyed them so long, in such abundance, and with so little effort of ours, that we are now insensible to the greatness of the blessing. And yet it is not easy to imagine in what condition we would have been today had we never enjoyed them, or in what condition we would be tomorrow were they to be taken from us.
3. The mercies of all kinds which God confers on men. We are surrounded by the love of God, not only in grace, but in nature, and in providence, and that love is designed to work on our hearts and lead us to repentance.
4. Afflictions and chastisements. These wound the body and often administer the cup of gall to the spirit, but their tendency is salutary, and therefore we conclude that their design is beneficent. It is mercy, when the sinner is in the way that leads to death, to beat him back although it should be with the rod of trouble,–to hedge up his path, although with the thorns of affliction.
5. The strivings of the Spirit. There are moments of fear, of trembling, of alarm, in the life of every sinner; he starts up, he looks around, and he would flee for safety if he only knew where he might be at rest. These are the strivings of the Spirit of God: to pluck him as a brand from the great burning, and, though they should never issue in his salvation, they are sufficient to show that God has no pleasure in his death. There are others who are begotten again to a lively hope by the Word of God; into their hearts the Spirit enters, restores the palace which was lately in ruins, and makes it a glorious temple in which God may be worshipped, and in which the Spirit may dwell. This exhibits God not only as employing means to prevent the death of the sinner, but as actually averting his destruction, and, therefore, it is the highest possible evidence that He has no pleasure in the death of the wicked. (The Scottish Christian Herald.)
The goodness and severity of God
I. The goodness of God. He has no pleasure in the death of the wicked.
1. The very commission which Christ gave to His apostles, and which has been handed down to their successors, proves this. Go ye into all the world, etc. Tell the vilest, the very chief of sinners, without any reserve or any hesitation, that Christ died for him: that Christ hath redeemed him and all mankind.
2. And this is to be told to men who are living in sin, rebelling and sinning with a high hand against God.
3. Nay, such is the goodness of God, so little pleasure has He in the death of the wicked, that He commissions His ministers to entreat and beseech sinners to return to Him; to come and receive a full and free pardon.
4. We see His goodness yet further illustrated when these invitations are neglected and sinners perish in spite of mercy.
5. The strong and repeated expressions or delight when His warnings are heeded, and His invitations accepted, speak loudly the goodness of God.
II. The severity of God. It is implied in the text. For though He has no pleasure in the death of the wicked, they will die notwithstanding. (R. W. Dibdin, M. A.)
An appeal to the heart
Life and death are words pregnant with the highest meaning.
I. The terrible event. The death of the wicked.
1. The wicked is that person, whatever he may be as regards externals, whose will is not in unison with the will of God.
2. The wicked, far down in the dark abyss of destruction, will ever remain conscious of his loss, his wretchedness, and the intolerable anger of an offended God. His death will be his loss of Gods favour, and his own personal happiness.
3. Why is the wicked doomed to die?
(1) Because death is the inevitable tendency of the great principle that rules his soul. The wicked man is governed by selfishness–he is the slave and victim of sin. This principle is fatal to everything that is elevated, pure, and life-giving, in the spiritual world. It tends to destroy all peace of mind, to quench hope, to fetter the intellectual powers, to dissolve friendship, and to fit the soul for the gloomy regions of despair.
(2) Because death is the desert of sin.
(3) Because death is the effect of a Divine decree respecting disobedience.
II. The cheering fact. Can there be anything more consolatory to a sinner than this Divine affirmation? God takes no pleasure in the misery of His creatures.
1. It is contrary to His benevolent nature to do so. Nature, conscience, and scripture, testify that His delight is in making all beings happy.
2. The ruin of a soul gives no satisfaction to the Divine justice.
3. The design of God in all His dealings with sinners is to save them. All the powers of His infinite love, all the pathos of His infinite compassion, all the influences of His infinite Spirit, are employed to turn the wicked from his evil way, and to save his soul. It is not Gods pleasure, brother, that you should die. Your destruction must be your own act. There may be written over the portals of hell, in large letters of fire, the inscription–self-destroyed.
III. The stirring appeal.
1. It is an appeal addressed to mans higher nature. Think–give a reason for such mad conduct. This is Gods method of dealing with mens souls: He appeals to their reason. He wants to know the cause of our determination to reject the offers of redeeming love. Why will ye die? There is nothing in the Divine purposes, nothing in the sacrifice of Gods beloved Son, nothing in the agency of the Holy Spirit, yea, there is nothing in Gods remedy for diseased souls, why any sinner should die.
2. It is an appeal which implies the necessity of immediate personal attention.
(1) The duty is important: God is most urgent in His appeal. It is a matter of life or death to the soul.
(2) The duty is personal–O house of Israel, why will ye die? The appeals of the Gospel are pointed, they aim at the heart, they are applied to the individual conscience.
(3) The duty requires immediate attention. We have no time to procrastinate.
3. It is an appeal which conveys the strongest motive for obedience. Have you any doubt about the reception of a penitent sinner? Think of the oath of God. Remember the encouraging words of Jesus, He that cometh unto Me, I will in no wise cast out. (J. H. Hughes.)
God calling the wicked to repentance
I. The declaration.
1. The import of the declaration.
(1) He tells us, in what He hath not pleasure. I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked. And yet the wicked dies. In full view of this awful fact, Jehovah asserts His benevolence. If a stranger, visiting this country, looked in on the homes made wretched by vice, some of which are not very far removed from the palace; or into the cells of our prisons, which are so prominent and so costly as government institutions, throughout our land; or on the sad scene of an execution at which agents of the crown were present;–would he be justified in coming to the conclusion that our sovereign was not benevolent–that such a state of things under her government was an evidence of our queens lack of clemency? The mercy that winked at crime would produce more calamitous results than the sternest tyranny. Even goodness demands a restraint on crime, and punishment for the convicted criminal. And let it never be forgotten that the death we are now considering, in relation to the government and character of God, is the death of the wicked. We must think of his having resisted the will, disowned the authority, dishonoured the name, hated the being, and defied the power of God. Can we think of God as infinite in His being, glory, and goodness, without being constrained to conclude that eternal death is the wages due to all who thus sin against Him? Could we worship a God who, in the full knowledge of what He was, would award a punishment less than this? The one pregnant difficulty is the existence of wickedness. While this fact must be assumed, it points to what must, to us, forever remain an insoluble mystery in its relation to the will of God. But it is due to God, because of His infinite love of righteousness, that His relation to the origin of sin should be regarded without any suspicion; and it is also due to Him, as Supreme Governor, that to His mind alone the perfect rectitude of this relation should appear. If the existence of sin forms a dark background before which the glory of Him who alone is immutable all the more brightly appears, let our thoughts regarding its relation to Jehovahs sovereign will, produce the calmness of adoring silence behind the awe which overwhelms us as we think of its moral hideousness and of its everlasting results. But there is more than this. Such is the character of God, as revealed in the Gospel, that it is impossible for Him to find pleasure in the death of the wicked. The fullest exhibition of His character, and the overwhelming proof of His having no pleasure in the death of the wicked, are given to us in the Cross of Jesus Christ. Whatever be His purpose, it is abundantly evident that God is love. That is the character of Him to whom you are called to return. You are called to meet that love in the Son as Jesus the Christ, and to present yourself on His blood as a suppliant for all the blessings of the covenant of grace. What more can you desiderate?
2. He tells us in what He hath pleasure–that the wicked turn from his way and live. The repentance of the wicked is an occasion of delight to God; for it is the first acknowledgment of His being the true God; the first tribute to His Godhead from the creature of His hand; the first movement of a lost one from the wrath to come; the first rupture between Him and that abominable thing which God hateth; the first act of homage to His Anointed, who is also His Son; the first fruit of the Spirits work of grace–it is grace returning to the fountain whence it came, and bringing a wretched and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked sinner back to be filled with all the fulness of God. As our greatest pains and pleasures reach our hearts through their love, the measure of love must indicate the capacity for joy. But who can conceive what must be the gladness resulting from the gratification of infinite love! And there is a three-fold love of God, through the gratification of which He receives pleasure from the penitence and life of the wicked.
(1) His infinite love to His people. Oh, think of joy in heaven over one whose sins made the Son of God a Man of Sorrows!
(2) His infinite love to His Anointed One. Each case of conversion is an instalment of reward to Hint for doing the will, and glorifying the name, of Him who sent Him.
(3) His infinite love to Himself, and to righteousness. God is love. He is so when contemplated in the unity of the eternal Godhead. Oh, infinitely holy sphere! Oh, sphere of infinite loving–the unapproachable sphere of the interrelations and fellowship of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost! And God is love to righteousness in His relation to His moral government. And when He makes manifest that He is love to His people, He does so in such a way as to secure that in their salvation there shall appear to His view, to His infinite delight, all to which He is love,–as to afford an opportunity of expressing what He is as love to Himself, what the mutual love of the Trinity is, and how He loveth righteousness.
3. The declaration is in the form of an oath–As I live, saith the Lord. It is meet that such a declaration should have such a form, for thus only could earnestness, springing from infinite love, express itself fitly in words. Is this Divine earnestness to be met by indifference? Oh, yield not to the unbelief that would dare to prefer a charge of perjury against Him for whom it is impossible to lie!
II. The call. From out of the midst of Divine glory, from off the Divine throne of grace, and intense with Divine earnestness, comes the call to the house of Israel–Turn ye, turn ye, from your evil ways.
1. Whence? From your evil ways. Every way in which you depart from the fellowship and service of God is evil. Burdened and filled with sin, having no righteousness to cover your persons, and no excuse to hide your guilt, and while there is nothing in all your consciousness but sin, all over and all through,–with no ability yours but the fell power to transgress,–you are called to receive all the pardoning mercy and all the saving grace you need.
