How then can we survive?

Ezekiel 33:10-19 NASB

"Now as for you, son of man, say to the house of Israel, ‘Thus you have spoken, saying, "Surely our transgressions and our sins are upon us, and we are rotting away in them; how then can we survive?"’ "Say to them, ‘As I live!’ declares the Lord God, ‘I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that the wicked turn from his way and live. Turn back, turn back from your evil ways! Why then will you die, O house of Israel?’ "And you, son of man, say to your fellow citizens, ‘The righteousness of a righteous man will not deliver him in the day of his transgression, and as for the wickedness of the wicked, he will not stumble because of it in the day when he turns from his wickedness; whereas a righteous man will not be able to live by his righteousness on the day when he commits sin.’ "When I say to the righteous he will surely live, and he so trusts in his righteousness that he commits iniquity, none of his righteous deeds will be remembered; but in that same iniquity of his which he has committed he will die. "But when I say to the wicked, ‘You will surely die,’ and he turns from his sin and practices justice and righteousness, if a wicked man restores a pledge, pays back what he has taken by robbery, walks by the statutes which ensure life without committing iniquity, he shall surely live; he shall not die. "None of his sins that he has committed will be remembered against him. He has practiced justice and righteousness; he shall surely live.
"Yet your fellow citizens say, ‘The way of the Lord is not right,’ when it is their own way that is not right. "When the righteous turns from his righteousness and commits iniquity, then he shall die in it. "But when the wicked turns from his wickedness and practices justice and righteousness, he will live by them.


My thoughts -

In reading through the Old Testament there always seems to be a sharp distinction between the righteous and the wicked. Everything is black and white, you are good or bad, a sinner or a saint.

And yet, a lot of our saints are sinners. David committed murder and adultery, Samson had a thing for sex and violence, even Abraham lied about his own wife to save his skin. None of us are fully good. But also, none of us are too far gone that we can't repent and turn to the Lord.

Verse 11 tells us that God does not desire to punish sin but to have sinners repent and return to him. God doesn't want to destroy. God doesn't want to condemn. God wants to redeem. God doesn't want to punish sinners. God wants us to stop sinning.

When we repent, when we turn away from our sins and toward God then our transgressions are forgotten. Look at verses 14 through 16 again:

"But when I say to the wicked, ‘You will surely die,’ and he turns from his sin and practices justice and righteousness, if a wicked man restores a pledge, pays back what he has taken by robbery, walks by the statutes which ensure life without committing iniquity, he shall surely live; he shall not die. "None of his sins that he has committed will be remembered against him. He has practiced justice and righteousness; he shall surely live.

So what does repentance look like here? It is not just saying "sorry". It is turning from sin and towards righteousness. It is doing what is right. It is making amends for what was wrong. It is not enough to say you are sorry. Fix it. Stop sinning and do what is right.

But we have Jesus. Doesn't that mean that our sins are forgiven no matter what? Lets look at what Paul has to say about that:

Romans 6:1-11 NASB

What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin so that grace may increase? May it never be! How shall we who died to sin still live in it? Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death? Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection, knowing this, that our old self was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin; for he who has died is freed from sin.
Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him, knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, is never to die again; death no longer is master over Him. For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God. Even so consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus.

So what do we do? How are we saved? The passage from Ezekiel says that if we are righteous and then sin our righteousness won't save us. Yet if we sin and then repent we are no longer in death in our sins but live in righteousness. We believe that Jesus died for our sins to set us free but Paul says that means that we have died to sin. We are now alive in Christ. We are to live in God's will through Christ.

We are dead to sin. Rather than having death as the penalty for sin we have died with Christ to sin. We no longer are held prisoner to our selfish, sinful nature. We have been set free to live in righteousness through Christ.

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