Liberating the Will of Australia. Geoffrey Burn

which is being punished after a long period of God’s forbearance (see ch. 20), but Ezekiel promises the possibility of redemption if the people do repent. God desires that the people repent (18:23, 32).68 Ezekiel finishes his argument in chapter 18 with the call to corporate repentance: “the final words of the chapter (vv. 30b–32) focus on the challenge to repentance. ‘Get yourselves a new heart and a new spirit! Why will you die, O house of Israel?’ (v. 31); ‘Turn and live’ (v. 32). These words make explicit the challenge to repentance which is clearly implied in vv. 21–24 and 26–28.”69

      Note that “the call to repentance is addressed to the community as a whole, and it is the restoration of the whole people of God for which Ezekiel presses.”70 Even more than that, Ezekiel has a vision of the restoration of the nation (e.g., chs. 36 and 37); God’s generosity goes beyond the dynamics of the responsibility of repentance.

      Ezekiel says that the problems of the past that are continuing into the present can be addressed by the repentance of the nation. In doing so, the present generation can do more than repent of its own sins; it is breaking the pattern of bound willing that has been inherited from the past. The nature of repentance will be explored further in the Second Movement, Loosing. In particular, we will look at what must be done in Australia to repent of the present continuation of the sins of the past. But before we can do that, we need to understand the way in which Australia’s will has become bound, which is the purpose of the next section.