2. Whither? To Himself God calls you. To Himself as revealed in the declaration going before–to Himself as on His throne of grace–to Himself through Jesus Christ.
3. How? In willingness to accept the terms proposed by God, as terms of salvation and of service. Turning thus, you will verily be debtors to His grace for all you need. And you may be hoping debtors, for He raiseth the poor from the dust, He bringeth the fallen from out of the horrible pit, and He gathereth, as He calleth, outcasts from the very ends of the earth. (John Kennedy, D. D.)
The salvation of sinners desired by God
I. The state of mankind as sinners.
1. A state of moral evil. The plural ways is here employed to intimate that the courses pursued by sinners are various in their kinds.
(1) There are ways of rebellion, or opposition to Gods authority; they are open and avowed (1Co 6:9-10; Gal 5:19-21); or they are secret and concealed (Mar 7:21-23).
(2) There are ways of impenitence, or contempt of Gods mercy: in which God is forgotten (Jer 2:32); and not sought (Psa 10:4; Psa 107:10-11).
(3) There are ways of self-deception, or vain delusive hope (Pro 14:12); such is the way of self-righteousness (Jer 17:5-6; Isa 1:11); and such also is the way of antinomianism (Pro 30:12; Mat 7:21; Heb 12:14).
2. A state of imminent danger;–a state in which they are certainly exposed to death, even eternal death (Rom 6:23).
II. Their duty and privilege as sincere penitents.
1. Their duty is to turn from their evil ways.
(1) Turn from your ways of rebellion, by entire reformation (Isa 55:7; Eze 18:27).
(2) Turn from your ways of impenitence, by earnest prayer (Hos 14:1-2; Luk 18:13).
(3) Turn from your ways of self-deception, by coming to God, trusting in Christs mediation (Joh 14:6); and by seeking a new creation (Gal 6:15-16; Psa 51:10).
(4) Turn seasonably; without delay (Isa 55:6; Job 22:21).
(5) Turn perpetually; without defection (Jer 50:5).
(6) Turn believingly; in confident expectation of salvation (Heb 10:19-22).
2. Their privilege is, to be saved from death, and enjoy life.
(1) All genuine believers in our Lord Jesus Christ are saved from death by being delivered from the dominion of spiritual, and the sentence of eternal death (Joh 1:25-26).
(2) The life enjoyed by them is comprehensive: including an interest in Gods manifested favour (Psa 30:5; Psa 63:3); actual devotedness to Gods service (Rom 6:13); and the eternal possession of heaven (Rom 2:6-7).
3. The attainment of this privilege is as certain as it is desirable.
(1) From Gods earnest command.
(2) From Gods solemn oath.
(3) From Gods gracious expostulation.
1. Why will ye die? By continuing in sin you choose death, the worst of all evils; and eternal death, the worst of all deaths. This is murder, self-murder of the blackest description.
2. Why will ye die? By what arguments can you justify your conduct at the bar of your own consciences? Is not God a better master than the devil? Is not holiness better employment than sin? Are not the treasures of grace and heaven better enjoyments than hell and damnation?
3. Why will ye die? Ye men! concerning whom there is still hope of salvation. Ye Britons! the peculiar favourites of heaven; who enjoy the clearest gospel light, the greatest religious liberty, and the highest advantages for piety, in the richest abundance (Psa 147:20). Ye professing Christians! who are called by the name of Christ, and are encouraged in His word to seek Him (2Ch 7:14); who are baptized in the name of Christ, and bound by the most solemn vows to serve Him alone (Ecc 5:4).
4. Why will ye die? Remember, if thou die eternally, it must be because ye will die; your death must be the result of your own deliberate choice; for God wills your salvation. (Sketches of Four Hundred Sermons.)
The compassion of God for the unconverted
The compassion of God for the unconverted shows us how miserable the condition of such an one is. The first trait–the root and origin of all your misery–is sin; you are miserable because you are sinners. Sin is the transgression of the law. Transgression is not weakness, but it is revolting against order, it is the overthrowing of the law, which is order and rule; it is total irregularity and confusion. Such law, such transgression; such order, such disorder; he who transgresses any law offends against the order of the whole region over which that law extends its empire. He who offends against domestic law, offends against domestic order; he who transgresses the law of a nation, offends against the order of a nation; he who transgresses the law of this world, offends against the order of this world; and he who transgresses the law of the universe, offends against the order of the universe. But more remains. Sin is the transgression of the law of God: but of which law of God? for there are two laws of God: there is His material law, which regulates the visible world, to which the sea, the sun, the heavenly bodies belong; and there is His spiritual law, which governs the invisible world, to which the soul of man belongs. The law which sin transgresses is the second law, the spiritual law, which regulates the invisible world. Man sins, and the harmony of the invisible world is disturbed; but though man sins, the sea observes its limits, and the sun pursues his course, and the celestial bodies remain in their places. It is for this reason that the disorder of sin is less striking to us, carnal as we are and enslaved to visible things; but it is exactly for this reason that it ought to strike, amaze, and alarm us more. For, which is the grander and more glorious of these two worlds, the invisible or the visible world? Behold then the disorder which sin hath produced! And by a necessary consequence, since the seat of this disorder is in the sinners heart, there is the sinners misery and wretchedness; there is your wretchedness, your own individual wretchedness; and this is the reason why the God of all compassion is moved, conjures you, and says, As I live, etc. Sin does not only throw you into disorder, it exposes you also to the chastisement of God; and if you can blind your heart so that it can reconcile itself to disorder, you cannot blind God to exempt you from punishment. Vain would be your hope of persuading yourselves that your sin deserves no punishment because you were born in sin, and that it is only in the first man it should be in justice sought for. Have you never done anything which you knew to be sinful, though you had power to avoid committing it? If this has been the case, have you not felt the reproaches of conscience? Well, then, when you have done what you knew to be wrong and what you had the power of not doing, you have committed on your part what Adam did on his, and you have spiritually shared in the fall of all your race; and when your conscience has reproved you for it, you have testified against yourself that you have deserved a punishment. And what is the punishment that God reserves for sin? (Gal 3:10) A curse!–this single word has something in it which makes us tremble. Yet the malediction of any man might be unjust. If I have the approval of God and of my own heart, I could take refuge in the sanctuary of my conscience, out of the reach of man, and lift up my eyes in peace to heaven and say unto the Lord: Let them curse, but bless Thou. And even if the malediction of man were merited, it is powerless of itself. But if God, all just, all good, almighty, should curse me, what would this malediction be, but all the Divine perfections arrayed against me; the justice of God overtaking me, His power overwhelming me, and, what is more terrible, His goodness aggravating the horror of His judgments, and of my remorse, and constituting my severest torture? Ye unconverted ones, be not emboldened by the consideration that you do not feel anything commensurate with such dreadful denunciations, and do not reason in this manner within yourselves: No, I do not feel myself accursed of God. Whether you feel yourselves accursed or not, you are so, for God says it. If you feel it not, know that this insensibility is the sign of a hardened heart and the first-fruits of this very malediction. If you do not feel it now, know that you will one day feel it, when the visible things through which you are now able to disguise your condition from yourselves shall have perished. This malediction, under which you are resting, is eternal; insomuch that if you were to appear at the tribunal of Jesus Christ without having been converted, you would be condemned to endless punishment (Mat 25:41-46). I shall assume that you are sincerely desirous of conversion, and that you are determined to do, as far as in you lies, all that you can and ought to do on your part towards it. It is beyond doubt that your conversion cannot be effected by your own will; that it can only be by the will of God; that it can only be a work of God, a gift of God, a grace of God; and that a converted soul has cause to acknowledge with humility that its entire change proceeds from God, and from the very first commencement. But it would be decidedly wrong for you to conclude, that, because your conversion is the work of God and not your own, its success is less certain; on the contrary, it is more so. If your conversion be the work of God, the success depends upon the power and the perseverance, the faithfulness and the wisdom of God; and have you not everything to gain by placing your trust in such firm and sure hands,–provided only you have the assurance that God favours your conversion? But I have something to ask you: hear me with singleness of heart. Do not ask me to explain to you how it is equally true from Gods Word that no one attains conversion without the grace and election of God, and yet that you are answerable to God if you do not turn to Him, He having done for each of you all that is necessary for your conversion. Both these truths are equally attested by Scripture: this sufficiently authorises me to preach both one and the other, and this ought to be enough also to lead you to receive both. Let us apply to the things which concern our salvation that spirit of simplicity and good sense that we exercise in the ordinary affairs of life. Suppose your house on fire: the flames extend, they spread and reach the apartment in which you are; a beam over your head takes fire, is rapidly consuming and momentarily threatens to fall upon you . . . a way of escape is presented to you;–will you say, in such a case, I cannot escape from the flames unless it is ordained by God that I should; otherwise I shall perish, do what I may; I can do nothing to save myself, therefore, I will remain where I am? No, but you will see in the way opened to you a sign that God willeth your deliverance, and you will hasten to escape, without perplexing yourself to inquire whether you are destined to escape from the fire or not,. Exercise the same prudence in whatever relates to the salvation of your soul. Flee only, and you will be one of the elect. Whatever may happen, nothing on the part of God raises an obstacle to your conversion; on the contrary, everything invites, favours, and ensures its success; God willeth your conversion. What has He refused you that is necessary for your conversion? Birth, baptism, instruction, communion, preaching, Scripture, example,–what is wanting? Look around on all sides, what do you see, what do you hear but the invitations of God, but His graces, His promises, His menaces, which warn, which summon you, I had almost said, which compel you to turn? Have you ever considered, in what manner the preaching of the Gospel has reached you? Perhaps you think that it has been brought hither as to all other places where it is now known. But no; it has been borne hither by a series of special, astonishing, and miraculous dispensations, and in which a fixed design clearly appears to cause the Gospel to reach you in this country, notwithstanding all obstacles. There is not perhaps any spot on the globe which the Spirit of darkness–under all the successive forms which he has devised and assumed–has contested so pertinaciously and fiercely with the Spirit of truth, as the land that we tread, this revered land–this land covered with the most vivid and glorious reminiscences of Church history; and truth banished for a time has invariably retaken hold of this country, where it has ultimately established itself without violence before your eyes and for your benefit. I now go farther, and feel emboldened to assure you that there is nothing on Gods part to prevent you from turning to Him, nothing on His part to cause the delay of your conversion; nothing, absolutely nothing, to hinder your conversion this very day. If the work of conversion were your own, not only would it be impossible this day, but it could never take place; yet because it is the work of God it is as practicable this day as on any other. And Gods desire is not that you should postpone it: even this day He invites you to turn to Him. Today if ye will hear His voice, harden not your hearts. But an invitation to turn tomorrow, you will nowhere find in the Word of God: when conversion is the subject, Scripture does not know the word tomorrow, except to protest against all delay. Scripture presents many instances of persons turning as soon as they are called. Lydia hears Paul, and the Lord opens her heart. The jailor of Philippi hears the Gospel, and is converted the same night. The nobleman of Capernaum sees his servant healed by Jesus Christ, and believes with all his house. Zaccheus seeks Jesus, finds Him, receives Him, and performs works of faith–all in one day. The thief humbles himself, is converted, and receives the promise of life whilst he is on the cross. All things are now ready for the conversion of souls. On the Kings pare all is ready: the oxen and fatlings are killed, the dinner is prepared, the tables are covered, the places are arranged, the doors are open, the servants are sent, the guests are invited, they have only to enter and sit down at the feast. All is ready since the world began, for anyone who is now desirous, has desired, or will desire to be converted. But if God desire your conversion, and desire it this day; if on His side all is encouragement, invitation, will, disposition; and if He does all that can be done, all that can be imagined–except compelling you–in order that you should turn; from whom then arise the obstacles which impede your conversion, or the delays which retard it? From whom, if not from yourselves? from yourselves, who wilt not enter when God opens His door to you, who will not open to Him when He knocks at yours, who, in short, will not turn to Him? What prevents you from taking up your Bible and reading it with attention, perseverance, prayer? from praying to God for His grace and His Spirit, for faith, and a new heart? from confessing your sins to the Lord, and beseeching Him to blot them out with His blood? from doing what God enjoins in His Word, and ceasing to do what He forbids? from seeking the encouragement and advice of experienced Christians who are within your reach? what, in fine, prevents you from hearing God who speaks to you, from following God who calls you, from opening to God who knocks, and from doing, in a word, all that is necessary to your conversion? (A. Monod.)
