Discussion on Calvinism – Part I

Commandments of Love

The First and great commandment is Love – loving God. The second is Love – loving each other.

In Matthew 7, at verse 8, Jesus says:

8 For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened. 9 Or what man is there of you, whom if his son ask bread, will he give him a stone? 10 Or if he ask a fish, will he give him a serpent? 11 If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him?

We learn a number of things from these passages but the one that stands out to me tonight is when Jesus says:

“If you, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children HOW MUCH MORE SHALL YOUR FATHER WHICH IS IN HEAVEN GIVE GOOD THINGS TO THEM THAT ASK HIM.”

In John 3:16 we read:

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”

And again, I recognize God – this God who knows how to give much better gifts than humans, including the gift of His only begotten . . . because He so loved the world.

I turn to 1st John 4:7 which says:

“Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God.”

And then I go down 10 verses and read:

“And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him.”

And finally I go to 1st Corinthians 13 – that mighty chapter that describes the kind of love that God is –

He is love that “suffers long,” is kind doesn’t envy; is not puffed up, doesn’t behave unseemly, seeketh not its own is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; Rejoiceth not in iniquity rejoiceth in the truth; Beareth all things believeth all things hopeth all things endureth all things. And never, ever fails

Questioning Calvinism

And I look at Calvinism and I find myself utterly befuddled. This is really the only question I would like Brother Matt to explain to us in our time together . . .

How could God be a better gift giver than man . . . How could God who so loved the world . . . who is love . . . Who sends His Spirit that bears fruits of love . . . Who possesses a love that NEVER fails . . . Be the same God who the Calvinists claim created all human beings and of His own free will and selects only some to life – knowing full well that all the rest will suffer in hell and/or the Lake of Fire forever AND ever AND ever.

Understanding Total Inability

Tonight we are taking only the first letter of the TULIP acronym and examining it – Total Inability.

Matt and I are going to privately address the other four points tomorrow in taped conversation which we’ll air for you in the weeks to come. I wanted to give the lion’s share of time to the first point in the TUPLIP – total inability because if this can be proven faulty all the other points fail as they represent a logical extension of this first point.

The system of Calvinism is pretty consistent and if the first point is conceded then the others naturally follow in as reasonable. Every Calvinist knows this and so they spend a lot of time proving that man’s nature is wholly corrupt.

As a result I will resist this first point to the best of my biblical ability knowing that the others will be much easier to topple once this one falls.

The idea of “Total Inability” is said to be the result of man's spiritual ruin that came from the acts of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. It has left him incapable of doing anything good, or even desiring it. Man is therefore spiritually disabled and can neither will himself to obey any spiritual command – including an invitation to receive Christ. John Calvin sums this up in stark language: "Let it stand, therefore, as an indubitable truth, which no engines can shake, that the mind of man is so entirely alienated from the righteousness of God, that he cannot conceive, desire, or design anything but what is wicked, distorted, foul, impure"

The Concept of Original Sin

"…and iniquitous; that his heart is so thoroughly envenomed by sin, that it can breathe out nothing but corruption and rottenness; that if some men occasionally make a show of goodness, their mind is ever interwoven with hypocrisy and deceit, their soul inwardly bound with fetters of wickedness." The source of this innate wickedness? Calvin said:

"…the corruption by which we are held bound as with chains originated in the first man's revolt against his Maker."3

We refer to Adam and Eve’s sin as the Fall but this is not a biblical title for it. All we know is that through their sin they introduced sin to the world. The Calvinist claims that due to Adam and Eve’s sin human beings found themselves UNABLE to respond to God and INABLE to do take any legitimate action in pursuit of God.

Calvinist Augustus Strong says this: "Man's present inability is natural, in the sense of being inborn, – it is not acquired by our personal act, but is congenital."4 To the Calvinist our total inability toward spiritual good is congenitally received, similar to our eye color or race. It is a situation over which no human being has ANY control. In other words, free will is a myth. Calvinist scholar Boettner says this: "In matters pertaining to his salvation, the unregenerate man is not at liberty to choose between good and evil, but only to choose between greater and lesser evil, which is not properly free will…As the bird with a broken wing is 'free' to fly but not able, so the natural man is free to come to God but not able."5

Biblical Reference and Interpretation

All of this is the result of another non-biblical phrase, Original Sin. If the doctrine of Original Sin was true I think we would surely expect to find some mention of it in the Genesis account. But we never read about God imposing a curse of “Total Inability” on man's nature. A curse of death is mentioned. But God says this will mean we will return to the dust where we came from and does not infer a total inability of Spirit.

