Ezekiel 20:44Meaning & Commentary from the Church Fathers

I will assist you in this stewardship towards you, aiming to lead others to the understanding of Me through the grace you have received; for you, having emerged from a background of lawlessness, are unworthy of honor or kindness. Thus, recognizing the serious nature of profaning God's name, we must strive to avoid causing disgrace to the Lord; for those who claim to bear His name yet do not live in accordance with it provoke the foolish to speak ill of Him. God has remarked about the Israelites: "And they defile My holy name, when they speak unto them, these men of the Lord, and they come up out of His land" (Ezekiel 36:20). We too carry the name of the Lord since we are called by Christ.

Nonetheless, our salvation is not based on the merit of our actions but solely on God's grace, as God Himself declares: ‘And remember therein your ways, and all your deeds, by which you have defiled yourselves, and abhor yourselves for all your wickednesses which you have done. And you shall know that I am the Lord, when I deal with you for My name's sake, not according to your wicked ways and deeds of corruption, O house of Israel’ (Ezekiel 20:43-44). Therefore, the Orthodox Fathers, who attained the fullness of heart not through worldly reasoning but through action—through action, through action—confirm that God instills within every person a longing for goodness, while simultaneously allowing the possibility for them to choose otherwise through their own will.