Passage Read: Ezekiel 16-19
Meditation Verse: 18:2
Thought
The sense of this proverb is that the fathers do wrong and get away with it, but their sons must endure the consequences. With it, the latter generation blames the former generation for their trials and difficulties. Their fathers sinned against the Lord but lived out their days in prosperity and safety, but their sons live under the oppression of a foreign king, no freedom, humiliated, starving. They suffer the consequences of their fathers' sins. They blame their fathers for their own troubles, as if they share no part in them. Yet when they enjoy blessing because of the obedience of their fathers, they can't recognize that, but think it is because of their own righteousness! They want it two ways, but God operates in mercy, blessing those who do not deserve it and disciplining those who need it so that they might repent and live and receive blessing. They blame their fathers for trouble, but pin blessing on their own righteousness. Scripture doesn't say the consequences of the fathers' sin are passed onto the children, but the sins of the fathers. The sons are to see their fathers' sins and renounce them! If they don't, they see encouragement to sin with ever greater gusto, provoking the Lord more than their fathers. How can He not act against them? First with the warnings of faithful prophets and light discipline. Then, if they refuse to acknowledge their sin, He will ramp up their punishment, even destroying them from the land.
Application
If I blame my father for the consequences and discipline that come into my life without seeing my own participation in those sins, I can never be free. I may have inherited some sins from my father, but I'm responsible for my own behavior; I suffer his consequences as consequence for my own evil deeds, as discipline that I might acknowledge our shared sin and turn away from it. I inherit the sin, act in it, and therefore deserve to share in the consequences. By the same token, I share in the blessing that comes from his obedience, even if I'm not as obedient as him, which is not an encouragement to lesser obedience but greater. If he enjoyed favor for some obedience, how much more favor could I enjoy for greater obedience? The lesson for me is that ultimately I'm judged for my own sin or righteousness, not my father's. He may set a direction for me, but I'm responsible for whether I walk in it and to what degree. I'll be condemned by my own sin, not my father's, if I do not turn away from it, even though I inherited it from my father. Or I'll be rewarded for my own righteousness, not my father's, even though I inherited the pattern from him. I'm not bound by his choices; I can and should seek to rise above his example, turning away from all the evil and doing better in all the good. The results are of my own making.