God also decreed the presence of "thorns and thistles" to make toil more difficult (v.18). And He told the woman that she must endure great pain in childbearing (v.16). These curses that were mentioned would mean very little compared to the total inability to relate to God at all. But that isn’t even suggested.

A critic of Original Sin and Total Inability, George Burnap, said: "If this doctrine is true, God did not tell man the true penalty, neither the truth, nor the whole truth, nor a hundredth part of the truth. To have told the whole truth, according to this hypothesis, He should have said, 'Because ye have done this, cursed be that moral nature which I have given you. Henceforth such is the change I make in your natures: that ye shall be, and your offspring, infinitely odious and hateful in my sight. The moment their souls shall go forth from my hand…if they are suffered to live, such shall be the diseased constitution of their moral natures: that they shall have no freedom to do one single good action, but everything they do shall be sin….What an awful blot would such a curse be on the first pages of Scripture!"6

The Transmission of Inability

Now, it is true that death passed upon all men through the First Adam. His expulsion from the Garden with its Tree of Life removed him from the source of immortality and made death certain. This is also true of his posterity. But the transmission of Total Inability toward God is nowhere conveyed in the text. Additionally, the two primary texts used to prove the man-made doctrine of Original Sin from scripture (Roman 5 and 1st Corinthians 15) say nothing about the concept of “Total Inability.”

Nowhere are we told that an invincible tendency to resist God was imparted to the race through the offense of one. If ever there was a place in scripture that discussed this doctrine I would think we would find it in one of the places that deal with the relationship between Adam and his descendants. But there is not a trace of such teaching there.

In fact, this Calvinist teaching raises an even more basic question that needs to be answered: Where do we read in Scripture that man had a holy, pure nature that became corrupted and transmitted to his posterity? Calvinists, and most Christians for that matter, automatically assume that God made Adam morally perfect.

Examining Moral Perfection

The London Confession of Faith of 1689, a Baptist confession of Calvinistic order presupposes this inbred Moral perfection when it says that God "created man after His own Image, filled with all meet perfection of nature, and free from all sin" (Section IV). But where does the Bible convey this bit of information about perfection of nature? Have you ever wondered what was IN morally perfect Adam and Eve that allowed them to sin in the first place? To me if they were morally perfected in nature they never would have sinned because they wouldn’t have had the ability. Of course it’s reasonable to affirm that Adam and Eve were created with an original innocence – but this is not close to being the same thing as "perfection of a moral nature."

Our first parents did lose innocence when they sinned. Their eyes were then opened to good and evil which prompted them to then hide from their Creator. But it is an entirely different matter altogether to say that they fell from a state of moral perfection to a state of total spiritual depravity. The fact that God called His creation "good" does not mean it was all morally perfect. Scripture also calls Barnabas "a good man" in Acts 11:24 but he certainly was not a morally perfect man. "Good" can simply mean that it was complete and suitable for the divine purpose. In Ecclesiastes 7:29, it says, "God made mankind upright, but men have gone in search of many schemes." But the word "upright" does not necessarily denote moral perfection either.

Questioning Calvinistic Interpretation

The Calvinist would resort to passages of scripture that deal with man's extreme sinfulness from birth to prove their point of Total Inability. Did God create beings who, as Job said, "drink evil like water" or who are "shapen in iniquity" (as Psalm 51:5 says)? Obviously there is a universal sinfulness in man but because a Hebrew writer expresses his outrage in the presence of it again do not represent anything more poetic bold statements that underscore man's tendency to go astray. If the tendency was in the first man to stay we know it’s in the rest of us too. Even from the womb, as the Hebrew poets so eloquently suggest. Man is sinful – there is no doubt to this.

And we are very familiar with the verses used to prove it – but taken just in this light, the following passages in no way prove that because of Adam we all came into the world totally INCAPABLE of moral goodness or an ability to look for God.

1. LISTEN CLOSELY TO PSALM 58:3
   “The wicked go astray from the womb: they go astray as soon as they are born, speaking lies.”

2. Or Isaiah 48:8
   “I knew that thou wouldst deal very treacherously, and wast called a transgressor from the womb.”

When these passages are packaged and presented to us in presuppositional Calvinistic rhetoric they are very easy to interpret as speaking of Total Inability. Again, man is a sinner. Provers 22:15 says “every person has folly bound up in the heart from earliest days” (Prov. 22:15).

