Commentary
Say to them, ‘As I live!’ declares the Lord GOD, ‘I take no pleasure at all in the death of the wicked, but rather that the wicked turn from his way and live. Turn back, turn back from your evil ways! Why then should you die, house of Israel?’ – Ezekiel 33:11 (NASB)
In 1669, at the age of 30, Nathaniel Vincent delivered a sermon titled “The Conversion of a Sinner: Explained and Applied from Ezekiel 33:11.” That sermon was published and Reformation Heritage has edited and revised it into a short book titled, “Turn and Live.” In it, Vincent’s point is clear: if you do not turn, you will surely die. The chapters of the book provide his expositional outline. After declaring the main point of the text, he provides three doctrines. In chapter two, the way of evil is the way of death. In chapter three, men die as a result of their own will. In chapter four, the Lord repeatedly calls sinners to turn from their evil ways and live. He closes the book with applications in chapter five.
Much like Greenhill’s “Stop Loving the World,” this text provides us with one primary logical argument. If you do not turn, then you will die. The natural response is to ask … turn from what? He says we must turn from the way of evil so we must ask how that is defined. I find it easier to consider chapter three before chapter two because it provides us with root cause. The text in Ezekiel says that God desires that the wicked turn from his way and pleads with them to turn back from your evil ways. We must make no mistake that the path man finds himself on is his own chosen path. God did not put us there. We chose it. It is our way. Vincent argues that “the great reason why men die (and die forever) is because they will it.” We chose to be “servants of sin.” Our way is essentially loving the creation instead of the creator. Our review of “Stop Loving the World [insert link]” breaks this down further and shows how loving God and loving the world are mutually exclusive. We want the things of the world and we want to gratify our own desires. At its core, this is idolizing the self. We have made ourselves gods and have replaced the only God with false gods all while claiming that we believe in Him. This is our evil way.
Some may counter with God’s absolute sovereignty (which we absolutely affirm at RTP). After all, isn’t He sovereign over my salvation? Yes, but that does not mean we can charge God with not making us repent. It is no excuse. Further, some may say that we are unable to turn on our own due to our depravity. We affirm this too but there’s more to it. Vincent clarifies, “our inability to do good does not undermine the doctrine that one’s sin and misery is a direct result of one’s will … it is true that sinful man is unable to do good, but he is unwilling as well.” Sure, we can’t turn without the Spirit working in and through us, but even if we could we wouldn’t.
Now that we’ve shown the source of our evil way, we must address the consequence. In other words, why does God want us to turn from our way? He wants us to turn because our way leads to death (see chapter 2). He says in Ezekiel, “I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather…turn.” He adds “why then should you die…?” It is implied that without turning, death is assured. Here is where we get our either-or argument. So how does God call on us to turn from our way? Vincent deals with this in chapter four.
Vincent outlines five ways in which God calls on us to turn. First, He uses the law to awaken us and stop us in our path of destruction. Next, He uses the gospel to invite us to consider His mercy instead of our way. Third, He uses passionate pleas through scripture. Fourth, He uses previous and present examples of faithful saints and those who choose their own way. We can look to the past and present to see the outcomes. Finally, His Spirit works in us. All other calls are of no use unless the Spirit accompanies them. Really, this could be boiled down to one cause and call. If the Spirit calls us, it is fully effectual. If the Spirit does not call us, all other calls are ineffectual. Therefore, our prayer for unbelievers should be that the Spirit works in them to repent and turn to God. Keep it simple and direct. The Spirit working is a necessary premise to salvation. Start your prayers there. While you’re at it, pray that Spirit continues to show you your own sin and enable you to repent.
“Turn and Live” is a great title for this little book. It points directly to the fact that turning involves two things. It is a turning away from something but also implies a turning to something else. You can’t turn from something to nothing. Vincent shows it as a turning from darkness to light, from the power of Satan to God. This turning, repentance, is conversion. You can’t have salvation without it because, as he has already shown in his treatment of Ezekiel 33:11, if you do not turn, you die … eternally.
As I read this book, I thought of a couple of famous allegories from Plato. One is the allegory of the cave that you are probably familiar with. In this allegory, Plato shows prisoners who have spent their entire lives chained at the bottom of a cave facing a wall. They have never seen the light. They have never seen what is outside of the cave. Instead, they only know the shadows of what passes by the opening of the cave. This is their reality. While we read it and think how awful it would be, for them it is the only thing they have ever known. They do not want to leave the cave. It is comfort to them. When forced to leave, they are confronted by light and true reality. After succumbing to the fact that all they have ever known was false, the prisoner sees true reality for what it is and wants to run back to the cave to tell those left behind what they are missing. He has turned from the darkness to the light and sees the truth and it has forever changed him. Another allegory Plato wrote about is the allegory of the sun which carries the cave allegory further. In this, the sun is shown to be the true source of all that is good on this earth. Our ordinary senses only show a faint semblance of reality because none of it exists without the sun.
While these were not written with the Christian worldview in mind, you can see the parallels. When we walk around this world, we naturally think this is all there is. We grow comfortable in it assuming it doesn’t get any better. What we don’t realize in our fallen state is that none of it exists without God. All of the good things we experience here are simply blessings and a foretaste of what is to come for those who believe. God wants us to turn from the darkness and see that there is something much better than the cave we live in. He is the sun in our comparison. Nothing good exists without Him. Once we turn and see Him and all that He has done, we will know that we have to go back and tell others. That is the reason He doesn’t take us home immediately after conversion. We can glorify Him by telling others to come out of the cave and see the light. We can plead with others, as God did with us, to turn and live.
Structure of the Book
The book is divided into 5 chapters:
God’s Call to Turn
The Way of Evil is the Way of Death
Death as a Result of One’s Choice
God’s Repeated Call to Turn from Death to Life
Concluding Applications
Five Key Quotes
“If you do not turn, you will certainly die.”
“You must not think God gave you a being and sent you into the world to please yourselves, to satisfy your immoderate and corrupt desires, or to live carelessly and rebelliously against Him. But that is what you do until you are converted.”
“Most who walk in evil ways have a future desire to leave them, but this only shows their present unwillingness.”
“If you persist in your evil way you may gain a little of the world – something to be kept for a little while – but you lose your soul and eternal glory.”
“The will, so utterly corrupted and possessing the influence it does, does everything in its power to hinder conversion to God and holiness.”
Recommended Complementary Reading
Repentance: Turning from Sin to God by Thomas Boston
The Doctrine of Repentance by Thomas Watson
The Acceptable Sacrifice by John Bunyan
Stop Loving the World by William Greenhill
Where to Buy the Book
If you purchase the book through the following link, RTP gets a small percentage back which we will use to fund our operations. It’s costs nothing extra to you and you’ll be helping us connect the Puritans with Christ’s church worldwide.
