In Ezekiel 18, God lays out how his judgement works. To him, it’s not how you start, it’s how you finish. You can live a horrible life and repent at the end and you are credited righteous. You can live an amazing, upright life and sin at the end and your righteousness will be forgotten (v24). Only for the sins the individual has committed are they judged.
God then asks the rhetorical: are these ways unjust? And states that it is not his ways but ours that are unjust. Does cheating on a spouse not result in broken trust despite what they’ve done in the past? Similarly, does not a child who realizes a mistake and asks for forgiveness, without your prompting, warm your heart to the point of embrace? So to us our relationship with God. At the end of the chapter, he clarifies that he wants no one to die but judgement must come.
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