Life by repentance unto life
God is here; revealing the secret thoughts of many hearts on the subject of sin, and the hopelessness of deliverance from its dominion and the impossibility of coming to life or salvation, if that salvation is to consist in separation from sin in the inner and outer man. Salvation, or eternal life, by redemption from sin, and reconciliation with God in repentance, and its fruit, or fulfilment, regeneration, this is to be the message of every minister of the Gospel, which is not only to be proclaimed so plainly and loudly that it cannot be mistaken, but to be pressed on the conscience of his people with the intense earnestness of affection, and fervent longing for their souls salvation, which will breathe the very spirit of the Divine love, to which the minister but gives expression.
1. A false persuasion possesses the minds of innumerable members of the Christian Church as thoroughly as it pervaded the Jewish on the subject of sin, salvation, and the righteousness, as well as grace, of Gods providence, or judgment, in His dealings with sinners. Do Christians in general, any more than Jews in Ezekiels day, connect consciously in their own minds, as things inseparable, sin not repented of and death eternal, or damnation, sin repented of and life eternal, or salvation? Is the way of the Lord in their eyes equal, by a revelation which has commended itself to their consciences of a way of righteousness that is invariable in the case of every sinner, the saved and the lost equally, and as unchangeable as the life of the eternal God Himself, being one of the laws of the kingdom of heaven, indeed; the fundamental law on which the kingdom eternally rests? Is life, in their faith, separation inwardly and outwardly from sin? Is salvation, in their view, salvation from sin, and reconciliation with God, or return to God on the sinners part by repentance unto life, and regeneration to newness of spiritual life? Do they see that such is the salvation of the Gospel?
2. What, then, is to prepare the way of the Lord in the Christian, as formerly in the Jewish church? What but the proclamation of the antidote to the former life in the message of the prophet which forms the second lesson of the text? What but repentance unto life revealed to be the Gospel way of salvation, the way of salvation open to every sinner equally without respect of persons, and the only way of salvation to any sinner, because the only possible way by which a sinner can become a saint?
(1) God, as He is now revealed in Christ, wishes the salvation of every sinner, and has no pleasure in the death of any. This is not only a matter of certainty, an unquestionable truth to which the Gospel bears testimony in innumerable passages. It is the fundamental truth on which the whole Gospel of salvation rests, because it is the thing revealed in the revelation of God as a Redeemer, who has no respect of persons,–a Saviour of sinners, whether they be Jews or Gentiles, a Father of every prodigal son.
(2) God, as He is now in Christ revealing this His purpose of love universal, has proclaimed the way of salvation in the case of every sinner alike to be repentance unto life. Enter in by repentance, for in repenting thou art turning thy back on hell, and all that is infernal and of the wicked one; thou art taking part with thy true Lord and Redeemer against those very enemies and powers of darkness from which He came to set thee free; thou art allowing, and inviting, and beseeching Him to turn thee from darkness to light, etc.
(3) God in the Gospel of Christ has now commanded His ministers to preach repentance unto life as the way of salvation to all sinners, and to press it earnestly and incessantly on the consciences of all, with all affection, as the only way of escaping death or damnation.
(i) It is a mans own fault–God is not to bear the blame–if the man, although a sinner, does not come to life and salvation.
(ii)
This is the purpose of a Gospel ministry, to bring you to repentance, and so to salvation; to baptize you with the baptism of repentance, through faith in Jesus Christ for you crucified, and so bestow on you remission of sins, and all the other spiritual blessings of the kingdom of heaven.
(iii)
Whatever be the actual result to you personally, the way of the Lord is equal, and impartial. God is gracious, and to you gracious, whether you believe so or disbelieve. God is righteous, and will deal with you righteously in His providence, and judge you in righteousness according to your way and works, whether you come to repentance, and so forsake sin, or refuse to come to repentance, and so remain ungodly, unrighteous, unregenerate. (R. Paisley.)
Why will ye die, O House of Israel?—
Why go to hell
I. A horrible resolution. A resolution to die–a determination to be damned. Stay, sir, says one, that is far too strong an assertion; who ever heard anyone say that he intended to go to hell? I never said anyone had been heard to say so, all I say is, they determine to.
1. A man may De said to have resolved to die when he uses the means of death. There is a black mixture, sweet to the natural taste of man, but labelled by God slow poison, called sin. The result of taking it is declared, in language that cannot be mistaken, to be certain death. The soul that sinneth, it shall die. The wages of sin is death. Sin when it is finished bringeth forth death. These are a few of the red labels of caution that God has put upon sin.
2. A man may be said to have determined to die, who spurns all that could save him from death. It is possible to ensure death by simply refusing to accept anything that could rescue from it. The poison is in your blood, working death, and in rejecting Christ you have given as awful a proof of determination to die, as ever you could have given by the vilest of lives.
3. A man may be said to have determined to die who surmounts all obstacles placed in his way in order to prevent him. God only knows how many obstacles you have overcome in your race to ruin. In early days a mother stopped your path, but you soon evaded her, and broke her heart. A Sunday school teacher did his best to arrest you, but he proved no great obstacle; you soon left his class when you found he was satisfied with nothing less than the salvation of your soul. Hundreds of sermons have been flung across your path, but you have somehow got over them all.
II. A plaintive question. Why will ye die?
1. Is hell so pleasant a place you want to enter there?
2. Is it because heaven has no charms?
3. Is eternity in your estimation a trifle? I could better understand your indifference to salvation–or, as we are describing it tonight, your preference for perdition–if the future state was in either case of only limited duration. But to risk the loss of a soul, when forever and forever is part of the contract, is almost sufficient to stagger belief, were there not so many sad witnesses to the fact.
4. Do you consider a soul worthless? You value your health, you value your home, you value your friends, but you set no value on your soul. Is it so? Surely that which will outlive all the other possessions of a man must be of some worth. Remember also that if you count it of but little value, it has been differently estimated by One who ought to know, considering that He made it. Christ considers that the worth of one soul outweighs the accumulated wealth of a universe.
III. A glorious truth, full of hope for sinners. If this text proclaims anything, it declares with trumpet tongue that hell is not unavoidable. It steps in the path of the sinner, throws a barrier before him, and argues with him to wean him from his fatal resolve.
1. God does not desire the sinners ruin.
2. Hell was never prepared for man at all, but for the devil and his angels, and it is only if man prefers Satan to God on earth, that he must reap the consequences of his choice in eternity by dwelling forever in the home of the one he has preferred.
