Ezra 10:1-3 Now when Ezra had prayed, and when he had confessed, weeping and casting himself down before the house of God, there assembled unto him out of Israel a very great congregation of men and women and children: for the people wept very sore. And Shechaniah the son of Jehiel, one of the sons of Elam, answered and said unto Ezra, We have trespassed against our God, and have taken strange wives of the people of the land: yet now there is hope in Israel concerning this thing. Now therefore let us make a covenant with our God to put away all the wives, and such as are born of them, according to the counsel of my lord, and of those that tremble at the commandment of our God, and let it be done according to the law.
Ezra prayed, confessed, and wept before God for the trespasses of the people, and his repentance led the people to repent. They confessed that they had taken foreign, pagan, and idolatrous wives. They realized that these strange wives would tempt them away from the faith and worship of the Lord.
The people made a covenant promise that they would put away their strange wives and their unbelieving practices. They would not just say it and will it, but they would actually do it. So thoroughgoing and sincerely rooted was the repentance and faith of the returnees from Exile that they followed through and actually changed their behavior. They took this drastic action because the experiences of exile had so deeply affected them that it produced repentance and change.
We may repent, but we don’t always bring forth the fruits of repentance by putting away the worldly attitudes and behaviors that come between God and us. Godly sorrow for sin leads to a deep faith in grace, for the Gospel is the power of God unto salvation and changed lives. We need the power of the Spirit to put away the things of the world from our lives.