The Sins of Your Ancestors

We blame the gun after I pulled the trigger, the cigarette company because I smoked, or the prostitute because I get a disease. Fans blame the coach for losing the match.

Mormons have a great plan for your dead ancestors. You get baptized in their place, their sins are forgiven, and they enter the kingdom of God.

Others have another take on the sins of your ancestors. You’re guilty of their sins 300 years ago and must pay the price through social justice. It’s Mormonism without the water!

Should you be held responsible for the sins of your ancestors? How would you know those sins? How many generations back will you go?

No one today, nor of the past, has clean hands. No tongue, tribe, nation, skin color, or individual – past or present – is innocent of horrible things.

Africans enslaved Africans over thousands of years. In the 1400s, the Inca in South America murdered their neighbors in violent religious rituals. Pacific islanders stole from one another and then ate each other. Five hundred years ago, Roman Catholics killed Protestants and Lutherans killed Anabaptists. My great-grandfather defrauded his neighbors with rotten potatoes. The whole world is a guilty mess!

What do you mean when you use this proverb concerning the land of Israel: “The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge?”

“As I live,” says the Lord God, “you shall no longer use this proverb in Israel. Behold, all souls are Mine; the soul of the father as well as the soul of the son is Mine; the soul who sins shall die” (Ezekiel 18:2-4).

In the days of the Jewish prophet Ezekiel, people blamed each other for the sins of their ancestors, even creating a proverb about it. God told Israel to stop repeating the proverb because it wasn’t true. God holds each sinner personally responsible for his own sins and not the sins of others.

When Adam sinned, he blamed God and Eve. Eve blamed the serpent. The serpent was the only one in the Garden who didn’t pass the buck (Genesis 3:8-13). Blaming someone else (or their ancestors) is always easier than looking in the mirror to see where I miss the mark.

God saves and forgives individuals one-by-one by grace through faith in Christ. God’s Saviour meets the sinner where he is, not where his great-great-great-grandmother was.

Here’s Looking at You

When you look in the mirror, deeper than the skin and hair and other features, what do you see?

Many people, the deeper they look, the more uncomfortable they become.  Often what we see is not something necessarily pleasing.

If God were standing on the other side of the mirror, do you know what would He see in you?

If you read through the first few books of the Bible, you find the early history of the Jewish nation.  It’s a history full of rebellion, wars, idolatry, and other evils. The children of Israel were not outstanding in any way but their sin; but God looks at His own children differently than others see them, or we often see ourselves.

At one point in Israel’s history (Numbers 23), the king of a neighboring people hired a prophet to put a curse on the Israelites.  Every time Balaam opened his mouth to curse the people of God, God took over and placed words of blessing in his mouth instead.

God has not observed iniquity in Jacob, nor has He seen wickedness in Israel, the Lord his God is with him (Numbers 23:21).  Balaam announced what God saw when He looked at His own people.  He didn’t see sin or the wickedness.  Why not?  Everyone else did.  But God didn’t see it because He’d forgiven the people and covered them by His grace.

What does God see in you?  Depends on your relationship with Him.