The Text:
"The one who sins is the one who will die. The child will not share the guilt of the parent, nor will the parent share the guilt of the child. The righteousness of the righteous will be credited to them, and the wickedness of the wicked will be charged against them."
Here are some quotations I have gathered from Credobaptists concerning this verse:
- So are you saying we inherit Adam's sin even though God says we don't inherit our parents sins?
- If I cannot inherit my father’s sin, how can I inherit Adam’s sin? I cannot.
- The idea that human beings are born already guilty of someone else’s sin is not only false doctrine, it does dishonor to the God of the Bible. Ezekiel 18:19-20 says that the son does not inherit the sin of the father and the father does not inherit the sin of the son.
- I believe it would be unjust to punish you for my sin, or me for Adam’s sin. I am not morally culpable for the actions of others, but for my own, and that is plenty. Ezekiel 18 seems like a strong argument for this view.
- Ezekiel 18:20 says the son does not bear the guilt of the father but total depravity says all the descendants of Adam inherit the guilt of his sin. Sin is not something which comes by birth but is something one decides to engage in.
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Ezekiel 18 is a complex chapter. This chapter deals with the deported second and third generation Israelites who are suffering enslavement in the midst of the Babylonian captivity. The cause of this captivity was idolatry against God Himself.
With the destruction of the Temple and the deportations, a very real crisis emerged. Prior to that event, it was held that
the Temple in Jerusalem was God’s exclusive dwelling place on the earth, and that only in the Temple was it possible to commune with God. Furthermore, this communing was only through the Zadokite priesthood. So when the Babylonians destroyed the Temple and exiled the Temple priests and seized the holy relics, there was a very real crisis. With the Temple gone and the priests unable to perform sacrifice there, how could the Jewish people commune with their God and follow his commandments?
We now see a drift into
fatalism with the recurrent theme of complaining or murmuring against God by shifting-the-blame to the sins of their fathers instead of the exiles understanding their own sin. For those born in captivity, a smug self-righteousness overcomes them and an accusation will be leveled against God Himself…He is unjust (vs. 25-29). The exiles are blind to their own sin. It is not God who is unjust. God then rails down the condemnation….the exiles themselves are unjust (vs. 29).
The answer and comfort Ezekiel gives those in exile foreshadows the New Testament especially in the person of John the Baptist.
God will tabernacle with his people wherever they are at in captivity. Through repentance and the preaching of Ezekiel (and Jeremiah in Judea), God will give them a new heart and spirit to commune with God himself (vs. 31). This is regeneration in the truest sense.
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Chapter 18 begins with the exiles using an extra biblical proverb is a challenge to God’s fairness. “
The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge.” In essence, the proverb seeks to place the blame elsewhere for their captivity. The gist of the proverbs seems to be a comparison to a situation in which a child is born deformed, on account of the father eating bad grapes before conceiving the child. Thus, the child is punished with bad teeth because of the father’s bad judgment, or perhaps even his simple mistake. As stated before, Israel seemed to place the blame of exile at the feet of their fathers who had sinned and walked contrary to God. In doing so, they had failed to recognize the sinfulness of their own sin, were guilty of blame-shifting. God then commands that use of the proverb cease.
Ezekiel answers this false proverb and the exile’s own self righteousness by calling for
repentance with his three generation illustration. The prophet uses civil transgressions with the judgment and penalties associated of Torah as analogous to moral transgressions. Therefore, the context of the second set of verses is dealing with the legality aspect within the Jewish court system.
- The third generation: The sinful but repentant grandfather is considered righteous (vs 5-9).
- The second generation:The sinful wicked unrepentant father (who commits capital offenses) as is worthy of death (vs. 10-13).
- The first generation: The sinful but repentant adult son is considered righteous(vs. 14-18).
God is not addressing here the issue of sin as related to
spiritual death but as to one sinning unto a capital crime that will lead to them being put to physical death, such as by stoning. The unrepentant father is a robber, murderer and has committed adultery which are capital sins in the Torah. This does not have original sin in its cross hairs, rather we may add, the consequences of original sin’s corrupting influence.
In order for the exiles to stop blame-shifting the prophet states in vs. 20 “
The son will not share the guilt of the parent, nor will the parent share the guilt of the son....” In other words, the Jewish legal system does not allow “guilt sharing” in its punishments, so neither should the exiles believe they are sharing in their forefathers guilt and blaming them for it. The exiles have true moral guilt because they are sinners and repentance is its only cure.
Perhaps Duet 24:16 as a parallel passages adds clarity here. “
Fathers shall not be put to death for their sons, nor shall sons be put to death for their fathers; everyone shall be put to death for his own sin.”
Deuteronomy 24 is talking about how things should operate in civil society. It's not talking about God's dealings with man whether though the Law or Gospel; Duet. 24 and Ez. 18 are talking about capital punishment in the context of civil society. And in the context of society, sons ought not be put to death for the sins of their fathers. The right way to preserve justice in civil society is to punish those alone who have committed crimes worthy of punishment. So, this passage isn't dealing with imputation at all, it's dealing with capital punishment as it relates to civil society.
CONCLUSION:
1. Contextually, Ezekiel 18:20 has nothing to do with the fall, original sin or the imputation of guilt concerning Adam’s descendants. It is not a parallel text to Genesis 3. So it is a stretch for credobaptists to interpret it as such even though it is nearly uniformly believed to be about imputation by Credobaptists. This verse is part of a larger rhetorical message of the whole chapter, namely, if you repent, you will be saved – regardless of the sins of your parents or children.
2. Contextually, there is no mention of repentance during the Fall of mankind. Adam endures God’s pronouncements and suffers the curse mediated to him. Adam is comforted with the protoevangelium of Genesis 3:15. On the other hand, the exiles themselves are going to commune with God in a new and different way….through repentance: “Repent! Turn away from all your offenses; then sin will not be your downfall. Rid yourselves of all the offenses you have committed, and get a new heart and a new spirit. (vs. 30-31) Repentance is not a matter of bearing guilt as a burden, neither is it the cultivation of remorse or regret. Instead, is the first step toward transformation — what Ezekiel calls getting a new heart and a new spirit. Repentance is an active, deliberate step in a new direction. It is a step into the future, into life itself.
3. If the context dealt specifically with the imputation of Adam's sin, why would the passage be dealing with actual sin? The passage actually deals with the idea that the unrepentant sin of the father should not be charged to the repentant children. The
doctrine of original sin does not deal with repentance at all, but rather the guilt we have in Adam. The passage assumes both guilt and pollution since the subject is a wicked man who needs to repent.
4. Ezekiel 18 does not address the origin of sin or how sin is contracted.
5. There are no innocent individuals in Ez. 18. All are above the Age of Accountability even the son, who is considered an adult as he doesn’t require a pledge for a loan (vs. 16).
6. If one insists that the Ezekiel passage is a universal principle or law that states that no one can justly suffer for the sins of another, then it directly violates the gospel message that Jesus Christ suffered on the cross for the sins of human beings. And Christians are to affirm that Jesus suffered in the place of others. In other words, apart from Christ's imputed righteousness, the repentance in Ezek. 18 by itself is not able to cover our sins.
Apart from Christ's imputed righteousness, our sins-- even a single sin-- would outweigh any good that we did and there could not be forgiveness. The prophet can say that "none of the transgressions which he has committed shall be remembered against him" because of Christ’s substitutionary atonement.