Sins of the Father

It is asked, "If it is true that Adam's descendants do not inherit guilt from Adam, why does the Scripture teach that the children inherit the sins of the fathers?"  It doesn't teach that at all.  It teaches that the sins of the parents will be visited on the children to the third and fourth generation.  It is the consequences that children inherit, not the guilt or blame.

Furthermore, if one appeals to this principle in support of inherent sin, he has proven too much and therefore proven nothing at all.  If the "generational sins" theory is an extension of the manner in which Adam's sin affected his descendants, then children must be to blame for all sins of the fathers all the way back to Adam.  On the other hand, if the "generational sins" last only to the third and fourth generation, then Adam's sins, now more than four generations removed, could not affect us at all.  So it couldn't be said, "In Adam all died."  It would be said, "In Great Grandfather, Grandfather, and Father all died."  Look at what the Bible actually says about visiting sins on the children.

• "Therefore now go, lead the people unto the place of which I have spoken unto thee: behold, mine Angel shall go before thee: nevertheless in the day when I visit I will visit their sin upon them (Ex. 32:34)."  The visitation of sins does not occur at birth, but at a point in the future when judgment falls.

• "If his children forsake my law, and walk not in my judgments; If they break my statutes, and keep not my commandments; Then will I visit their transgression with the rod, and their iniquity with stripes. (Ps. 89:30-32)."  To visit sins is not to make them sinners, but to punish for sin.

• "Thus saith the LORD unto this people, Thus have they loved to wander, they have not refrained their feet, therefore the LORD doth not accept them; he will now remember their iniquity, and visit their sins (Jer. 14:10)."  Again, the visitation of sins is judgment, not more sin of the same kind.

• "Thou shalt not bow down thyself unto them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me (Deut. 5:9)."  The sins are visited (judgment falls) on those that hate him.

• "And they that are left of you shall pine away in their iniquity in your enemies' lands; and also in the iniquities of their fathers shall they pine away with them. If they shall confess their iniquity, and the iniquity of their fathers, with their trespass which they trespassed against me, and that also they have walked contrary unto me; (Lev. 26:39-40)..."  The iniquity of their fathers became their own, and is something from which the children can be free if they repent.  The judgment continues only as long as the children are sympathetic to their fathers' sin.
  
  This could not answer to the concept of inherent sinfulness, or it could not be forsaken through repentance.  Who teaches that one can repent of Adam's sin and be free from it?

• "Thou shewest lovingkindness unto thousands, and recompensest the iniquity of the fathers into the bosom of their children after them: the Great, the Mighty God, the LORD of hosts, is his name, (Jer. 32:18)."  A recompense is a judgment on sin, not the transmission of sin itself.

• Wherefore, behold, I send unto you prophets, and wise men, and scribes: and some of them ye shall kill and crucify; and some of them shall ye scourge in your synagogues, and persecute them from city to city: That upon you may come all the righteous blood shed upon the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel unto the blood of Zacharias son of Barachias, whom ye slew between the temple and the altar. Verily I say unto you, All these things shall come upon this generation (Matt. 23:34-36)."  They were going to kill prophets in their own generation, and for that the judgment would fall on this one generation, a judgment that had not fallen on previous generations.

It is the effects of sin that are inherited, not a sinful disposition. 

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