Tracing the Roots of a Doctrine

But the question is “Was Adam any different? The burden of proof is on the Calvinists to show that he was. The Scriptures never say so, and it is not our responsibility to prove a negative (which is as we know dealing with the LDS an impossibility). The Calvinist's entire system of soteriology is founded on the grand assumption that Adam was created morally impeccable. He lost perfection through sin and assumed a nature totally corrupted and alienated from God, which became a nature imparted to all mankind as a curse. But AGAIN, while the Scriptural support for these contentions is lacking the doctrine is assumed unquestionably by most people. I’ve taught it myself for goodness sakes.

So where did “Adam's fall from moral perfection” come from. Gotta go back to Augustine. He used the premise to argue against Pelagianism which says that Original Sin of Adam did not taint human nature and that humans can choose good without God’s intervention. Calvin received the message completely from his medieval legacy and it is still alive and well today. But shouldn’t a doctrine that plays such an important role in systematic theology have nearly unequivocal proof in the Bible. In other words, how and why would we ever believe a Calvinist unless the Bible proved that: God made man morally perfect; Adam's sin immediately corrupted him and rendered him unable to respond to God at all, and that God transmitted this inability to all human.

Understanding the Doctrine of Total Inability

Beings forever more. AGAIN – so I’m not taken wrongly, we did inherit a physical death from Adam, and we did inherit a propensity toward sin because we have been made in God’s image and therefore have an ability to choose and reason, and finally we all do sin. But to say that we inherited the consequences of Adam’s Original Sin just because we descend from Him AND the Total Inability to seek God at all is an unbiblical tenet. Moving along, the false doctrine of Total Inability (passed to us from Adam) makes it impossible for us to comply with the command to believe in Christ. As many men and women more scholarly and astute than me have pointed out, the most obvious fault with the doctrine of Total Inability is that it makes the gospel an unreasonable demand.

How can God, who is perfectly just, "command all men everywhere to repent" (Acts 17:30) knowing full well, as the Calvinist would suggest, that the command is impossible for all men everywhere to obey? This is a very difficult problem for Calvinists. So as to maintain consistency they often assert that just because a command is given does not necessarily imply an ability to keep it. This follows right in line with the LDS teaching that God gave Adam and Eve a command (but knew full well they could never keep it).

Addressing God's Commands and Human Ability

Here’s the deal – now think – If God gives a command and threatens to punish people who do not comply, it certainly does imply the ability to obey it, right? This puts the Calvinist in another major difficulty. Man is so corrupt, he will not and cannot obey even the slightest spiritual command – nor can he appreciate or even understand it. Yet God orders him to believe and He punishes him for not believing. In other words as a supposed Just Judge of the Universe, could He justly “condemn the sinner for not doing what he from birth cannot do?” In order for a person to embrace these principles they have to ignore a whole bunch of revealed characteristics about God in order to make them fly.

Have you ever noticed that the Old Testament demands of God never seemed to be presented as “impossibilities” for the hearers to keep? Moses said in Deuteronomy 30:19 "See, I set before you today life and prosperity, death and destruction. For I command you today to love the Lord your God, to walk in his ways and the commands, decrees and laws…" We note that Moses didn’t add – but you are incapable of doing any of it. The commands were offered genuinely and presented to them to consider.

I used to see the words of Joshua written on the sides of barns in Pennsylvania that urged the Israelites, "choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your forefathers served beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord" (Joshua 24:15). There is nothing in Joshua's entreaty that suggests the Israelites were all unable to choose the Lord unless they first experienced an inward miracle from the hand of God – whether they wanted it or not. Admittedly, Joshua did say that the people were "not able to serve the Lord" in their present sinful state (v.19) but all that meant was repentance was in order. They were still called upon to make a choice of the heart and turn from their evil ways. Joshua said, "throw away your foreign gods that are among you and yield your hearts to the Lord, the God of Israel" (v.23).

