Daily Journey: April 5th

Deut. 22:6-24:22, John 9:24-41

Thought from Today’s Old Testament Passage:

Deuteronomy 24:16 lays down a general principle that human courts and human governments are not to impute to children or grandchildren the guilt of their parents or forebears when they themselves have not become implicated in the crime committed. It is clearly recognized in Scripture that each person stands on his own record before God. If one is personally guilty of unbelief or wickedness and fails to repent and trust in God’s mercy through the blood shed on the altar, that person will die for his own sin—not for that of his father. But if the child is upright and a true believer, he is justified before God; yet he cannot be justified on the basis of his father’s righteousness if he himself rejects the grace of God (Jer. 31:29-30; Ezek. 18:1-20). …

Although this legal principle of dealing with each person according to his deeds is firmly laid down in Scripture, it is also made clear that God retained for Himself the responsibility of ultimate judgment in the matter of capital crime. In the case of the child conceived by Bathsheba of David when she was married to Uriah, the loss of that baby (in that Old Testament setting) was a judgment visited on the guilty parents for their gross sin (which actually merited the death penalty under Lev. 20:10). It is by no means suggested that the child was suffering punishment for his parents’ sin but that they were being punished by his death. (Gleason L. Archer, Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1982), pp. 152-153)