One riddle, then and now, is the apparent tension between Ezekiel 18 and Exodus 34. The former chapter argues that God does not punish children for their father’s sins, while the latter passage seems to imply precisely that. Ezekiel writes:
The word of the Lord came to me: “What do you mean by repeating this proverb concerning the land of Israel, ‘The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge’? As I live, declares the Lord God, this proverb shall no more be used by you in Israel. Behold, all souls are mine; the soul of the father as well as the soul of the son is mine: the soul who sins shall die.
Several questions are in order: Is it more accurate to say that God ‘punishes’ or that He ‘allows the consequences of one’s sin to be felt’? Can we say that God habitually ameliorates the just and proper consequences of sin?
In chapter 34 of Exodus, God speaks of Himself in the third person:
Lord, Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.
Does this passage from Exodus indicate that God allows the natural consequences of sin to spread beyond the sinner? If one individual sins, will the negative effects of his transgression spread beyond himself and impact others?
One may imagine here various concrete scenarios: one in which a parent neglects his child. The parent sins and the child suffers the consequences of the parent’s sin. But this would not mean that God is punishing the child or holding the child responsible for the parent’s sin.
Indeed, the central idea for all of Ezekiel chapter 18 is that God holds each person accountable for his own sin, and not for the sins of others, and that therefore, death is inevitable (cf. Gen 3:3, 3:19; Romans 6:23). While Ezekiel is clear in this chapter that all must die, the next question is whether the New Testament regards this as the physical death which everyone must endure (Hebrews 9:27) or an eternal death.
All humans receive a physical death, both as the natural consequence of their own personal sin, and as an effect of the sins of others. The latter heading includes both injury done directly by a concrete identifiable sin (the neglected child) and injury done by the circumstance of being a member of a fallen race living in a broken world.
Ezekiel chapter 18, then, sets the stage for the Gospel. It explains (cf. Romans 3:23) that we need a Savior, and why all humans are lost without Jesus: we are unavoidably mortal. God defends His stance: death is a reasonable consequence for sin. But He also indicates that He will ameliorate this consequence.
Both the New Testament church and the modern church face, in this interpretive question, various common misunderstandings. Ezekiel would have in no way considered himself to be stating that humans can work themselves up into a state of perfection, and thereby avoid either this world’s physical death or the next world’s eternal death.
Ezekiel’s command to “turn and live” (i.e., repent and live) plays on the messages of both judgment and messianic salvation in the preceding chapter. In Ezekiel 17, God recounts the consequences of the people’s sin - that they were taken into the Babylonian captivity - and His messianic plan to rescue them - the messianic images of the dry tree and the green tree.
That one may suffer the consequences for the sin others is seen in the Babylonian Captivity, as those who had been faithful to the Lord were taken along with those who’d worshiped idols. God’s amelioration of His sentence upon mankind - His lessening of the natural consequence of sin - is also seen in the messianic promise.
The text of Ezekiel chapter 18 is not, then, a denial of the doctrine of original sin, but rather an explanation and example of that doctrine.
Among the many heresies confronting the early church and the modern church is the denial of original sin. This error can take various forms, but remains essentially the same. So it was that the early church (Acts 2:23) proclaimed that it was “according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God” that Jesus died and rose again, in order to fulfill “the promise of the Holy Spirit” which the prophet Joel had explained.
So it is that Peter quotes David, who “saw” that God’s plan caused it to be that “my flesh also will dwell in hope.” David understood that the only natural fate was for God to “abandon my soul to Hades.” But a supernatural fate arose through God’s messianic intervention, when God ameliorated the natural consequences which David so clearly saw.
The modern church, likewise, understands that natural law predicts temporal or eternal death as a natural consequence, both for committed sin and as an effect of other sin. Scripture rejects any argument which attempts to use natural law as a justification for denying original sin and its effects: hence God’s defence of His justice in Ezekiel 18.
The New Testament church spoke from Scripture and it spoke to its contemporary circumstances, as Jaroslav Pelikan writes:
When the church confessed what it believed and taught, it did so in answer to attacks from within and from without the Christian movement. The relations of the church fathers to Judaism and to pagan thought affected much of what they had to say about the various doctrinal issues before them.
The New Testament church initially saw itself as an extension of Judaism, and when it spoke to Judaism, sometimes agreeing and sometimes disagreeing, it saw such a conversation as intramural. As a Jewish institution, the New Testament church saw its conversation with pagan philosophers as one with “others,” sometimes agreeing and sometimes disagreeing.
The modern church similarly carries on conversations, agreeing and disagreeing, with a variety social and cultural patterns.
At all times, the followers of Jesus see in Scripture an analysis of the human condition (Jeremiah 17) which sees man as broken beyond any natural repair:
The heart is deceitful above all things,
and desperately sick;
who can understand it?
“I the Lord search the heart
and test the mind,
to give every man according to his ways,
according to the fruit of his deeds.”
The Lord calculates the fitting consequence for our actions. Our actions emerge from our heart and its status: what we do emerges from who we are. We are sinners. The only natural or reasonable consequence is death.
God violates both nature and reason. He gives us a supernatural rescue because no natural rescue is possible. He saves us when any rational calculation would reveal that we deserve no salvation. God’s lavish generosity is unreasonable in the extravagance of the powerful love which He pours out on broken and undeserving people.