Questioning the Concept of Total Inability

Nowhere are we given the impression that these people were in a state of Total Inability from birth, innately incapable of yielding as Joshua commanded. I mean, how do Calvinists explain Job whom scripture describes as a perfect (complete) man all the way back in the day? The New Testament uses the same language. On the day of Pentecost, Peter preached before thousands who had gathered in Jerusalem. Luke writes, "With many other words he warned them; and he pleaded with them, 'Save yourselves from this corrupt generation'" (Acts 2:40). Was Peter "pleading" with these people to do something they were utterly incapable of doing? Even if it was just their willingness to hear, or humble themselves, or give God a chance aren’t such things at least SOME ability rather than TOTAL inability? See, with the idea

Critique of Total Inability

Of total inability in place, human beings are rendered as puppets in the hands of God – imagery I believe Calvin relished. Can you imagine Peter preaching the words, “Save yourselves" to an audience of Calvinists? I mean, Jesus himself did not seem to have been a believer in Total Inability either. Consider the texts of Mark 4:11-12 where he explains why He would speak in parables against the stubborn Jews. He actually said that the purpose of parables was to keep his message from entering their ears, "otherwise they might turn and be forgiven" (v.12). Again, Jesus said in effect that had those stiff-necked people been allowed to hear the truth straight out, they might have turned and received it. But how? Calvinism tells us that no one can turn and receive the forgiveness of sins because Total Inability has passed on to all people from Adam. They say that God must first give each person an "effectual call" – Jesus seems to suggest that the call was always out there – that God was calling all and had He spoken openly some of those Jews may have heard. Calvinist’s often suggest that to preach to a natural man is like preaching to the dead – they cannot respond on their own. Jesus, however, felt it necessary to obscure his message in parables to keep certain people from responding to it. Had he preached the truth openly they would have turned and been forgiven. This fact alone is fatal to the Calvinist dogma, for it contradicts the notion that all men have a native inability to believe.

Biblical Instances and Human Response

What about the fact that Jesus sometimes "marvelled" at the unbelief of his hearers (Mark 6:6). Why would He marvel at their hard hearts if Total Inability was a reality? Speaking of hard hearts, the doctrine of Total Inability also seems to oppose the Bible teaching concerning hardness of heart. The Scriptures warn us that those who repeatedly trifle with sin may sear their consciences (1st Timothy 4:2) or render themselves "past feeling" (Ephesians 4:19). This is not a condition of birth, but seems to be a consequence of repeated sin. Isaiah speaks of this condition as having come upon people when he asks: "Why, O Lord, do you make us wander from your ways and harden our hearts so we do not revere you?" (Isaiah 63:17) But the Calvinists tell us that this condition – an invincible anti-God bent – is the birth-condition of all human beings. In Romans 1, Paul writes of men who are "without excuse" because of the manifest presence of God in creation. He says, "For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened" (Romans 1:21). Here we see men who became futile in their thinking and were given over to a darkened state of the heart and are not subject to a condition at birth. The Calvinist is hard-pressed to show how this condition of darkness, given to those who harden their hearts, is possible if they are Totally Incapable to know God in the first place.

Zechariah 7:12 says of Zion, "They made their hearts as hard as flint and would not listen to the law or to the words that the Lord Almighty has sent by his Spirit through the earlier prophets." Obviously, the people made themselves insensible to the truth of God, which clearly indicates that they were not in this condition from the womb. Again, I’m not denying that all people are born with sinful tendencies and are apt to go astray. This is obvious. But it is one thing to say that all men have such tendencies and quite another that they are unable to respond to God.

Examining Calvinist Proof-Texts

Let me briefly touch on some of the passages Calvinists use to support the notion of Total Inability. One of the prominent proof-texts is Romans 3:10-12 which says: "There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands, no one who seeks God. All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one." The Calvinist's main emphasis is on the fact that "there is no one who understands, no one who seeks God." And, of course, this passage is taken singularly and is said to be speaking of a literal condition in which all human beings are born. Note this passage says that they have all turned away…

The Debate on Total Inability

Implying that they have turned from a former place AND that they have all BECOME worthless – not that they were all born worthless. Additionally, the origins of this is taken from Psalms as it, therefore, has poetic origins. Why does Paul use it here in Romans? Contextually, Paul is merely proving that Jews and Gentiles alike are "under sin" and that sin is not only found among filthy Gentiles and he proves it by quoting Psalm 14. David as a poet is appealing to Hebrew idiom in his indignation, a common poetic device. For example, in verse four David says evildoers "devour my people as men eat bread." Should this be taken literally and used as a proof text to support a theological superstructure too? Contrary to this passage, other scriptures tell us there are righteous men who do good and seek after righteousness – contrary to Romans 3:10.

