Ten Commandments: The DNA of sin

After my daughter was born, many people started telling me that she looks like me. 

I guess we have the same eyebrows and same nose (or so I’m told), but I think she has my wife’s mouth. 

A friend told me that if she ever got lost, people would just be able to look at our faces and identify me as the father. 

I guess that’s the power of DNA.

Anyway, sin also has a certain DNA that seems to pass itself along from person to person, especially in families.  And it is this that I think God is referring to when he said,

I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me (Exodus 20:5).

Now at first glance, this seems unfair.  It seems as though God is saying he punishes children for their father’s (or mother’s) sins. 

But God makes it very clear later that this is not the case. 

In Deuteronomy 24:16, God commanded the people,

Fathers shall not be put to death for their children, nor children put to death for their fathers; each is to die for his own sin.

In Ezekiel 18, God rebukes the people who quoted a proverb that seemed to imply that God would punish children for their parent’s sin.

So if God doesn’t punish people for their parent’s sins, what does he mean by punishing the children for the sins of their fathers to the third and fourth generation?

I believe it means that sin and the effects of sin tend to pass on from person to person, especially in families. 

You see this in marriages.  A father and mother live selfishly, refusing to love and honor each other, eventually divorce, and leave behind children with no concept of what a godly marriage is. 

So when they grow up, they repeat their parents’ sins and find that they cannot sustain their marriages either.

Or a child is abused by their father or mother.  And they vow never to do that to their children. 

But when they grow up and have children of their own, they find themselves doing to their children the very same things their parents did to them.

Or a child sees their parents trapped by drugs or alcoholism.  And when they grow up, they find themselves trapped by the very same problems. 

And this vicious cycle just keeps going and going and going.

Each person is punished for their own sins which they commit, suffering the pain and heartache that comes from sin, and yet passing on their sins to the next generation for which they themselves will be punished.

Is there any way to break this cycle of sin?  Is there any way to keep us from passing along the DNA of sin to our children? 

Yes there is. 

A key phrase here is that God punishes the children for the sins of their fathers to the third and fourth generations of “those who hate me.”

When people reject God in their lives, the power of sin has full force in their lives, and they are vulnerable to its effects. 

If they fight sin at all, they do so by their own power, but they soon find out that they are powerless to fight it. 

They find themselves repeating the sins of their parents and passing on to their children those same sins, along with all the hurt and pain that accompanies them.

If the cycle of sin is to be broken in our lives, we need a relationship with the living God.  We need his transforming power in our lives. 

We need to say, “God, I need you.  I need your healing.  I don’t want to be a slave to sin in my life anymore.  I can’t do this on my own.  Help me.”

And if we repent of our sins, reach out to Him, and let him take the throne of our lives, he will give us victory over the sin that is destroying us, and that cycle of sin will be broken. 

Instead of passing on sin to your children, you will pass on the love of God which he shows to a “thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments.”

Which DNA is at work in your life? 

The DNA of sin? 

Or the DNA of the transforming love of God?