Settling individual accounts

 This week's verses are Ezekiel 18:19-23:

 “Yet you say, ‘Why should the son not suffer for his father’s iniquity?’ When the son does what is just and right, and observes all my statutes and carries them out, he will surely live. The person who sins is the one who will die. A son will not suffer for his father’s iniquity, and a father will not suffer for his son’s iniquity; the righteous person will be judged according to his righteousness, and the wicked person according to his wickedness.

“But if the wicked person turns from all the sin he has committed and observes all my statutes and does what is just and right, he will surely live; he will not die. None of the sins he has committed will be held against him; because of the righteousness he has done, he will live. Do I actually delight in the death of the wicked, declares the Sovereign Lord? Do I not prefer that he turn from his wicked conduct and live?

 These verses were revolutionary for the time when they were given. The normal practice in past cultures was to punish whole families. If a man went into debt, not just he would be sold into slavery but his wife and all his kids would be sold into slavery as well. If someone attacked your family, you might kill all the males in his household, not just the guy who was the initial problem. This was especially true in war.

It makes sense. If you want to end a feud and take a man out, you don't want the kids to grow up looking for revenge. If someone is a deadbeat who doesn't pay their debts, maybe he'll take them seriously when you threaten his family.  If you go to war, you don't want an insurgency springing up from the military aged males left behind, so you commit genocide to ensure that the land you took stays yours.

This was the operating system of mankind up until this point. We see it repeated across cultures. People assumed God was like that. If someone was born crippled, probably his parents had done something wrong. And if someone's ancestor had been particularly righteous, people expected to inherit that reward without doing anything particular themselves.

So God turns this on its head. In the verses leading up to these, he gives repeated examples of people's ancestral reputations not affecting how they were judged. The punchline here is we all stand on our own before God. We can't hide behind our family or anything else, and nothing they do will drag us down.

But even in Jesus' time people believed that we were the product of our surroundings. People debated whose sin was responsible for a child being born with a disability. People claimed to be righteous because they had Abraham for an ancestor. People even condemned Jesus for hanging around unrighteous people, like it would rub off on him.

We do it now too. We assume we're righteous because we attend church, or that we're good people because of our nationality or what school we went to, or how much more our career pays than another career. Or we assume we're less worthy than others because of atrocities committed by our ancestors, or because our nation does something morally questionable, or because we come from a broken family. But none of that makes a difference in God's eyes, and God is the only valid judge of our righteousness.

Even the past version of ourselves can't pay for our sins. And if the past version of us was sinful, we need only repent and change our ways and God will forgive. God is honest about this: "Do I actually delight in the death of the wicked, declares the Sovereign Lord? Do I not prefer that he turn from his wicked conduct and live?"

So why is it so hard for us to accept it? We should be rejoicing that we have the opportunity to settle accounts directly with God and not be dragged down by others. And we should be fearful that we might take our past good conduct too seriously and stumble away from a firsthand knowledge of God's grace. But we mostly don't think about it at all, and instead continue to keep accounts the same way our ancestors did, just like monkeys.

 So this week, take inventory: Is there anything you inherited or adopted as an identity that makes you feel righteous? Is there anything linked to your ancestry or cultural identity that you feel makes you unworthy? Bring it to God and accept the only true righteousness that lasts in exchange.