3. Although God hates sin, He loves the sinner, with a love unutterable. (A. G. Brown.)
Divine expostulation
Christian teachers are always talking to men about conversion, change of heart, and consequent change of habit. The Christian teacher seems to be intent upon pressing upon the attention of men a certain scheme of thought. He will not speak to us so much about practical life, conduct, habit, manners, and the like; he persistently addresses himself to the exposition and enforcement of certain abstract or metaphysical arguments. The idea is that if you can really alter a mans thought, you at the same time alter the mans fife. The Christian teacher, therefore, if really sent from God, begins with the heart, he does not come to wash the hands, but to cleanse the soul; knowing that when the heart is really clean, thoroughly purified, the hands cannot be foul. He would make the fountain good that he may purify the stream; he would make the tree good that the fruit which it brings forth may also be good. The motive determines the quality. If a man be building from the outside and only on the outside, then be sure he is not a durable builder. Hence the slowness, or the apparent slowness, of the Christian movement. You can write a programme in a few moments; you can, by using proper instrumentalities, organise a demonstration for fourteen or ten days, and it shall be quite impressive and portentous to some minds and eyes; but it means nothing unless there be behind it a conviction, a spiritual reality, a noble motive, then it must win. When your minds are full of right thoughts we need take no further care of you. You are under the government of God; but whilst you have cast out the evil thoughts and have not received the good thoughts you are yourselves a temptation and an opportunity to the devil. First of all, then, we lay down this proposition, that a man must be born again; not merely restored, reformed, redressed, rehabilitated, but born, born again; starting life as a babe, with a babes heart, and a babes eye of wonder, and a babes trustfulness. Who is Christ? Have you begun at the right name? My Lord hath a thousand appellations, yea by ten thousand names is He known to all the adoring angels, but to me He is known first and midst and last by the sweet name–Saviour. What man wants in the first instance is the distinct consciousness that he needs a Saviour. Until he gets that consciousness he can make no progress. Only broken heartedness can pray; only helplessness can cry mightily to heaven; only agony has e he key of the Cross. When a man does not thirst he does not inquire for the stream, but when his throat is burning with thirst his lips are full of heat because of want of water; he tries to say, though chokingly, Where is the well, where is the stream? Then a child might load him; but so long as that necessity is not biting him, burning him, scorching him, he holds his head aloft, he will not be talked to, he will not have any dogmatic teaching; let him alone. The time will come when he will ask the least child that can talk to tell him where the living stream doth flow. The Christian idea is that there is only one Saviour. But He is a thousand Saviours in one. He has all man needs, and man needs all He has. It is a very complex problem, though simple in some of its aspects. Man never knows how great a being he is until he knows Christ. Christ makes the man himself so much larger. He addresses Himself to the very mystery of our manhood. He does not ignore our will. He knows that we are fearfully and wonderfully made, He knows that He is dealing with the handiwork of God, for a moment spoiled by the devil; therefore He saith, What wilt thou, poor blind man? what wilt thou, lonesome leper? Therefore saith He, Believe ye that I am able to do this? and when He reproaches us He says, Ye will not come unto Me that ye might have life; and in that last, grandest, sublimest plaint He says, O Jerusalem, Jerusalem! killer, stoner of prophets and missionaries, how often would I have gathered thee together as a hen doth gather her brood under her wings, and ye would not: and these words He could hardly speak, for He was choking with emotion, and the tears were running from His eyes. Christianity is a pleading religion, it is a missionary religion; it goes out after that which is lost, and will not come until it hath found it. The Gospel has only one time–now! The Gospel has no tomorrow; Now is the accepted time, now is the day of salvation. All earnestness has only one time. Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might, with a will, with a tremendous concentrated energy, for in the grave there is no device. Christianity has only one way–believe! How this word has been maltreated! To believe is to give the soul over to the keeping of the way of God. Belief is not assenting to something, saying, That is true: I see no reason against it: in the meantime your proposition seems to be wholly impregnable, your position is invincible: on the whole I accede and consent. That is not faith; that is a mere intellectual action. To believe is to nestle the soul in God. Christianity has only one purpose–holiness. Christianity ends in conduct. Christianity begins in motive, but it ends in character, in manhood. We are to be perfect men in Christ Jesus, we are to be as He was in the earth; we are to breathe His Spirit, repeat His deeds, follow His footsteps, and represent Him to mankind. Christianity has only one test–service. To die for Christ, to work for Christ, to be always repeating Christs great mission to the world. Lord, what wilt Thou have me do? Watch a door, light a lamp, or preach Thy Word? Not my will, but Thine be done; only dismiss me not Thy service, Lord! (J. Parker, D. D.)
Man is bent on his own destruction
1. Men break the law of God, knowing that the penalty of breaking this law is their everlasting ruin. If a man should pass through the streets, plunging a dagger into the heart of everyone he met with, if we had evidence that he had his reason, we should say that he meant to tempt the law to do its best for his destruction.
2. The same truth is manifest from the fact that sinners reject Jesus Christ, the only medium of their pardon and their salvation. If one had broken the law of man, and should refuse to receive pardon from the hands of his chief magistrate, although he should go daily to his prison, and offer that pardon, and solicit his acceptance, we should say that he intends to die. If the conditions were that he should receive that pardon at the hands of the chief magistrate, with due acknowledgments, and without any necessary degradation, we should say that he not only intends, but deserves to die.
3. From other facts, it is evident, that sinners are determined to die, inasmuch as they reject the influence of the Holy Ghost, the only power that can make them clean, and take their feet out of the horrible pit and miry clay, and set them upon a rock. If one had fallen into a deep cavern, and there was but one ear that could hear, and but one arm that could save, and he should refuse to be aided by that arm, we should say that he certainly means his own destruction.
4. The same truth is evident from the fact that men are going on to form a character for perdition, when they know that a totally different character is requisite to fit them for heaven.
(1) Will it prove you brave to dare the Eternal to His face?–to rush upon the thick bosses of Jehovahs buckler, and browbeat the sacred and terrible anathemas of the whole law and the whole Gospel? Would a man rush into the mouth of a cannon or leap into the crater of Vesuvius, to show himself brave? Would he not thus evince himself a natural fool?
(2) Will it prove you wise to place so small a value upon the soul, and expose it to endless ruin? Would it not place you too by the side of him who sold all the honours of his birthright for a mess of pottage?
(3) Let me inquire whether it will prove you good? O, can a good being place so little value upon the glory of the Eternal, and put so low a value upon the blood of Christ! (D. A. Clark.)
Why will ye die
1. One will die because his heart is engrossed with worldly cares.
2. Another, because he is ashamed to have it known that he is anxious.
3. Another, because he is unwilling to give up some sinful companion.
4. Another, because he is unwilling to leave his profession.
5. Another, because he is unwilling to pray in his family.
6. Another, because he is unwilling to confess Christ before men.
7. Another will lose his soul by talking about others.
8. Pride of consistency will keep some out of heaven. They fear that if they commence a religious life they will not hold out, and so will not begin.
9. Some will lose their souls by spending their time in cavilling at Divine truth.
10. Others will perish in consequence of cherishing some secret sin, known only to God and their own consciences. (A. Nettleton, D. D.)
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
Verse 11. As I live, saith the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked] From this to the twentieth verse inclusive is nearly the same with Eze 18:3 &c., on which I wish the reader to consult the notes. See Clarke on Eze 18:3.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
As I live, saith the Lord God: see Eze 5:11; 16:48; 17:16.
I have no pleasure: see Eze 18:23,32.
But that the wicked: here is an ellipsis; but I have pleasure in the seasonable return the sinner makes from sin to holiness, and from death to life.
Turn ye; O leave sin, cease to do evil, be persuaded to repent; it will please me to pardon your faults, and to throw away the rod, and to save your persons.
Why will ye die? death is your choice, not mine, so long as you go on in the way that is not good; whoso sinneth against me wrongeth his own soul, and love to sin is interpretatively a love and choosing of death. It is your culpable will, not my severe resolution, that you die.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
11. To meet the Jews’ cry ofdespair in Eze 33:10, Ezekielhere cheers them by the assurance that God has no pleasure in theirdeath, but that they should repent and live (2Pe3:9). A yearning tenderness manifests itself here,notwithstanding all their past sins; yet with it a holiness thatabates nothing of its demands for the honor of God’s authority. God’srighteousness is vindicated as in Eze 3:18-21;Eze 18:1-32, by thestatement that each should be treated with the closest adaptation ofGod’s justice to his particular case.
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
Say unto them, as I live, saith the Lord,…. The following is the answer returned from the Lord by the prophet to their above complaint and reasoning; to which is premised the oath of God, showing the certainty, reality, and sincerity of what is said, which might be depended on as true:
I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, &c.
[See comments on Eze 18:23],
[See comments on Eze 18:31],
[See comments on Eze 18:32]:
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
(11) I have no pleasure.Comp. Eze. 18:28; Eze. 18:32. Ezekiel meets the despair of the people by the assurance, long before given in another connection, that the Creator and Father of all can have no pleasure in the death of any, and adds an earnest exhortation to repentance that they may be saved. Yet it was very important that there should be no misunderstanding in regard to the basis of acceptance with God, and the prophet therefore, in the following verses (12-20). briefly reiterates the teaching of Ezekiel 18 in regard to the individual responsibility of every one for himself before God. This teaching has already been explained under Ezekiel 18.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
“Say to them, As I live, says the Lord Yahweh, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live. Turn yourselves, turn yourselves, from your evil ways. For why will you die, O house of Israel.”
These words should be written in large letters. God has ‘no pleasure in the death of the wicked’. His longing is that they turn from their wickedness and live. That is why He made the provision for forgiveness under the old covenant at Sinai, and that is why He sent His Son into the world that we might live through Him. There will be no pleasure for God in the judgment day. Only deep regret and sorrow as He passes His sentence on the majority of mankind. But nevertheless that sentence will be passed on all those who have not turned from their sins, for God is not only love, He is also light. He cannot overlook or deal lightly with unforgiven sin, for it reveals a heart set on evil.
