Dan Chapa

Summary of the Passage The passage comes at a time when Judah has lost it's freedom and possession of the promised land; Ezekiel himself being among the Babylonian exiles 1 .  This presents a new question for God's people; why don't we have the land?   2 Kings 23:25-26 and 2 Kings 24:3-4 attribute Judah's suffering at the hands of the Babylonians several generations back to the heinous sins of King Manasseh. God's judgement should have lead the Jews to look to their own sins but instead, they blamed their parents using the saying " The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge ". 2   This complains of sons suffering for their fathers sins and may even refer back to Adam and Eve's eating the forbidden fruit, with it's consequences on mankind. God rejects the notion that blame can be shifted to parents, claiming His rule ( all souls are mine; the soul of the father as well as the soul o...

Many Christians object to the idea that we are condemned in Adam.  But the same objectors often hold we receive a sin nature from Adam and that due to the fall we will physically die.  Richard Watson highlights the logical inconsistency with this objection:   The justice of this is objected to, a point which will be immediately considered; but it is now sufficient to say, that in the making the descendants of Adam liable to eternal death, because of his offence, be unjust, the infliction of temporal death is so also; the duration of the punishment making no difference in the simple question of justice. If punishment, 'whether of loss or of pain, be unjust, its measure and duration may be a greater or a less injustice; but it is unjust in every degree. If, then, we only confine the hurt we have received from Adam to bodily death; if this legal result of his transgression only be imputed to us, and we are so constituted sinners as to b...

One of the more common objections to the doctrine of original sin is that it's unjust. I didn't eat the fruit, why do I have to suffer?  We of course did not eat the fruit, nor does God look at us as if we did. Rather, we are closely associated with Adam and in Adam all die. This idea or federal headship is similar to the idea of families or nations suffering together for something their leader did and the bible gives us plenty of examples of this happening.