Ezekiel 18:1-3 The word of the LORD came to me again, saying,… Various themes are afoot in our days, and have been in generations past, to relieve us from the pressure of personal responsibility for the character of our own life. We want to get some scientific ground to excuse ourselves whenever the ideal in our souls condemns the real in our action. The theory abroad in our day, clad in a robe of scientific weaving, and therefore counted respectable, has these two feet — one called heredity, the other environment. It is assumed by many that a man can stand firmly, and hold up his head bravely, if only he alternates these two ideas. If one gives out and will not account for things, he can put the other forward. The consequence is that many people are fatalists. I am what I am, because my father and mother and grandfather and grandmother were what they were. This fatalism is paralyzing to the higher moralities and charities of life. While on the one side it condemns, on the other side it discourages. Let us not say (it would be foolish to do it) that the influences of heredity do not descend. The Old Testament people knew they did. The idea was expressed very strongly in the words that, not in their guilt but in their natural consequences, the sins of the fathers should be visited on the children to the third and fourth generations. That is about the longest period of life (in the human family) an evil has; but goodnesses and virtues keep on to thousands of generations. In that is our hope of the final complete triumph of good over evil. "Visiting the iniquities of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generation, and showing mercy unto thousands (of generations) of them that love Me and keep My commandments." Heredity justifies itself. It is beneficent in its purpose and working. Notwithstanding that evil tendencies are started, notwithstanding that a next generation may be handicapped, yet the question whether more evil than good ever descends is one which we cannot now stay to discuss. Personally, I cannot but believe that life is always a blessing given, and that along the line of the most unfortunate heredity that thin stream of Divine life flows which can never be extinguished till God withdraws Himself. And that is, to my mind, proved by the experiences we have of the regenerating force of a purified environment. The cases are legion for numbers in which some of the most useful lives now being lived have carried in them an heredity of the very worst. People were thinking in Ezekiel's time as we are thinking in our time. They were misrepresenting God and His providence. They were talking of one another as if each were simply the exact sum of a row of figures; as if they were animals of certain sorts or families. The lion is not responsible for being a lion, nor the leopard for his spots, nor the tiger for his bloodthirstiness, nor man for his characteristics. That was the kind of speech heard from lip to lip. Into the midst of it all the prophet came with his message from God, "The soul that sinneth, it shall die. The son shall not bear the iniquity, etc. This language recognises that each of us is something more than a section in the stream of heredity, and something more than a silver-plated mirror receiving the impression of the life round about us, whether we will to receive it or not. A man is not accountable for his heredity, and only partly for his environment, but he has a self which is related to both, but which is more than both. He can say "I." He can say "I will." Around those two words all his responsibility gathers. What fathers and mothers have given us, that is between them and God. But there is something they have not given us. Within all the forces of life, vital and mechanical, there is a Divine movement. Out of theft Divine Spirit has come the soul which is the self, which sits at the centre of things, receiving and rejecting, approving and disapproving — the Ego — the I — the self. This is the mystery — the wonder of life. No theories, no philosophies, no systems can deny it or undo it or scatter it, or give it to someone else, or make someone else responsible for it. Individuality is as real as society itself. Evaporate it we cannot. Melt it into something else than itself we cannot. All theories about man being heredity and environment, and nothing else, are lifeless, in the presence of this persistent, unsubduable, and unconquerable "I" which presides over every man's destiny. Not for Adam's sin — not for your father's sin — not for your mother's sin — but for your own, that which is unquestionably your own, will you be called to account. The truth under Ezekiel's words, "The soul that sinneth, it shall die," etc. — that truth is the reassertion of God's claim on the faithfulness of each as well as on the allegiance of all. If you examine history you will find that God has moved the race forward, and reforward by consecrated individualities. When He has punished its laziness and sloth and wickedness, it has been by the misleading force of men of strong individuality, not consecrated but desecrated, — for everything that is not used for God is desecrated. It,. Old Testament times men were gradually led from one truth to another. Not till Ezekiel's time did the great truth of each person's individual accountability to God ring out clear and free. It was Ezekiel's revival note, and, indeed, is not the root distinctiveness between Romanism and Protestantism in this very truth? In Romanism individualism is so controlled that it can never arise to the place where between it and God there is nothing to intervene. In Protestantism the individual finds himself face to face with God. His first allegiance is not to the Church and not to the State, but to God. As intelligence increases he learns that he can serve the Church best and the State best by serving God. What was the impression that the early Christians produced on the society around them? "These all do contrary to the decrees of Caesar, saying that there is another King — one Jesus." Does not that passage show the simplicity of their allegiance? It was not divided. It gave them no trouble. They were not perplexed about it, because they were honest and sincere. Each man serving the same Christ, and subjecting his own will, came into a new and deeper relationship to other men than had aforetime been realised. There was no question of the collision of interests. Each man knew he could serve the interests of his own family best by individual allegiance to Christ. Each knew he could serve his Church best and his country best by serving Christ. (Rouen Thomas.) Parallel Verses KJV: The word of the LORD came unto me again, saying, |
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