But here He emphatically calls men to turn from their sins. He longs for their repentance. Then He will not have to judge them. Then they will not need to face sin’s punishment. Then they will not die the death of the wicked. His cry to His people is heart-rending. ‘Why will you choose to die?’
God’s reply reveals that the sacrificial system was not seen by Him as a final necessity. They were not in a position to offer sacrifices, but forgiveness was available. What was required was a heart that turned to Him in repentance. For He looked ahead to the one great sacrifice for sin that would replace all others, the sacrifice of Himself for man’s sin. It was that that enabled ‘the passing over of sin done aforetime’ (Rom 3:25).
Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett
DISCOURSE: 1112
GOD EXPOSTULATING WITH SINNERS
Eze 33:11. Say unto them, As I live, saith the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; but that the wicked turn from his way and live: turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways; for why will ye die, O house of Israel?
THE excuses which men offer for not turning unto God, are, for the most part, reflections cast on the Deity himself. One man deems the service of God unnecessary; another thinks it impracticable in his particular situation; another says, I can do nothing without grace, and if God do not bestow his grace upon me, how can I help myself? Such was the disposition manifested by the Jews of old, when they were invited and commanded to repent: they complained, that it was to no purpose to repent, since they were already pining away under their transgressions; and that the promises of life, which were held forth to them in Gods name, were delusive, since God, so far from wishing to pardon them, had shewn a pleasure in executing his vengeance upon them [Note: This seems to be implied in ver. 10. as connected with the text.]. Against such unrighteous accusations, God vindicates himself by an oath, and by the most pressing and affectionate exhortation renews his calls to repentance. In the message which he sent by the prophet to the Jews, we have his message to sinners of every age and nation: and in delivering it to you at this time we would call your attention to two things contained in it:
I.
A solemn oath
Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth, for the Lord speaketh, yea, sweareth; and, because he can swear by no greater, he swears by himself, even by his own life and immortal perfections. But what is it which Jehovah condescends to confirm in this solemn manner?
1.
That he hath no pleasure in the death of a sinner
[What? was this a matter so doubtful, that it was necessary to remove our doubts in such a way? Methinks, we need no further proof of this than our own continuance in the land of the living. Should we, should any of us, have been here, if God had taken pleasure in our death? Have we not provoked God in ten thousand instances to cut us off, and would he not long since have consigned us over to perdition, if he had not been slow to anger, and rich in mercy? Would God moreover have given his only dear Son to die for us, and his blessed Spirit to convert and sanctify us, yea, would he wait so long to be gracious unto us, and, notwithstanding our obstinacy, follow us every day with invitations, entreaties, promises, and expostulations; would he act thus, I say, if he had pleasure in our death? Surely it was not any uncertainty respecting this truth itself, but our backwardness to believe it, that gave occasion for such an astonishing vindication of it.]
2.
That he has pleasure in the conversion and salvation of sinners
[This is not at all less obvious than the foregoing truth: and the same observations which confirm the one, will establish the other also. But we may farther refer both to existing facts, and most explicit declarations, in support of this assertion. We cannot conceive more atrocious guilt than that which David had contracted, guilt aggravated a hundred-fold by his past professions and experience. But no sooner did he acknowledge his transgression, than the prophet who had been commissioned to denounce the heaviest judgments against him, was inspired to reply, The Lord hath put away thy sin, thou shalt not die [Note: 2Sa 12:13.]. In what beautiful colours is the mercy of our God painted in the parable of the lost sheep, and the returning prodigal! Is it possible for words more fully to describe how much he delighteth in mercy? Let us marvel then at the condescension of our God in confirming such declarations by an oath. Had he sworn in his wrath that we should not enter into his rest, we might easily have accounted for it; because, however merited such a judgment might be, he is never brought, but with extreme reluctance, to execute it [Note: Isa 28:21. His strange act.]. But to establish his character for mercy in such a way, was altogether superfluous, except for the more abundant display of his own goodness, and the richer consolation of our minds.]
That this testimony of God, respecting his own delight in mercy, may not fail of producing its proper effect on our minds, it is enforced by,
II.
An affectionate exhortation
Had we not already seen such condescension as almost exceeds our belief, we might well be filled with wonder at the further proofs of it which are exhibited in the text
The Creator and Judge of all stoops to use the language of entreaty towards perishing sinners
[He does not simply issue his command, but repeats it with all the tenderness and solicitude of the most affectionate parent. He sees with deep concern how all like sheep are gone astray, every one to his own way: one is wandering in the paths of open sensuality and profaneness; another has involved himself in the labyrinths of worldly care; another is pleasing himself with the idea that he belongs to the fold of God, while he has nothing but the form of godliness without any of its power. But God would have all return to him, to walk in his ways, and to enjoy his blessings. He longs to see the sensualist, the worldling, and the formal professor of religion, all truly and thoroughly awakened to a sense of their guilt and danger, and all seeking after the salvation of their souls as the one thing needful. He would not that one of them should perish, but that all should come to repentance and live. Hence his earnestness in urging their immediate and effectual return.]
He further enforces his request with a most animated expostulation
[Sin and death are inseparably connected: there is no alternative but to flee from sin or perish forever; we must turn or die. This is evidently implied in the expostulation which God uses; and the certainty of it is far more strongly marked, than if it had been asserted in the plainest terms. Let sinners then answer the question which God puts to them, Why will ye die? Is death, eternal death so light a matter, that ye will subject yourselves to it for the fleeting gratifications of sin? Is it a light thing to fall into the hands of the living God, and to have both body and soul cast into hell for ever? Or is a life of godliness so painful, that the labours of it will not be repaid by all the felicity of heaven? If we were to ask you, Why will ye seek after God? Why will ye regard your souls? Why will ye forsake the beaten paths of sin, and walk in the unfrequented ways of righteousness? your answers would be plain; the most ignorant might give such a reply, as not all the wisdom of man could gainsay or resist. But what will ye answer to the interrogation in the text? And if you are constrained now, notwithstanding your habits of self-vindication, to acknowledge the folly and madness of your conduct, how much more will you be speechless in the day of judgment, when the enormity of such conduct will appear without any palliation or disguise! Let not God then reason with you in vain: but turn from those ways, which you are not able to justify, or, with any shadow of propriety, to excuse.]
Application
1.
To those who are now at length desirous of returning to God
[It is not from profaneness to morality, or from morality to an outward observance of religious duties, that God calls us; but from all sin whatever to a sound and thorough conversion. Be sure then that you do not mistake in a matter of such infinite importance; but turn to God in the ways which he has appointed. Go with penitence and contrition to the Lord Jesus, that you may be washed in the fountain of his blood: and pray to God for the influences of his Spirit, that you may be sanctified wholly in body, soul, and spirit, and be preserved blameless unto his heavenly kingdom. Rest in nothing short of this, for it is to this only that the promise of life is annexed; you must be converted, and become as little children (simple, teachable, dependent, obedient in all things) if ever you would enter into the kingdom of heaven.]
2.
To those who are still determined to withstand the entreaties of God
[Go on in sin, till you have filled up the measure of your iniquities: but remember, ye will not have to cast the blame on God in that day when your calamities shall come upon you. God has at this very hour testified with an oath, that it is his desire to save your souls; yea, he at this moment expostulates with you, and beseeches you to seek his face. Nor shall ye have to accuse your minister in that day. We are told indeed, in the very chapter before us, that the blood of those who perish, shall be required at the hands of negligent and unfaithful ministers [Note: ver. 79.]: but, even though your blood were to be required at the hands of your minister, it would be no alleviation of your misery, since you also would die in your iniquity, and be condemned together with him. We hope, however, and are determined, God helping us, to be pure from your blood: we have warned you, and do warn you yet again, that you must turn or die; if ye live after the flesh ye shall die; but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live. Whatever others therefore may plead, ye have, and shall have, none but yourselves to blame; and it will be a bitter reflection in the day of judgment, to think, that God called, and ye refused; and that Christ would often have gathered you as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, but ye would not. May God prevent those reflections by giving you repentance unto life, for his dear Sons sake: Amen, and Amen.]
Fuente: Charles Simeon’s Horae Homileticae (Old and New Testaments)
Eze 33:11 Say unto them, [As] I live, saith the Lord GOD, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; but that the wicked turn from his way and live: turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways; for why will ye die, O house of Israel?
Ver. 11. As I live, saith the Lord God, &c. ] This is one of those precious places, those mellifluous honeycombs, which we should go on sucking towards heaven, as Samson once did towards his parents. Jdg 14:9 Here, if anywhere, we may find “strong consolation.” God, when he swears, desires certainly to be credited, saith Tertullian. a Oh happy we, for whose sakes God vouchsafeth to swear! and oh, thrice wretched we, if we believe not God, no, though he swear to us! Oh, saith Theodoret here, who can ever sufficiently admire the Lord’s great goodness, who, being so shamefully slighted by the sinful sons of men, doth yet swear his readiness to receive them graciously who have revolted grievously? Well might Nazianzen say that God delighteth in nothing so much as in man’s conversion and salvation: b , , saith Basil – i.e., he would we should fear him, not fall by his hand: Redire nos sibi, non perire desiderat, as Chrysologus phraseth it, return unto him, not “perish from the way.” Psa 2:12
For why will ye die?
a Lib. de Poenitent., cap. 4.
b Suffundere mavult sanguinem quam effundere. – Tertul.
As H live, he. Figure of speech Delete. App-6.
saith the Lord GOD = [is] Adonai Jehovah’s oracle, See note on Eze 2:4.
turn ye. Note the Figure of speech Epizeuxis. App-6.
evil. Hebrew. ra’a. App-44.
why will ye die . . . ? Figure of speech Erotesis. App-6.
