Ezekiel 18:4-18 - Everyone belongs to me

18:4

This verse is amazing. “All souls are mine”. This is a fundamental truth. God does look at societies and nations, but He also regards each individual. We matter to God as individuals, not just as members of a particular group. This also means we have responsibility. See how easily society and pressure groups will seek to deny personal responsibility. Even if we are badly mistreated, an essential step towards progress is to take responsibility for ourselves. Any group that denies this is actually denying full humanity to its members, and is ensuring that they will continue to be “victims”.

18:5-18

The section is a little repetitive, but the message is clear. The lists of the various things the person does not does not do are from the Law. The righteousness of the father is not imparted to the son. Likewise, the unrighteousness of the son is not imparted to his son. So the clear message is that each will live or die for their own sin. This raises the question of how does Ex 20:5 fit in with this? First, ESV is the better translation when it says “visiting the iniquity of the fathers”, rather than NIV “punishing the children”. So how do the two fit together? Well, the effects of the sins of one generation are felt by subsequent generations. We can see that this is empirically true. In the USA the effects of past racism are still felt today, having a destructive effect. However, the subsequent generations are not guilty, unless they commit similar sins themselves. So the talk of “whiteness” by critical race theory (CRT) advocates is deeply unbiblical, and is extremely unhelpful. So we need to take responsibility for our own actions, but we also need to recognise that we will need to deal with the “mess” of previous generations. It is also worth remembering that future generations will have to deal with results of our own failings.