Again, Job is a perfect example: "This man was blameless and upright; he feared God and shunned evil" (Job 1:1). In 2 Chronicles 11:16, it says: "Those from every tribe of Israel who set their hearts on seeking the Lord, the God of Israel, followed the Levites to Jerusalem to offer sacrifices to the Lord, the God of their fathers." This is the fulfillment of Lamentations 3:25, "the Lord is good to those who hope in him, to the one who seeks him" (Lam. 3:25). The theme of men seeking God is all over the Bible, making the taking of Romans 3 that none seek after Him foolish.

Assessing Biblical Support for Total Inability

Another passage Calvinists employ to prove Total Inability is 1 Corinthians 2:14. It says: "For the man without the Spirit [or 'natural man'] does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned." We would all agree that natural men do not relate to spiritual matters, and that sin has the ability to keep people blind and deaf. But this fact does NOT support the notion of Total Inability.

Additionally, we have to ask: does the King James "natural man" in 1 Corinthians 2:14 refer to the natural BORN state, as the Calvinist assumes, or something else? The New International Version translates this as "the man without the Spirit." William Barclay, Bible commentator, says this about the passage: "Paul speaks of the man who is psuchikos. He is the man who lives as if there was nothing beyond physical life and there were no needs other than material needs, whose values are all physical and material. A man like that cannot understand spiritual things. A man who thinks that nothing is more important than the satisfaction of the sex urge cannot understand the meaning of chastity; a man who ranks the amassing of material things as the supreme end of life cannot understand generosity; and a man who has never a thought beyond this world cannot understand the things of God. To him they look mere foolishness."

"Natural man," then, need not mean "man in his native state." Calvinists allow their theological presuppositions to drive their exegesis. The term can very easily be understood to mean "that man who relates to life apart from a spiritual paradigm." Nothing in the text demands that this is a description of every person who enters the world.

Interpretation of Key Texts

Then we have the big one – John 6:44, which says: "No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him." This is supposed to teach that man is in a state of total inability, one that only a miracle of God can overcome. John 6:44 has to be understood in light of verse 45 where Jesus adds: "It is written in the Prophets, 'They will all be taught by God.' Taking the two passages together, we can see that the drawing God does comes by way of those who listen to the teachings of the Father. The teaching is clear and consistent with other scripture – that the means God draws men to Him is through the preaching of the Word God. This is confirmed by Peter (1 Pet. 1:23) and James (James 1:18), both of whom declare that the Word of God is an agency of the new birth.

The Calvinist tries to use the dragging of God as evidence of man being totally unable to respond but, in reality, all these passages reveal is that God draws all to Him through the preaching of the Word. Ephesians 2:1 is another classic proof-text where Paul says that we were "dead in transgressions and sins." Calvinist

Understanding the Concept of Being "Dead in Sin"

Use this to suggest that men are absolutely dead – walking corpses – and therefore totally unable to receive anything unless God regenerates them. But letting scripture interpret scripture allow me to show you yet another way to understand this. First, we have to remember all we have shown from the rest of the Bible – Job, how God speaks to the Nation of Israel in terms of them having an ability to choose Him, right?

Secondly, I would suggest that the phrase dead in sin is akin to two brothers who were told by their mothers not to get in a mud puddle while the moms went to the store and them doing it anyway and then looking at each other covered in mud and saying: “We’re dead.” In other words “dead in sin” is akin to saying, as long as man is in sin he’s a dead man” referring to their future punishment rather than a state inherited at birth. “They are certain to die (due to unresolved sin) not that they ARE spiritually dead because of Adam’s sin.

Biblical Interpretations

We see this view in several places in scripture, like Genesis 20:3 where God said to Abimelech, “Thou art a dead man,” When due to Sarah, Abraham's wife the Egyptians said, “We be all dead men” (Exodus 12:33) and in 2nd Samuel 19:28 which says “All my father's house were dead men before the king.” Calvinism, like Mormonism, like Arminianism has the problem of taking specific verses of scripture and making them universal. Just because Isaiah says, "Your whole head is injured, your whole heart afflicted. From the sole of your foot to the top of your head there is no soundness – only wounds…" does NOT mean Isaiah was talking about anything but apostate Israel. Yes, scripture says that our works are as, "filthy rags" (Isaiah 64:6) and the people of Noah’s hearts were "only evil all the time" (Genesis 6:5). But there are a whole bunch of passages that give us an entirely different view than what Calvin created – a view founded in personal responsibility, the freedom to choose, and more than anything else – God’s love – which can nor will ever fail anyone, at any time and will reconcile ALL to Him in the end . . . not just some.

Scriptural Proofs and Responses

PROOF –
Psalm 51:5 Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me.

