Blog Jones

I promised you something insightful; I hope this fits the bill. Sorry it took so long. Here we go:

Let’s say that a man kills his neighbor and is later convicted of murder and sentenced to death. Let’s also say that the man has a ten-year-old son who was at school at the time of the murder.

Now, does that son bear any responsibility for the man’s crime? Should he be executed too, since he descended from so monstrous a man?

Of course not. Surely it’s plain to see that the sins of the father have no bearing on the status of the son. The Bible backs this up in Ezekiel 18:20:

The soul that sinneth, it shall die . The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son: the righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him.

So then, by our own law and by the law of God, people are responsible for their own actions, not their ancestors’ actions.

Now, here’s a problem:

My Bible Doctrines class, in studying anthropology (the study of man) and hamartiology (the study of sin), took an in-depth look at the story of Adam & Eve.

In this story, humanity’s parents committed the only sin available to them, eating from the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Because of that action, all of humanity is cursed, in sin, and condemned to hell apart from the help of Christ, according to the book of Romans, especially verses 5:12-14. (The following is from the NASB, which I selected for ease of readability.)

Rom 5:12 Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned–
Rom 5:13 for until the Law sin was in the world, but sin is not imputed when there is no law.
Rom 5:14 Nevertheless death reigned from Adam until Moses, even over those who had not sinned in the likeness of the offense of Adam, who is a type of Him who was to come.

So, because of the sins of our ancestors, we are declared guilty. Adam’s sin is imputed unto us. We bear the iniquity of the father of all men; “the fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge.”

Is this not a contradiction in God’s law?