Are we to repent for our ancestors past sins?

[Aquila]

I found this article to be thought provoking... corporate sins...

The Confession of Corporate Sins
Collective Ownership of Others’ Sins
by J.E. Eubanks Jr.

January 13th, 2016

In the 1990s, a Christian movement called “Reconciliation Walk” sparked waves of reaction throughout the world. The effort — concentrated in Europe, Turkey, and parts of the Middle East — offered an apology for the Crusades and the atrocities committed during that era. But soon, reports emerged that as a result of this effort, relationships between Christians, Jews, and Muslims had begun to soften. The movement also raised questions among Christians, including: Do we have any responsibility to make apologies like this? Should Christians today feel any burden for sins committed by our spiritual ancestors?

In today’s Western church, some believe we’ve lost our sense of corporate responsibility. This isn’t a new struggle; asking “Am I my brother’s keeper?” is a familiar question to God’s people. But perhaps especially in a context where individuality reigns, and where people identify themselves essentially by their independence, this struggle manifests itself anew in a real and sometimes challenging way.

Individual and Corporate Together

Believers typically have a strong grasp of individual culpability and are usually grateful for the opportunity, in worship, to confess. Though they know that Christ atoned for their sins once and for all on the cross, they also recognize that the ongoing presence of sin has consequences, not just for them, but for those around them, and their community. The regular confession of sins, then, is good for the soul. And while private confession will suffice, more public confession — made among God’s gathered people — binds believers in the fellowship of the cross as members of one body.

But when it comes to the collective ownership of others’ sins and participation in a more corporate confession, many wrestle. Several pastors have heard from a curious congregant: “I didn’t actually commit those sins; why do I need to confess them?”

Implicitly, they’re asking: Is there legitimacy to the idea that sins committed by others — or by institutions — are my responsibility? Is it important — for me — to confess corporate sins?

Christians do need to confess corporate sins, for at least a few reasons:

• Our participation may not be active or direct, but often we are complicit — at least in simply turning a “blind eye.”

• We may have more inclination toward such sins than we are ready to admit, or are even aware of, and our confession is good for our soul’s nurture.

• We find solidarity with our brothers and sisters in Christ who do have direct guilt with such sins, as we are all members of the same body.

• Scripture promises that the sins of our forefathers are visited on us, which means, in some way, we bear the burdens of such sins.

Ancestral Responsibility

Among these, the last one raises the most questions. Does the Bible teach that believers are culpable for the sins of their forefathers?

Several texts indicate that the answer is yes. For example, in Leviticus 26, the Lord spoke through Moses declaring the consequences should the children of Israel disobey; among the penalties named, they are told that “those of you who are left shall rot away in your enemies’’ lands because of their iniquity, and also because of the iniquities of their fathers they shall rot away like them” (Leviticus 26:39, emphasis added). Then they are told, “If they confess their iniquity and the iniquity of their fathers in their treachery that they committed against me … then I will remember my covenant with Jacob, and I will remember my covenant with Isaac and my covenant with Abraham, and I will remember the land” (Leviticus 26:40, 42).

The Psalmist, likewise, in leading the nation of Israel in a prayer for the blessing of the people, was concerned with their culpability for ancestral sin when he wrote, “Both we and our fathers have sinned; we have committed iniquity; we have done wickedness” (Psalm 106:6). Jeremiah, recording what the Lord said to him, mentioned the lasting effects of the sins of “we and our fathers” (Jeremiah 3:25) and instructs the people that they should acknowledge both their own wickedness and that of their fathers (Jeremiah 14:20). When Isaiah pronounced his woes upon beholding the glory of the Lord, he was not only concerned about his own unclean lips but also that he lived “in the midst of a people of unclean lips” (Isaiah 6:5); he also bore a prophecy of warning that the Lord would repay “both your iniquities and your fathers iniquities together” (Isaiah 65:6-7).

Most of the prophet’s words in Ezekiel 20 focused on the judgment that was Israel’s due to the sin and unfaithfulness of its ancestors. Nehemiah, too, spent nearly an entire chapter linking the spiritual condition of Israel in his day to the sins and covenant-breaking of its fathers (Nehemiah 9), before taking upon himself and his whole generation the burden of confessing this guilt and petitioning God to forgive it and grant His grace (Nehemiah 10). This brings out a larger point: A huge sense of the identity that Jews had, as the covenant people of God, was directly tied to their sense of ancestry and connection with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; they were called “Israel” or the “children of Israel” precisely because God had given Jacob a new name, and they were his descendants. Their entrance into the covenant was dependent, to a degree, on this connection; naturally, they would understand that their connection to the rest of God’s covenant people (be they contemporaries or those long dead) also affected their relationship to God Himself.

TO BE CONTINUED...