MET WITH –
Psalm 58:3 The wicked are estranged from the womb: they go astray as soon as they be born, speaking lies.

PROOF –
Romans 5:12 Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned:

MET WITH –
Ezekiel 18:1 The word of the LORD came to me again, saying,
2 "What do you mean when you use this proverb concerning the land of Israel, saying: 'The fathers have eaten sour grapes, And the children's teeth are set on edge'?
3 "As I live," says the Lord GOD, "you shall no longer use this proverb in Israel.
4 "Behold, all souls are Mine; The soul of the father As well as the soul of the son is Mine; The soul who sins shall die.
5 But if a man is just And does what is lawful and right;
6 If he has not eaten on the mountains, Nor lifted up his eyes to the idols of the house of Israel, Nor defiled his neighbor's wife, Nor approached a woman during her impurity;
7 If he has not oppressed anyone, But has restored to the debtor his pledge; Has robbed no one by violence, But has given his bread to the hungry And covered the naked with clothing;
8 If he has not exacted usury Nor taken any increase, But has withdrawn his hand from iniquity And executed true judgment between man and man;
9 If he has walked in My statutes And kept My judgments faithfully-He is just; He shall surely live!" Says the Lord GOD.
10 "If he begets a son who is a robber Or a shedder of blood, Who does any of these things
11 And does none of those duties, But has eaten on the mountains Or defiled his neighbor's wife;
12 If he has oppressed the poor and needy, Robbed by violence, Not restored the pledge, Lifted his eyes to the idols, Or committed abomination;
13 If he has exacted usury Or taken increase-Shall he then live? He shall not live! If he has done any of these abominations, He shall surely die; His blood shall be upon him.
14 "If he…

The Path to Righteousness

However, he begets a son Who sees all the sins which his father has done, and considers but does not do likewise; 15 Who has not eaten on the mountains, Nor lifted his eyes to the idols of the house of Israel, Nor defiled his neighbor's wife; 16 Has not oppressed anyone, nor withheld a pledge, nor robbed by violence, but has given his bread to the hungry and covered the naked with clothing; 17 Who has withdrawn his hand from the poor And not received usury or increase, But has executed My judgments And walked in My statutes—He shall not die for the iniquity of his father; He shall surely live! 18 "As for his father, Because he cruelly oppressed, robbed his brother by violence, and did what is not good among his people, behold, he shall die for his iniquity. 19 "Yet you say, 'Why should the son not bear the guilt of the father?' Because the son has done what is lawful and right, and has kept all My statutes and observed them, he shall surely live. 20 "The soul who sins shall die. The son shall not bear the guilt of the father, nor the father bear the guilt of the son. The righteousness of the righteous shall be upon himself, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon himself.

Turning From Wickedness

21 "But if a wicked man turns from all his sins which he has committed, keeps all My statutes, and does what is lawful and right, he shall surely live; he shall not die. 22 "None of the transgressions which he has committed shall be remembered against him; because of the righteousness which he has done, he shall live. 23 "Do I have any pleasure at all that the wicked should die?" says the Lord GOD, "and not that he should turn from his ways and live? 24 "But when a righteous man turns away from his righteousness and commits iniquity, and does according to all the abominations that the wicked man does, shall he live? All the righteousness which he has done shall not be remembered; because of the unfaithfulness of which he is guilty and the sin which he has committed, because of them he shall die. 25 "Yet you say, 'The way of the Lord is not fair.' Hear now, O house of Israel, is it not My way which is fair, and your ways which are not fair? 26 "When a righteous man turns away from his righteousness, commits iniquity, and dies in it, it is because of the iniquity which he has done that he dies. 27 "Again, when a wicked man turns away from the wickedness which he committed, and does what is lawful and right, he preserves himself alive. 28 "Because he considers and turns away from all the transgressions which he committed, he shall surely live; he shall not die. 29 "Yet the house of Israel says, 'The way of the Lord is not fair.' O house of Israel, is it not My ways which are fair, and your ways which are not fair?

A Plea for Repentance

30 ¶ "Therefore I will judge you, O house of Israel, every one according to his ways," says the Lord GOD. "Repent, and turn from all your transgressions, so that iniquity will not be your ruin. 31 "Cast away from you all the transgressions which you have committed, and get yourselves a new heart and a new spirit. For why should you die, O house of Israel? 32 "For I have no pleasure in the death of one who dies," says the Lord GOD. "Therefore turn and live!"