We run our website the way we wished the whole internet worked: we provide high quality original content with no ads. We are funded solely by your direct support. Please consider supporting this project.

What is the significance of Ezekiel 33:13–15?

“[W]hen 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…he will die. But when I say to the wicked, ‘You shall 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 statues which ensure life without committing iniquity, he will surely live; he shall not die.”

How are we to understand the Lord telling a righteous person “you shall surely live” or telling a wicked person “you shall surely die” if we also believe that at that very moment the Lord was perfectly certain that the righteous person he’s speaking to would not live (for he eternally foreknew they’d fall) and that the wicked person he’s speaking to would not die (for he eternally foreknew they’d repent)? Declarations are truthful only if they reflect sincere beliefs. But if God’s knowledge about a person’s fate is eternally settled, then any declaration he gives which goes against this knowledge is insincere.

If we grant that when the Bible depicts God as changing his mind it depicts him as he truly is and not simply as he appears to us, these problems disappear. In good faith, the Lord tells the righteous they shall live and the wicked they shall die, for this is what the Lord truly believes about them at the time of the declaration. If they change, however, his belief about them truly changes, and so his sincere declaration about them changes.

Category:
Tags: ,
Topics:
Verse:

Related Reading

Does God Intervene?

Given the vast influence of angelic and human free will, what influence does God have in determining what comes to pass? While God has an important role to play in anticipating and creatively responding to decisions agents make, is God only a responder? Does he have anything to do with what’s going on in creation?…

Your Prayers Matter

My conviction is that many Christians do not pray as passionately as they could because they don’t see how it could make any significant difference. They pray, but they often do so out of sheer obligation and without the sense of urgency that Scripture consistently attaches to prayer. The problem, I believe, is that many…

How do you respond to Matthew 20:17–19?

“The Son of Man will be handed over to the chief priests and scribes, and they will condemn him to death; then they will hand him over to the Gentiles to be mocked and flogged and crucified, and on the third day he will be raised.” God knew perfectly the hearts of all the Jewish…

What is the significance of Judges 10:13–16?

The Israelites cry out to God because of their oppression from foreign rulers. The Lord refuses to deliver them because they have abandoned him (vs. 13–14). The Israelites repented, put away their foreign gods and worshipped the Lord. The Lord “also could no longer bear to see Israel suffer” (vs. 16). Hence the Lord changed…

Topics:

If God anticipates each possibility perfectly, how does he differ from the “frozen God” of classical theism?

Question: If God anticipates each and every possibility as if each were only possibility, how does God ever experience novelty and adventure? It seems that a God who perfectly anticipated (from all eternity)  every single possibility as if it were the only possibility would not differ from the timeless “frozen God” of classical theism Answer:…

Podcast: What is the Difference Between Open Theism and Process Thought?

Greg openly processes the major differences between Open Theism and Process Thought. http://traffic.libsyn.com/askgregboyd/Episode_0218.mp3