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.

You are Guilty for the Sins of Others

The soul who sins shall die. The son shall not bear the guilt of the father, nor the father bear the guilt of the son. The righteousness of the righteous shall be upon himself, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him (Ezekiel 18:20).

In 2013, a Kenyan lawyer named Dola Indidis, filed a lawsuit in the International Court of Justice against the nations of Italy and Israel. He asked the court to hold the two nations responsible for the death of Jesus and reverse His conviction in the name of “justice“. Indidis said Italy and Israel had violated Jesus’ human rights by “abuse of office bias and prejudice.” The case was dismissed because the court only has authority in disputes between nations.

The modern nations of Israel and Italy were not responsible for the conviction and death of Jesus nearly 2,000 years ago. Those who committed the crime are the ones responsible, not their descendants 50 generations later. But such is the concept of social justice; you are guilty for the sins of others which they may or may not have done. This is not Christianity.

While the ancient governments of Israel and Italy carried out Jesus’ trials, conviction, and death sentence, the Bible says that Christ’s death was according to the eternal will of the Godhead. Jesus said of Himself at the Last Supper, The Son of Man goes as it has been determined (Luke 22:22). In the first sermon of the Christian era, the Apostle Peter echoed this, Jesus was delivered by the determined counsel and foreknowledge of God to those who killed Him (Acts 2:23). Nothing happened to the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world (Revelation 13:8) that God had not ordained in every exacting detail from eternity.

We have each been conceived with a sin nature. That sin nature cannot help but rebel against God. It has come to each of us, like the rest of our human characteristics, through Adam and Eve, our first parents. But God doesn’t hold us responsible for the sins of others. We each have plenty of sins of our own, and we are each personally accountable for those sins.

For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. And the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 3:23; 6:23)

Surely Goodness and Mercy

I will greatly rejoice in the Lord, my soul shall be joyful in my God; for He has clothed me with the garments of salvation, He has covered me with the robe of righteousness … (Isaiah 61:10)

Imagine! Evicted from Eden! The emotional pain of Adam and Eve was overwhelming; guilt, shame, loss, fatigue, personal conflict, disappointments, fear. Forcibly cast from Paradise into thorns and thistles, stinging bees and blood-sucking mosquitoes, the sweat of labor, and soon the pain of childbirth.

Wherever they went, the haunting specter of physical death pursued. But something more horrifying had already overtaken them; something not visible to the naked eye. God’s promise was simple: Of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die (Genesis 2:17). Death would strike in the very day of sin.

Some mock the Scriptures saying Adam and Eve didn’t die in the day they rebelled. Adam, the Bible says, lived another 930 years (Genesis 5:3). Physical death was agonizingly slow, but as God promised, spiritual death immediately gobbled up the souls of mankind’s parents, for the soul who sins shall die (Ezekiel 18:20).

We see the outward appearance, but God sees the heart (1 Samuel 16:7). Physical death was slowly working in their flesh, but spiritual death had already claimed their souls. Just as a dead body is unable to respond to physical stimuli, so the dead spirit can’t respond spiritually. Adam and Eve hid themselves, powerless to seek fellowship or forgiveness.

Before evicting them from Eden, God taught Adam and Eve of the need for atonement. They brought sin and death into the world (Romans 5:12), but He brought the promise of a Redeemer and eternal life (Genesis 3:15).

In the Garden God sacrificed a lamb. It’s innocent blood flowed on their behalf; eternal life springing from the death of another! Taking the lifeless skin of the animal, He then clothed their naked bodies, a picture of being clothed spiritually in Christ (Genesis 3:21). Physical death was still in pursuit, but surely, goodness and mercy would follow those who were spiritually alive.

Today for you, there is a fountain filled with blood drawn from Immanuel’s veins; and sinners, plunged beneath that flood, lose all their guilty stains and sing His power to save.

Caught!

Photo radar of my wife speeding.

I mentioned in my sermon how we are law breakers, sometimes in simple ways we don’t recognize like re-using a postage stamp, taking a paperclip from the office, or speeding. Law breakers deserve punishment for their crimes, even the ones we think are insignificant.

As we drove home that afternoon, Daniel mentioned that Kimberly speeds; a charge she denied. Moments later I saw a flash from the side of the road. I think you just got a ticket, I said. Kimberly was sure she was driving the speed limit.

Where we live, computers and robotic cameras monitor traffic. These machines catch people who drive faster than the allowed limit, go through stop lights, make illegal turns, and break other traffic laws.

A week later Kimberly received a letter from the City of Portland. Inside was a picture of her behind the wheel of her car. On the public website were five pictures of her from different angles. There was also a $170 ticket for driving 41 in a 30 mile-per-hour zone. Rather than pay the ticket, she could pay $125 to take a 1 1/2 hour traffic safety class and have the ticket removed from her record.

She paid the fee, which goes wholly to the Bible university from which I graduated! The class reminded her about the laws of the road, showed pictures of accidents, and offered testimonies from people injured or who lost loved ones due to simple traffic infractions. She learned a lot!

Laws exist for our good, whether we like them or not. The law of God’s Word is no different. It distinguishes right from wrong. It points out our sin and pronounces God’s condemnation and judgment: The soul who sins shall die (Ezekiel 18:20). Death is the ultimate punishment for sin, and death is ultimately eternal separation from God.

But the good news is that while you are judged guilty of sin, God provided a means of forgiveness. It’s not by attending church or performing good deeds. Forgiveness isn’t earned by works or merited by privilege. The washing away of sin from your record is through faith in Jesus, who took the full penalty of God’s wrath upon Himself in your place.

To Jesus all the prophets witness that, through His name, whoever believes in Him will receive forgiveness of sins (Acts 10:43).

Punishing the Child for the Sins of a Parent

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

Should you be punished for the sins of a neighbor, a cousin, or another person with your eye, hair, or skin color? How about being responsible for the sins of an entire city or a nation a thousand years ago?

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 were blaming one another for the sins of their ancestors. They even had a common proverb about it. God told Israel to stop repeating the proverb because it wasn’t true. God holds each sinner responsible for his own sins and not the sins of others.

Large African tribes throughout western Africa raided smaller and weaker tribes two hundred years ago, enslaved their African neighbors, and then sold them as slaves to Europeans. Should modern Africans be punished for the sins of their ancestors?

Should the Japanese of today be responsible for their ancestors who killed Chinese men and kept their wives as “comfort women” (sex slaves)? Or the Chinese tribes which enslaved each other four thousand years ago?

On April 14, 1865, John Wilkes Booth murdered US President Abraham Lincoln. Should Booth’s descendant pays a price today for their ancestor’s deed? Does God blame Booth’s descendants for his actions?

We are each individually responsible to God for our own sins.

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 much 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.