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.

The Danish Bible

A copy of the 1550 Danish Bible.

Within three years of Luther nailing his 95 complaints about the Roman Catholic Church to his church door, the Protestant Reformation was boiling in nearby Denmark.

One of the issues of conflict between Protestants and the pope was over the Bible. The popes restricted the Bible to elite scholars, insisting it be written and read only in ancient Latin. Protestants insisted God’s design was for His Word to be accessible to every person no matter his language, education, or status in society. Danes wanted the Bible in common Danish!

A Danish monk named Hans Tausen went to Wittenberg, Germany to meet with Martin Luther. He returned to his pulpit in 1525 and preached about the need for the Church to be Bible-based rather than subject to the traditions and dictates of the popes. He proclaimed that God saved sinners by grace alone through faith alone in Jesus alone and not good works or rituals. Tausen was immediately imprisoned by Rome’s religious appointees, who also held political power throughout Europe.

Tausen refused to let prison walls silence him. Through his dungeon cell window, he preached the Good News of Jesus and within days many townspeople accepted the Biblical gospel apart from any ritual performed by a priest or good work of the sinner. Faith in the finished work of Jesus at the cross was sufficient to save the worst sinner.

Soundly born again, the town’s mayor released Tausen from prison and encouraged him to preach the gospel openly. Roman churches were ransacked, idolatrous statues and altars destroyed, and pulpits used to proclaim Jesus.

Danish king Christian II saw the Reformation as an opportunity to break his nation and the monarchy free from subjection to the pope. He commissioned his advisor Hans Mikkelsen to make the Bible available in the language of his subjects. Mikkelsen, aided by a former priest named Christian Pedersen, relied heavily upon Luther’s German translation.

Out of conflict and the personal ambition of King Christian II, Mikkelsen and Pedersen completed the Danish language Scripture in 1543. The first printing in 1550 was made of 3,000 copies, and the Danish Bible became an instant best-seller.

Disagreement at Marburg

(L) Luther, (R) Zwingli

Over four days in October of 1529, Martin Luther, the Protestant leader in Germany met with his Swiss counterpart, Ulrich Zwingli. It was hoped a Protestant alliance would have more impact reforming Roman Catholicism. The men had known each other by correspondence for years before meeting in Marburg, Germany. Their differences were minor except concerning the Lord’s Supper.

The popes taught that the bread literally became the flesh of Jesus and the wine literally became the blood of Jesus. Luther believed that Jesus was somehow present in the bread and cup but couldn’t explain how. Zwingli said the Lord’s Table was a symbolic memorial to Christ’s death.

When Jesus instituted the Communion meal, He said, This is My body (Matthew 26:26; Mark 14:22; Luke 22:19; 1 Corinthians 11:24). Luther said this meant the bread and wine were somehow Christ’s body and blood; Zwingli said the elements only sybolized His body and blood.

The dispute became known as The Great Controversy and the two men couldn’t agree. In fact, when Zwingli left for Zurich, Luther thanked Zwingli’s companion for coming and begged forgiveness for any harsh words he may have spoken. Luther then refused to shake Zwingli’s hand and criticized the Swiss Reformer openly. While Zwingli disagreed with Luther, he didn’t believe the matter should separate them or their followers in preaching Jesus in the Scriptures.

From the beginning of the meeting, Luther was hostile. He began by saying he wasn’t there to debate but to explain his belief and show why Zwingli was wrong. To the Word of God one must yield. It is up to you to prove that the body of Christ is not there when Christ himself says, ‘This is my body.’ I do not want to hear what reason says. Luther then took a piece of chalk and wrote on the table in Latin the words This is My body, then laid a tablecloth over the words.

To every argument made by Zwingli, Luther would lift the tablecloth and repeat the words. Zwingli met Luther’s assertions by asking how Christ’s physical body could be everywhere at one time.

We can look at the Marburg Colloquy as a failure. It was not. Both men argued from Scripture alone as the foundation for both Christian faith and practice. They lived up to their commitment to God’s Word and not the traditions of men, and God’s Word still stands today!