God and the Sinner
As I live, saith the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; but that the wicked turn from his way and live: turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways; for why will ye die, O house of Israel?Eze 33:11.
1. Our text must be viewed in the light of the preceding fact that the prophet, by Divine commandment, had pronounced a judgment on Israel. That judgment had declared that their transgressions were on them, and that they would die in their sins. To this denunciation in the verse preceding the text they reply: If our transgressions and our sins be upon us, and we pine away in them, how should we then live? The answer of the people is an expression of despair and helplessness. But it is more. It charges God with the helplessness and despair of their situation, and seeks to justify themselves. It is as if they had said: How can you blame us for not living? Who has resisted Gods will? We are powerless to help ourselves! Our death is by Gods imperious, irresistible decree. It is His pleasure that we should die, and we cannot help ourselves. To this charge, making God responsible for their death, the text replies: Say unto them, As I live, saith the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; but that the wicked turn from his way and live: turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways; for why will ye die, O house of Israel?
2. The people to whom Ezekiels message was addressed were not familiar with the idea of the Divine righteousness, and they could not at once perceive that anger against sin was consistent in God with pity for the sinner and mercy towards the contrite. The task of the prophet was to transform their attitude of sullen impenitence into one of submission and hope, by teaching them the meaning of judgment, the efficacy of repentance, the possibility and the conditions of forgiveness. And this could be taught to them only through a revelation of the free and infinite grace of God.
It is thus that God meets Israels hard thoughts concerning Him. Instead of being provoked to anger by their rebelliousness He answers their suspicious unbelief by a reiteration of His words of grace. How patient, how long-suffering, how condescending! Instead of executing vengeance, He renews the assurances of His unfeigned, loving interest in their welfare. Unmoved by their taunts and charges of insincerity, He approaches them in the posture of a friend; He repeats the declaration of His gracious mind; He adds new, and larger, and fuller asseverations of His unwearied and inexhaustible compassion. God thus, in the most solemn way, declares to us His loving intentions. He has laid bare the inmost thoughts of His heart. He tells us that these thoughts are the very opposite of ours; that His desire is not to destroy, but to save.
I
A Divine Declaration
As I live, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked.
It would seem as if the despair of man won from God His profoundest secret, His most healing revelation. The solemn affirmation with which the text opens means that before we can disprove the benevolent attitude of the Divine mind toward the sinner we must disprove the being of God. As I live, saith the Lord; just as certain as I exist, just as certain as I have self-existence, just as certain as that existence is eternal, just as certain is it that God has no pleasure in mens everlasting death.
Is it not wonderful that God should stoop so low as to confirm His promise by an oath? When men do this they always swear by one greater than themselves. God has none greater than Himself, so He swears by His own eternal being, saying, As surely as I live, saith the Lord, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that he should turn unto me and live. I remember how astonished and touched I was when I first saw this truth. I wept with emotion at the thought of Gods love and His eager desire that I should be saved; and I fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope set before me. I saw that His promise and His oath were quite sufficient for me to cling to, and that they could never, never fail.1 [Note: J. Thain Davidson, The City Youth, 285.]
1. Among the most subtle devices of sin to keep the soul under its power, and prevent the mans turning to God, is the slandering of the Most High by misrepresenting His character. As dust blinds the eye, so does sin prevent the sinner from seeing God aright. Blessed are the pure in heart; for they shall see God; but the wicked see only what they think to be God, and that, alas, is an image as unlike to God as possible! They say, for instance, that God is unmerciful, whereas He delighteth in mercy. The unfaithful servant in the parable was quite sure about it, and said most positively, I knew that thou art an austere man; whereas the nature of God is as opposite to overbearing and exaction as light is to darkness. When men once get this false idea of God into their minds they become hardened in heart; believing that it is useless to turn to God, they go on in their sins with greater determination. They conceive that God is either implacable, or that He is indifferent to human prayers, or that, if He should hear them, yet He is not in the least likely to grant a favourable answer.
Mercy never bears so grand a look, or moves so majestically, as when she takes counsel of justice. No man is ever so magnificently just as he that can be even tenderly merciful, no man so truly merciful as one that can hold steadily exact the balance of truth and justice. Our highest impressions of Gods justice are obtained when we conceive it as the partly discretionary dispensation of a mind in the tenderness and loving patience of the cross; our highest impressions of His mercy when we conceive it as the wonderful sacrifice to which even His justice allows Him to bend. Little honour then does any one pay to Gods judicial majesty in a scheme of satisfaction that takes away His right of discretion and requires Him to stand for His exact equivalent of pain, according to the count of arithmetic.2 [Note: H. Bushnell, The Vicarious Sacrifice, 236.]
2. When we come to think of God, what is it we must find at the centre of His nature so far as we can conceive of Him in His greatness? Is it not His goodnessis it not that heart of benevolent intentions and desires that leads Him as the great centre to spread His mercies over all His works and to make manifest the loving-kindness of His heart whenever His ways are understood? Beyond all question, good is God, and God is good. God is love, and love properly understood is infinite goodness. In the deep nature where He feels more than all created goodness can feel, and the infinite intensity of that heart of love that constitutes Him God, is there not reason why He should say, and say with emphasis, and confirm it with this oath, as He has written it in the blood of His Son, that He has no pleasure in the death of the wicked? God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. Here is the attitude of Gods mind towards sinners. Here is His yearning over them. Here is His boundless love. Here is the means devised for their redemption. Not even the devil can face that epitome of the gospel and affirm Gods pleasure in the death of the wicked.
Of the three great truths that God is Spirit, is Light, is Love, this last is the chief, for the other two ideas are incomplete without it. If, says Augustine, this one thing only were all we were told by the voice of the Spirit of God, that God is love, nothing more ought we to require. All the Divine attributes are combined in love, as in their centre and vital principle. This unity of the Divine nature is more than a moral union, it is one of essence, it is one of holiness. In the words of Van Oosterzee, God is Holy Love. All His properties must be regarded as the attributes of love. Gods power is thus the power of love; Gods knowledge the intelligence of love; Gods righteousness the righteousness of love.1 [Note: R. F. Weidner, Theologia, or the Doctrine of God, 30.]
The love of God is too great to understand and to grasp, for it is infinite. It would be too great to believe, only He who is the Truth has said it. Let us then wonder and be amazed at it, while we believe in it. This is the feeling God would work in you by it. Can it be? might be the question of wondering love at the infinite and unutterable love of God, or it might be doubt. When the question comes, let us thank God that it is, and then the feeling will be, not doubt but admiring love.2 [Note: The Story of Dr. Puseys Life, 361.]
3. The universality of the gospel invitations, their earnestness, their broadness, is an evidence of the truth that a sinners death can never be attributed to Gods pleasure. Gods pleasure runs in another direction. It is further evidenced by the welcome that is extended to the man who accepts the invitation and who returns to God. Read the fifteenth chapter of Luke, in that matchless parable of the prodigal son: But when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck and kissed him, and said to his servants, Bring forth the best robe, and put it on him; and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet: and bring hither the fatted calf, and kill it; and let us eat, and be merry: for this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found. It was meet that we should make merry, and be glad: for this thy brother was dead, and is alive again; and was lost, and is found. In this beautiful image is expressed the attitude of God towards any sinner who turns and repents. The naturalness of it is the force of it. Its power is in the adaptation to our conception. We can understand when a wayward son has run away from home and wasted his substance in riotous living, and yet, when in want, seeks by repentance to return to the fathers housewe can understand that the old mans heart would go out to his erring and wandering boy, and that he would not spurn him from his door; that he would keep the light shining in the windows that he might see it and return, and that he would welcome him with more joy than one who had never been astray. Now one cannot look at a scene of that kind and say that that father had pleasure in the want and in the death of his boy. One could not look at that welcome and say that the reason the boy was in such deplorable condition was that his fathers mind was hostile to him.
And it is when we look to God as He is manifested in Jesus Christ that we can see why God should speak with such earnestness as is expressed in the text before us. Jesus of Nazareth have pleasure in the death of the wicked! Jesus of Nazareth leave men to perish when He could as easily save them as He could move His finger! Jesus of Nazareth, who could not suffer a reproof to a mother bringing to Him her infant that He might lay His hands upon it, and bless it! Jesus of Nazareth, who could not see the widow and her dead son, without His heart being moved and melted with compassion! Jesus of Nazareth, who could not hear the blind man crying to Him for sight without stopping the procession of His triumphal entry, and calling for the man to be brought to Him! Jesus of Nazareth, who, when He felt the bloody sweat drop from His brow, in the terrific agonies of the curse that was wringing His heart, and said, Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me, had love enough for the souls for whom He had died to say, Nevertheless, not my will, but thine, be doneand who took that cup and held it to His lips until He could say, It is finished, and bowed His head, and died. Jesus of Nazareth having pleasure in the death of the wicked! If we take God as He is seen in Christ, and understand Him as He is there seen, we can have no difficulty in perceiving how natural and reasonable it was that He should send a message like this to a people, like the Jews in Ezekiels time, who complained that they could not help themselves, and that God could help them, but did not care to do so.
The battle is virtually won if you come to believe that in Jesus of Nazareth God was manifested in the flesh, and that it is your first and highest duty to bow before Him with penitence for your sin and trust in His mercy. And I can promise you, on the strength of the experience of one who, like yourselves, once saw his early faith covered with a boundless sea of darkness, that if you once reach a firm belief in this fundamental fact, the waters shall some day begin to ebbshall drain down to the depths whence they came; and, as the flood retires, that solitary truththe manifestation of God in the person of Christshall gradually be surrounded by province after province of Divine revelation, beautiful with fresh verdure and pleasant streams, and rich with yellow harvests; and, hidden deep beneath the soil, there shall be a secret treasure of wisdom and of joy: the gold and the crystal cannot equal it, and the exchange of it shall not be for jewels of fine gold.1 [Note: R. W. Dale, From Doubt to Faith (Exeter Hall Lectures, 1864), 12.]
