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Online Truth
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ON BEING FAIR
In Ezekiel 33:11, God makes it clear that He has no pleasure in death and punishment. His desire is to see people turn—meaning repent—from their evil ways. It's as if God is saying: "Don't you want to live?! Then do the right thing!" God then addresses what's fair and what's not—a subject also touched on in a previous chapter (Ezekiel 18). God is not trying to make everything "fair" for human beings in every aspect of this mortal life. Life is often very unfair—we don't choose where we're born, our early influences, what we're taught. And much of what we experience in life is the result of choices made by others. But God is promising to be fair about how our ultimate and eternal fate is determined. Each man's fate largely depends on how he concludes his life, either faithful to God at the end or unfaithful. If a man lives righteously most of his life and rejects God at the end, all his righteous acts go down the drain—they won't save him from losing eternal life. But it is never too late to repent if one is capable of repenting. In other words, a man who has lived an evil life can still sincerely repent toward the end of his life and meet God's conditions for living forever in His Kingdom. Of course, a person is foolish to procrastinate about turning to God, partly because he never knows when his life will suddenly come to an end. Moreover, if we knowingly resist doing what we know is right, we form bad habits that will be difficult to break and damage and sear our consciences so that it becomes increasingly difficult to repent. The Israelites complain that "the way of the Lord is not fair" (33:17, 20). Yet "in punishing Israel God was being faithful to the covenant stipulations. This covenant had been approved by the Israelites. They had agreed to its commands and accepted the consequences of breaking them, corporately and individually (see 5:8-17; 12:15, 16; 16:60, 61; 18:19-32; 20:5; Ex. 19:1-9; Deut. 27). God presents His rationale in these verses for deciding who would be rewarded with life and who would suffer death: He would save those who repent and turn to Him, but would condemn those who trust in themselves and do evil. After presenting His rationale, God declares that His judgment is just and fair—certainly more just [by any standard] than the practices of the Israelites" (Nelson Study Bible, note on Ezekiel 33:12-20). Ultimately, God is perfectly just and fair. The most common human approach to fairness is like a balancing scale. All the bad acts are put on one side of the scale and all the good acts on the other side. People think that if there is more weight on the good side, God will usher them into eternal glory. This is why many people live a hypocritical double life. They want to do evil, but they think that as long as they do more good than evil, they will escape God's punishment. Naturally people imagine that their goodness outweighs their sins, which they view as minor. In fact, they think of themselves as basically good even if most of their actions and attitudes are bad. They play deceptive games with other people, and it seems they think they can also play games with God—that they can pacify God or buy Him off with their offerings, charitable acts and show of religiosity. Man's approach to fairness leads to hypocrisy and complacency, whereas God's approach to fairness teaches true heartfelt repentance and spiritual overcoming. Only the latter approach will bring God's blessings and the opportunity for eternal life.
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