Ezekiel 18:30-31 - Exposition

That work was to produce repentance, hope, and fear. The goodness and severity of God alike led up to that. For a man to remain in his sin will be fatal, but it is not the will of God that he should so remain. What he needs is the new heart and the new spirit , which are primarily, as in Ezekiel 11:19 , God's gift to men, but which men must make their own by seeking and receiving them. So iniquity shall not be your ruin ; better, with the margin of the Revised Version, so shall they not be a stumbling block (same word as in Ezekiel 3:20 ; Ezekiel 7:19 ; Ezekiel 14:3 ) of iniquity unto you. Repented sins shall be no more an occasion of offence. Men may rise on them to "higher things," as on "steppingstones of their dead selves."