It is the greatness of Thy love, dear Lord, that we would celebrate
With sevenfold powers.
Our love at best is cold and poor, at best unseemly for Thy state,
This best of ours.
Creatures that die, we yet are such as Thine own hands deigned to create:
We frail as flowers,
We bitter bondslaves ransomed at a price incomparably great
To grace Heavens bowers.
Thou callest: Come at onceand still Thou callest us: Come late, tho late
(The moments fly)
Come, every one that thirsteth, comeCome prove Me, knocking at My gate
(Some souls draw nigh!)
Come thou who waiting seekest MeCome thou for whom I seek and wait
(Why will we die?)
Come and repent: come and amend: come joy the joys unsatiate
(Christ passeth by )
Lord, pass not byI comeand Iand I.1 [Note: Christina G. Rossetti, Some Feasts and Fasts.]
II
A Divine Appeal
Turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways.
The declaration of the text that God has no pleasure in the death of the wicked is followed by the converse statement that Gods desire is that the wicked should turn from his way and live. An urgent appeal is then made to the sinner, Turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways. This importunity on the part of God proves yet more fully His real desire. It is like one vehemently enforcing an invitation upon an unwilling listener, making a last effort to save the heedless or resisting. He lifts up His voice; He stretches out His hand; He exhorts; He commands; He expostulates; He entreats, Turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways. Must not He who thus reasons and remonstrates, repeating and re-repeating His entreaty, enforcing and urging home His message with every kind of loving argument, as well as with every form of solemn appeal,must not He be truly in earnest in His desire for the salvation of the sinner?
1. What is the turning from our evil ways which is here signified? It is not shedding a few tears of sorrow and remorse. It is not forming a few serious resolutions. It is not leaving off a few bad practices. It is not attending to religious duties more constantly, or more strictly, than formerly. By the expression turning from our evil ways is meant a deep and total change of the heart and life, a conversion of the whole soul, a turning from sin to God. The person who is turned from his evil ways is a new creature; he has a new heart and a new spirit: old things are passed away: behold, all things are become new. He has new desires and dispositions, and these lead him to walk in newness of life; so that henceforth he proves, in a manner which cannot be mistaken, that he has indeed turned out of the broad road of destruction into the narrow way that leadeth unto life.
A young soldier, who had led a careless life, but had become afterwards a Christian, described very well the change that had been wrought in him when he saidJesus Christ said to me, Right about face! And I heard and obeyed Him in my heart. That is exactly what we call conversion. It is a turning-about of the facefrom the world to God. But with the face it is a turning also of the heart.1 [Note: 1 C. A. Salmond, For Days of Youth, 42.]
2. The life which forms the termination of the one way is as certain as the death which forms the termination of the other. It is in the way of life that God so earnestly desires to see men walking. However far astray they have gone, and however near the confines of the second death they may have come, He beckons them back with His gracious hand, and beseeches them with His most loving voice, Come now, and let us reason together. Nay, more, He commands them to turn. It is not mere liberty to retrace their steps that He gives them; He lays His command upon them; and it is at their peril that they disobey. Am I at liberty to come to God? one asks perhaps. At liberty to come! Is that the way to put it? At liberty to obey His direct command! One dare not do otherwise! There is all the obligation that a command can give; there is a necessity laid upon us, an immediate necessity, a necessity from which nothing can loose us, a necessity arising out of the very righteousness of that God who is commanding us to quit our unrighteousness, a necessity springing from the certain doom that awaits us if we turn not.
God perceives His poor creature standing with his back to Him, looking to idols, looking to sinful pleasures, looking towards the city of destruction, and what does God say to him? He says, Turn! It is a very plain direction; is it not? Turn, or Right about face! That is all. I thought, saith one, I was to feel so much anguish and so much agony. I should not wonder if you do feel it, but all that God says is, Turn. You now face the wrong way; Turn, and face the right way. That turning is true repentance. A changed life is of the essence of repentance; and that must spring from a changed heart, from a changed desire, from a changed will.1 [Note: C. H. Spurgeon.]
3. When man is posting on to death, God, as it were, follows after him, and, standing in the way before him, He spreads out His hands of entreaty, crying, Turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways. God knows the awful fate that awaits the transgressora fate to which the transgressor himself is often hastening blindlyand He warns him and pleads with him. He appeals to his reason, to his conscience, to his affections. How deeply affecting is the anxiety of God on mans behalf! Cold is the heart that can resist His tender entreaty. What is the warmest human appeal compared with the appeal of God to man? But powerful as that appeal is, it is an appeal and nothing more. God does not compel the will. His influence upon men is suasive. Heaven persuades; man decrees. The appeal of God is to the free and rational nature of man. Man is not the victim of fate. He is not the creature of circumstances. He can get the better of his environment. The powers of evil which have gotten hold of him may be conquered. It lies with himself to decide whether he will die or live. His power of self-action is here appealed to. Turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways. Why rush on to ruin when you can turn and live? Why perish in sin when the Good Physician is standing near and asking, Wilt thou be made whole? The choice of the will is the fiat of destiny.
We talk about the power of the will, but no effort of will can obliterate the life that we have lived, or add a cubit to our stature; we cannot abrogate any law of nature, or destroy a single atom of matter. What it seems that we can do with the will is to make a certain choice, to select a certain line, to combine existing forces, to use them within very small limits. We can oblige ourselves to take a certain course, when every other inclination is reluctant to do it. Any one who will deliberately test his will, will find that it is stronger than he suspects; what often weakens our use of it is that we are so apt to look beyond the immediate difficulty into a long perspective of imagined obstacles, and to say within ourselves, Yes, I may perhaps achieve this immediate step, but I cannot take step after stepmy courage will fail! Yet if one does make the immediate effort, it is common to find the whole range of obstacles modified by the single act; and thus the first step towards the attainment of serenity of life is to practise cutting off the vista of possible contingencies from our view, and to create a habit of dealing with a case as it occurs.1 [Note: A. C. Benson, Where No Fear Was (1914), 229, 232.]
Amiel is a classical instance of the man in whom culture or knowledge has weakened certain elementary powers, faiths, instincts, in the absence of which, nevertheless, a man ceases to be himself. He will not commit himself in any particular casehe sees so much on the other side and on all sides. He will not apply himself to one thingthere are in this world so many things. Now, if in any urgent matter, either of duty or of faith, a man refuses to act, to make a personal choice, simply because there are so many facts and circumstances in the world which if he only knew them all might lead him to act differently, or refrain from acting altogether, that man is going against the ordinary practice of life in every region. Just as by an act of your will, if need be, and in order to read this page, you must for the moment neglect the entire world, and confine yourself to the type and to the play of ideas and associations which it awakens in your mind; and by so doingso far as this present moment is concernedyou live and assert yourself. So, in all personal matters which involve choice, judgment, decision, in matters of life or of faith, what you shall do, how you shall believe, it is necessary, when face to face with your question, to put away things which are obviously extraneous, and, with what wisdom you have, deal with the issue within narrower limits.2 [Note: J. A. Hutton, Pilgrims in the Region of Faith, 47.]
III
A Divine Expostulation
Why will ye die?
1. The text concludes with an expostulation. Man as a sinner is in danger of eternal death. To the first man that ever lived the warning was given, In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die, or, dying thou shalt die; that is, the act of disobedience in eating of the forbidden fruit would plant within him the seed of death, and he would become a dying man. Sin and death are cause and effect. As the seed contains the germ of the future flower, sin contains the germ of spiritual death. When once a person has been bitten by a venomous serpent he is a dying man. The surface wound may be very slight, and no danger may be apprehended, but the poison has got into the blood, and it will quickly search its way to the very centre and fountain of life. It is therefore no mere figure of speech to say that any one who is harbouring sin in his soul is a dying man. If the poison of sin is not neutralized it will surely work his eternal ruin. The soul that sinneth, it shall die. It dies by sinning. God has so made it that the wages of its sin are its death. This terrible law permits of no break. It may be met, counteracted, forestalled, arrested; its accumulated curse, gathered through the increasing guilt of the crowded past, may be diverted, transmuted, absorbed, transcended, but the thing that can never be is that it should be denied, abolished, prohibited, suspended. Man has deeply sinned, and, as deeply sinning, he must be subject to the inevitable law which God cannot repudiate without repudiating the reason, and the will, and the love with which He created him.
2. The death here spoken of is not the death of the body, for that is something which is inevitable. It is appointed unto men once to die. To the law of death there is no exception. Nothing can keep the earthly house of this tabernacle from breaking up. But there is something more terrible than the death of the body, and that is the death of the soulthe death of goodness, the death of hope, the death of noble aspiration, the death of all desire for a better life. Whittier says:
When faith is lost, when honour dies,
The man is dead.
Now the death of the soul, which the Bible calls the second death, is not inevitable like the death of the body. No man has control over the death of the body, but every man has control over the death of the soul. Sinners die because they will to die; not because God wills their death. Not that they deliberately choose death as an end, but they choose the way that leads to it. There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death.
Human nature is corrupttoo sorrowfully and deeply so. What you have first to perceive concerning it is exactly thatnamely, that all the evil of it is its corruption, not itself! That our sin is our Death; not our Nature, but the destruction of our Nature. And that through and within all such horror of infected plague, the living soul, holy and strong, yet exists, strong enough with its Makers help to purge and burn itself free, to all practical need, from the body of that death, and rise up in its ancient noblesse, overflowing in strength and zealous of good works.1 [Note: Ruskin, Fors Clavigera (Appendix, No. 24).]
