Ezekiel preached during the years of Israel’s captivity in Babylon, and he addresses at length the complaint of some that God was being unjust because they complained that the children were suffering for the sins of their fathers. In response, Ezekiel makes it clear that each individual, father or son, is accountable for his own actions.
Know that all lives are mine; the life of the parent as well as the life of the child is mine: it is only the person who sins that shall die. Ezekiel 18:4
According to Ezekiel, each person answers to God for his or her own deeds, even though collectively Israel was in captivity due to generations of unfaithfulness to God. Ezekiel assured his contemporaries that they live or die before God based on their own individual actions, even if their circumstances involve suffering due to the sins of those who lived before them.
Woe to you! For you build the tombs of the prophets whom your ancestors killed. So you are witnesses and approve of the deeds of your ancestors; for they killed them, and you build their tombs. Luke 11:47-48
Jesus criticized the religious leaders of his day, indicting them for continuing, with their current actions, the sins of those who had gone before. Jesus disputes that adorning the tombs of the prophets is enough to separate themselves from the sins of those who killed them. While the religious leaders of his day would have protested that they truly honor the prophets, Jesus declares that they still stand, by their own deeds, unrepentantly as the descendants of the prophets’ murderers.
From the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah, who perished between the altar and the sanctuary. Yes, I tell you, it will be charged against this generation. Luke 11:51
How can Jesus say that the leaders of his day will be charged with the murder of Abel? Cain killed him! Does Jesus not agree with Ezekiel’s teaching that each person is accountable for his or her own actions?
In fact, Jesus does agree with Ezekiel. However, a person’s actions for which they are accountable include how they respond to the sins committed by others who lived before them. The only way for the religious leaders to truly honor the prophets, the very ones their ancestors killed, is to believe in Jesus. He is the descendant of the prophets, and they have to decide if they will do as their ancestors did or not. Of course, they will continue the sins of their fathers by murdering him too. This makes them guilty with Cain and everyone after him who killed the righteous.
The question for us is not what kind of people were those who lived in the past, but what kind of people will we be? If we perhaps see more clearly than those of an earlier era, regarding sins both individual and collective, we cannot excuse their misdeeds by citing the cultural context of their day, nor can we judge them as to whether their sins were intentional evil or due to ignorance. God does that. We are responsible for what we do now regarding the sins of the past.
And you say, ‘If we had lived in the days of our ancestors, we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets.’ Matthew 23:30
Jesus did not believe the claims of the religious leaders of his day and he may not believe us either simply based on our assertion we would have never acted like those who lived before us. The proof will be in what we actually do today. Unless we reject the sins of the past by doing differently in our time we continue in the same evil tradition. While we cannot give an account for the actions of others who lived before us, we are accountable for what we do now, specifically whether we continue, downplay, or instead repent of the wrongs of our forefathers and do what is righteous.
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