This is the 14th article in a series entitled Wonderful Counseling. You can find the rest of the articles by clicking on the link above.

Western society is intensely individualistic. The idea that we might be corporately responsible, guilty, or subject to punishment for sins committed by others in our family lineage or group chafes against our Greek-based logic and world view. Old Testament people, however, saw things differently. Perhaps they had more common sense.

Common sense observations tell us that people often suffer because of the sins of others.

For example, if a father commits a crime and goes to prison, he suffers as does his entire family. Some of this suffering likely will impact future generations. When children do not have a father present, it causes damage. Grandchildren may suffer from a lack of proper fathering because their own Dad did not get fathered as God would have intended. This is a clear example of the sin of a father being passed down in unexpected ways.

Old Covenant people understood and believed that they were linked to the blessings and the sins of their ancestors and their nation.

We can see this clearly in a variety of passages. Below I list a few in which various leaders and prophets confessed their own, their forefathers’, and the nation’s sin to God.

Those of Israelite descent had separated themselves from all foreigners. They stood in their places and confessed their sins and the wickedness of their fathers. Nehemiah 9:2 (NIV) 

O LORD, we acknowledge our wickedness and the guilt of our fathers; we have indeed sinned against you. Jeremiah 14:20 (NIV) 

O Lord, in keeping with all your righteous acts, turn away your anger and your wrath from Jerusalem, your city, your holy hill. Our sins and the iniquities of our fathers have made Jerusalem and your people an object of scorn to all those around us. 17  "Now, our God, hear the prayers and petitions of your servant. For your sake, O Lord, look with favor on your desolate sanctuary.  Daniel 9:16-17 (NIV)  

Is this merely an Old Covenant concept that was done away with in Christ, or do we have the same sort of corporate responsibility before God today?

Lessons from DNA

There is a very interesting passage in the Letter to the Hebrews that has a lot to say about generational sins, guilt, judgments, and devastation.

One might even say that Levi himself, who receives tithes, paid tithes through Abraham, 10  for he was still in the loins of his ancestor when Melchizedek met him. Hebrews 7:9-10 (ESV) 

When Abraham paid tithes, all of his descendants paid tithes. This is a profound statement that should make us rethink things. Negatively, when Adam sinned, all of his progeny sinned. (Romans 5:19) On the positive side, when Jesus rose from the dead, all of his spiritual descendants through the new birth rose from the dead. (Ephesians 2:5-6) In the natural world, a similar process works in our bodies that is based on DNA.

I believe God uses the properties of inheritance through the genome to reveal to us a spiritual principle called identification.

Physically, all of us are the sum total of the DNA inherited from all our ancestors. Each male inherits Y-DNA from his father going all the way back to Adam. Males and females inherit mitochondrial DNA from their mothers going all the way back to Eve. The rest of our genome comes from others in our line. If we go back to our great-great grandparents, we have a total of sixteen persons contributing to our make up. This means that in a sense we were “in” those sixteen individuals and their forefathers when they lived their lives here on planet earth as they were obeying, disobeying, or simply ignoring God.

Theologically, the principle of identification means that our identity is connected to Christ in a very real way.

Paul called this being “in” Christ. What was and is true for him, excepting his divinity, is ours through our unity or identification with him. Christianity would not provide a way for us to overcome sin, Satan, death, and disease if we were not identified with Christ. It is not enough to be merely forgiven through Christ’s dying as our substitute. True victory lies in his living his life in and through us via the Holy Spirit. (Galatians 2:20) We are forgiven because he paid the penalty for our sins. We are justified because we have been given (in Christ) his actual right standing before God. We are children of God through the new birth which provides us with God’s “spiritual DNA,” so to speak. We have the ability to live for God because he lives in and through us.

Simply put, if not for identification, we would not be saved.

But identification also was the cause of our needing salvation. Our identities are linked to fallen Adam’s prior to the new birth. Just as surely as we were “in Christ” when he walked the earth in complete harmony with and obedience to the Father and in reliance upon the Holy Spirit, did miracles, died a sacrificial death, and rose again in glory; so, we were in Adam when he betrayed God in the garden. We cannot have it only one way. Either both are true or neither is true. Thankfully, both are real!

This forces us to conclude that the guilt-justification paradigm for understanding what Christ did for us on the cross is inadequate.

His dying as our substitute, taking our guilt and punishment upon himself, does not tell the whole story. In a very real way, our salvation is more about “Who’s your Daddy?” than anything else. From whom do we derive our life, our makeup, and our inheritance? Is it from Adam or God the Father through the new birth?

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, 4  to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, 1 Peter 1:3-4 (ESV)  

We inherited Adam’s “sin nature,” the inborn propensity to sin, via our natural birth. Along with this spiritual inheritance comes a plethora of other things that are handed down regarding physical attributes, inclinations, giftings, etc., along with inherited guilt, since in Adam, we all sinned.

Because one person disobeyed God, many became sinners. But because one other person obeyed God, many will be made righteous. Romans 5:19 (NLT) 

Likewise, the new birth is what gives us new life in Christ and a wonderful spiritual inheritance. So then, the idea of corporate guilt is not such a strange idea after all. Neither is the concept of corporate righteousness that we enjoy in Christ as the church. The bigger question, then, is how did Christ deal with this enormous weight of corporate guilt that infected all of humanity? Is there anything left for us to do? I will look at these two questions in coming articles.