3. The death of the soul is not a necessity, for an antidote has been provided. Those who have within them the sentence of death may feel the quickening touch of Christ and begin to live. It was the mission of Christ to bring life to dying men. I am come, He says, that they might have life. And Paul, writing to the Christians at Ephesus of the power of Christ, says: You hath he quickened who were dead in trespasses and sins. When a sick man has an efficacious remedy placed before him there is no reason why he should die. And yet his disease may run to a fatal end if he refuses to take the remedy provided. Sinful men die, not because they are sinners, but because they refuse the remedy which Heaven has provided for sin.
God in Christ does not forget even where a father might forget, or forsake even where a mother might be found forsaking. No, He will defer judgment, He will delay the crisis, He will set Himself to forestall the doom that must work itself out as the issue of sin. God willed that none should perish; He willed that all should be summed up in Christ, and that to be in Christ should have force to rescue, cleanse, renew, and glorify the entire body of mankind, and even if at last there will be found a residue of stubborn defiance in the human will which can hold out against the fullest effort even of Divine pardon, yet that will be only through wilful refusal to suffer the whole will of God to make itself felt. Still it will remain true that the intention, the purpose, the hope of God is that in Christ every soul should be brought to salvation. And if so, we must not sink the scale because the hope seems to us so distant and so broken, we must measure the Fathers actions according to the width and breadth of His perfect scheme.
Austere as we must be against sin, we will still remember that Christ died for sinners; that unless they hear Him they will die; and if, at some darker hour, our hearts sink as we wonder whether anything is achieved, whether it can be worth while to wait and trust, then let us remind ourselves that we have no gauge by which to measure the gains and the losses. We are not in a position to estimate Gods winnings, for we know not yet what we shall be hereafter, we know not what God may have in store; and, in view of that hereafter hidden from our eyes, He may well be gaining more than we think out of this dark, chaotic probation on earth. For God gains, let us remember, if only He can save a soul from the deliberate recoil from holiness which makes the case desperate; He gains, if only He can secure in a soul that its deepest wish, its last core of will, has yet something in it of belief in goodness, of appeal to God, some inner motion at its root which issues at last out of lifes trials into the other world with an upward and not a downward tendency. If only He can win that, then there are at least some possibilities hereafter, there is something secured which the discipline and purging of spiritual penitence can cherish and quicken, and the soul, it may be, may be saved though as by fire, though with many stripes.
Salvation must be as freely accepted by man as it is offered by God. We find men in this life so defiant of goodness and grace that we cannot assert that final impenitence is impossible. The grace of God in Christ now appears so sufficient, so urgent, so final that we cannot conceive what more God can do to save man. We may desire and hope that all shall be saved, but we cannot assert the salvation of all, and must recognize the possibility of a final impenitence. We must leave the issue of Gods world to Gods wisdom, holiness, and grace.1 [Note: A. E. Garvie, A Handbook of Christian Apologetics, 220.]
If there be a Divine purpose for mankind, its universality must either be something real or something nominal. If nominal only, then the universal offer of benefits that are not intended for all becomes a solemn farce, inconsistent with the truthfulness and goodness of God, an impossible creed which no honest man can proclaim to his fellowmen. Both Wesley and Erskine taught that the benefits of grace, as they ought to be fully and freely offered to mankind, are also intended for mankind, and to a certain extent are really and truly bestowed on mankind. As through one trespass the justification came unto all men to condemnation, so through one act of righteousness the free gift came unto all men to justification of life. Erskines interpretation of these words is, that as every man has been born into an order of sin, so every man is born into an order of grace; or, to put it otherwise, as Adam inflicted on the world a sentence of death, so Christ has brought a universal seed of life into the world which is available for all those who do not reject it.2 [Note: H. F. Henderson, Erskine of Linlathen, 57.]
Dr. William Taylor, of America, tells how, when he was a boy, he once heard a sermon on appropriating faith. His first question on getting home was, Father, what is appropriating faith?a circumstance not very complimentary to the preacher. His father replied, My boy, take your Bible and underline all the mes and mys and the mines, and you will soon find out what appropriating faith is.
If the mes, mys, and mines were underscored in Charles and John Wesleys hymns, it would show better than anything else the intense personal force behind the Great Revival.
And out of the glow of Experience came Evangelism. With the early Methodist it was only one step from me to the world. With deep and reverent faith he would sing
Lord, I believe Thy precious blood,
Which at the mercy seat of God,
For ever doth for sinners plead,
For me, even for my soul was shed.
But instantly the mind flings itself out to the uttermost limits of the human race. The gift received is a gift for all, and the missionary spirit of Methodism finds glorious expression in the very next stanza
Lord, I believe were sinners more
Than sands upon the ocean shore,
Thou hast for all a ransom paid,
For all a full atonement made.1 [Note: W. B. Fitzgerald, The Roots of Methodism, 180.]
God and the Sinner
Literature
Bonar (H.), Family Sermons, 311, 319.
Campbell (J. M.), Bible Questions, 155.
Carroll (B. H.), Sermons and Life Sketch, 149.
Cooper (E.), Fifty-Two Family Sermons, 204.
Farindon (A.), Sermons, i. 497; ii. 1.
Finney (C. G.), The Way of Salvation, 254.
Gibbon (J. M.), Evangelical Heterodoxy, 61.
Gibson (E. C. S.), The Old Testament and its Messages, 194.
Kennedy (J.), in Modern Scottish Pulpit, i. 231.
Kirk (J.), Sermons, 185.
Kuegele (F.), Country Sermons, New Ser., i. 136.
Lewis (H. E.), By the River Chebar, 62.
Oosterzee (J. J. van), The Year of Salvation, ii. 487.
Spencer (I. S.), Sermons, ii. 285.
Spurgeon (C. H.), Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, xxx. (1884), No. 1795.
Christian World Pulpit, xxxiii. 17 (H. S. Holland).
Homiletic Review, xvii. 341 (J. D. Freeman).
National Preacher, xiii. 17 (J. Fuller); xvi. 145 (E. Pond).
Plain Sermons by Contributors to Tracts for the Times, ii. 233.
As I live: Eze 5:11, Eze 14:16-18, Eze 16:48, Num 14:21, Num 14:28, Isa 49:18, Jer 22:24, Jer 46:18, Zep 2:9, Rom 14:11
I have: Eze 18:23, Eze 18:32, 2Sa 14:14, Lam 3:33, Hos 11:8, Luk 15:20-32, 1Ti 2:4, 2Pe 3:9
turn ye: Eze 14:6, Eze 18:30, Eze 18:31, Pro 1:23, Pro 8:36, Isa 55:6, Isa 55:7, Jer 3:22, Jer 31:18-20, Dan 9:13, Hos 14:1, Act 3:19, Act 26:20
Reciprocal: Gen 6:6 – grieved Deu 28:63 – rejoice over Deu 30:10 – turn unto 1Ki 21:29 – I will not 2Ch 7:14 – humble 2Ch 30:6 – turn again Job 27:2 – God liveth Psa 7:12 – If Isa 53:10 – the pleasure Jer 3:1 – yet return Jer 3:12 – Return Jer 18:8 – that nation Jer 25:5 – Turn Jer 26:13 – amend Jer 27:13 – Why Jer 44:7 – against Eze 12:3 – it may Eze 18:21 – if the Amo 5:6 – Seek Jon 3:8 – let Mic 7:18 – he delighteth Zec 1:3 – Turn Zec 1:4 – Turn Mat 3:2 – Repent Mat 12:31 – All Mat 21:31 – did Luk 15:5 – rejoicing Luk 15:10 – there Luk 19:42 – If Rom 11:11 – Have they stumbled Jam 2:13 – and Rev 2:22 – except
WHY WILL YE DIE?
Why will ye die?
Eze 33:11
I. You are in danger of deaththe second deatheternal death. You deserve deathare condemned to die.
II. You need not die unless you will, unless you wish to die.Your sin, which deserves death, is your own wilful deed, and from the death to which you are exposed there is a way of escape, if you willif you are willing to take it. It is not that God willsbut that you willthat you die.
III. That you should choose to die rather than to live is most unaccountable.Why will ye die? Can any one give a good reason why? (1) Have you no regard for your own best interests? He that is cruel to his own house is like the ostrich that hides her eggs in the sand, and considers not that the foot of the traveller may crush them; but he that is cruel to his own soul, what is he like? and unto what shall I resemble him? All nature has no imagery horrible enough to represent the murderer of his own soul. (2) Do ye thus requite the lovingkindness of the Lord, O foolish people and unwise? After all that God has done that ye might have life, why will ye reject His counsel, and refuse the best and greatest gift of everlasting love? (3) Or do you not believe that these things are so? that sin is destruction? that iniquity will be your ruin? or that there is a Saviour provided, and that to refuse Him is to choose death?
Eze 33:11. The Lord declares that He has no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but just the opposite is what is desired. That is why the wicked man is exhorted to turn from his evil way. Why will ye die is a challenge to the evil man to show a reason for his decision to die. No reason can be given, for nothing lies beyond death that will repay him for his unwise course. Neither can he make the excuse that it is unavoidable, for the Lord not only is giving him full warning of what is before him, but also has promised to help him in his efforts to avoid it.
33:11 Say to them, [As] I live, saith the Lord GOD, {f} I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; but that the wicked should turn from his way and live: turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways; for why will ye die, O house of Israel?
(f) See Geneva “Eze 18:23”
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
Fuente: The Great Texts of the Bible
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Fuente: Church Pulpit Commentary
Fuente: Combined Bible Commentary
Fuente: Geneva Bible Notes