Ezekiel 18:30, commentary and pictures

God will judge the house of Israel, every one individually according to his own ways and conduct, holding each person accountable for what he has done. The judgment is personal rather than corporate, reaching to conduct in daily life, to unjust acts, and to oppression persisted in after light has been received. He is watching families who profess to be Christians to see how they are conducting themselves.

Every person is called to repent and turn from all transgressions, without exception, so that iniquity will not become ruin and bring destruction. The call is to hear reproof and warning and to heed instruction with a patient, generous, teachable spirit, and those who do so receive the Lord's blessing. The Lord sees unjust acts and will judge those who persist in oppression and disregard the light they have received.

Turning belongs with casting away all transgressions and with making and receiving a new heart and a new spirit. The plain work required on the sinner's part is joined to being washed clean, putting away evil, ceasing to do evil, learning to do well, and walking in the statutes of life without iniquity. That turning and new heart and spirit involve cleansing from sin, and a changed life as the result of God's renewing work, with God's Spirit enabling obedience.

This turning and new heart is the work of grace upon the human heart that is the new birth through Jesus Christ, the only condition upon which a person can be saved and can secure entrance into and discernment of the kingdom of God, and it is the change by which a person is prepared for God's kingdom. That renewal is needed even by a man as just and honorable as Nicodemus, and rigid precision in obeying the law entitles no one to enter heaven. The appeal rests on God's just ways and reveals His will for the salvation of the sinner, for He has no pleasure in the death of anyone, even the wicked, but calls them to return and turn and live rather than die.

His way is vindicated as equal against the charge that His way is not equal, showing the inequality is in the sinner's ways when he will not repent and turn. Forgiveness and life are conditional on repentance and forsaking sin, and God will receive the sinner when he repents and forsakes his sins so God can work with his efforts in seeking perfection of character. He removes the offensive thing He hates as man cooperates by giving up, leaving and hating sin and accepting the righteousness of Christ by faith, being saved not in transgression but in forsaking sin and washing the robe of character white in the blood of the Lamb. The call therefore presses for evangelical work now in families, schools, sanitariums, and publishing houses, with fathers and mothers feeling the converting power of God, having their lives cleansed and their character transformed so the Holy Spirit can accomplish its work upon hearts.