No More Excuses: The Abolition of the Blame Game Text: Ezekiel 18:1-4
Introduction: The Universal Blame Game
Human history, from the very beginning, can be summed up as one long, sorry attempt to avoid personal responsibility. It began in a garden, with a man, a woman, and a piece of fruit. When God came walking in the cool of the day, He asked the man, "Have you eaten from the tree?" And the man, Adam, in a stunning display of what would become the default posture of the human heart, said, "The woman you gave to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I ate." Notice the genius of it. In one sentence, he blames his wife, and by implication, he blames God for giving him the wife. The woman, not to be outdone, promptly blamed the serpent. And ever since, we have been playing this miserable game of hot potato with our guilt, desperately trying to make sure we are not the one holding it when the music stops.
We see it in our politics, where every failure is the fault of the other party. We see it in our families, where children blame their parents, and parents blame their children. We see it in our own hearts, where we nurse our grievances and cultivate our excuses, polishing them like precious stones. We are experts at identifying the speck in our brother's eye, primarily because it distracts from the log in our own.
In Ezekiel's day, the people of Israel had gotten very good at this game. They were in exile in Babylon, their temple was destroyed, and their nation was in ruins. And they had a tidy little proverb to explain it all away, a saying that let them off the hook entirely. "The fathers eat the sour grapes, but the children's teeth are set on edge." It was a clever, folksy way of saying, "This isn't our fault. We are the innocent victims of our ancestors' sins. We're just paying their bill." They had turned a biblical truth, the reality of generational consequences, into a damnable lie, the denial of personal guilt.
Into this festival of self-pity and blame-shifting, God speaks through His prophet Ezekiel. And what He says is not a gentle course correction. It is a divine demolition. God takes their favorite proverb, their most cherished excuse, and He cancels it. He declares it null and void. He tells them, in no uncertain terms, that the blame game is over.
The Text
Then the word of Yahweh came to me, saying, "What do you mean by using this proverb concerning the land of Israel, saying, 'The fathers eat the sour grapes, But the children’s teeth are set on edge'? As I live," declares Lord Yahweh, "you are surely not going to use this proverb in Israel anymore. Behold, all souls are Mine; the soul of the father as well as the soul of the son is Mine. The soul who sins will die."
(Ezekiel 18:1-4 LSB)
The Indictment of an Excuse (vv. 1-2)
We begin with God confronting the people's cherished excuse.
"What do you mean by using this proverb concerning the land of Israel, saying, 'The fathers eat the sour grapes, But the children’s teeth are set on edge'?" (Ezekiel 18:2)
God's question here is dripping with righteous indignation. "What do you mean by this?" It is the divine equivalent of grabbing someone by the lapels and demanding an explanation. This proverb was not just an idle saying; it was a theological manifesto. It was an accusation against the justice of God. It was their way of calling God unfair. They were essentially saying that God was punishing the wrong people.
Now, we must be clear. The Bible absolutely teaches the principle of corporate solidarity and generational consequences. The second commandment warns that God visits "the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me" (Exodus 20:5). When Achan sinned, his whole family suffered the consequences. We are all in Adam, and we all fell in him. The consequences of our fathers' sins are real. A father who is a drunkard brings real misery upon his children. A nation that abandons God brings real judgment upon the next generation. This is an undeniable reality.
But the Israelites were twisting this truth. They were using the reality of consequences to deny the reality of their own culpability. They were acting as though they were righteous men, sitting in Babylon, innocently suffering for the sins of their grandfather Manasseh. But they were not innocent. They were enthusiastically ratifying their fathers' rebellion with their own idolatry, their own injustice, their own unfaithfulness. They were eating the same sour grapes their fathers ate, and then complaining about the taste in their mouth. They were using a true principle as a smokescreen for their own sin.
This is what we do. We take a sliver of truth, "My upbringing was difficult," and we use it to excuse our own bitterness. We take a fact, "I was wronged," and we use it to justify our own unforgiveness. The Israelites were masters of this, and God was having none of it.
The Divine Abrogation (v. 3)
God does not just critique their proverb; He outlaws it. He cancels it by a sovereign oath.
"As I live," declares Lord Yahweh, "you are surely not going to use this proverb in Israel anymore." (Ezekiel 18:3 LSB)
When God says, "As I live," He is swearing by His own existence. There is no higher authority to which He can appeal, so He puts His own being on the line. This is the most solemn oath possible. And what is He swearing to? That this excuse, this theological security blanket for sinners, is hereby rendered obsolete. It is taken out of circulation. The game is over.
This is a radical declaration. God is not interested in negotiating with their self-pity. He is not interested in validating their victim status. He is interested in truth, and the truth is that their predicament was their own fault. He is shutting down the excuse factory. Why? Because as long as we are blaming someone else, we will never repent. As long as we see ourselves as victims, we will never see ourselves as sinners in need of a savior. Excuses are the anesthetic of the soul, and God is about to perform surgery.
He is clearing the ground for the central truth He is about to lay down. He is silencing the noise of their complaints so that they can hear the clear, sharp note of His justice.
The Bedrock of Justice (v. 4)
Here, in verse 4, God lays down the foundational principle of His government. This is the axiom upon which all divine judgment rests.
"Behold, all souls are Mine; the soul of the father as well as the soul of the son is Mine. The soul who sins will die." (Ezekiel 18:4 LSB)
First, notice the basis of God's authority: "Behold, all souls are Mine." This is a declaration of absolute ownership. God owns every human being by right of creation. He is not a remote landlord; He is the sovereign proprietor of every life. The soul of the father is His, and the soul of the son is His. He does not have partial custody. This ownership gives Him the absolute right to set the terms of life and death, of blessing and cursing.
Because He owns all souls, He is not a respecter of persons. He judges each soul directly. The father stands before Him as an individual, and the son stands before Him as an individual. There is no hiding in the crowd. There is no hiding behind your family tree. Your father's righteousness cannot save you, and his wickedness cannot, in the final analysis, condemn you. You stand on your own two feet before the judgment seat of God.
And what is the standard of that judgment? "The soul who sins will die." This is the clearest, most concise statement of divine justice in all of Scripture. It is the law of the universe. The wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23). This is not complicated. The issue is not what your father did. The issue is, "Have you sinned?" And since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, the verdict is universal. Death.
This "death" is comprehensive. It is physical death, the separation of the soul from the body. But more profoundly, it is spiritual death, the separation of the soul from God, who is the source of all life. It is to be cut off from His fellowship, His blessing, His presence. And ultimately, it is the second death, eternal separation from God in hell. The principle is direct, personal, and unavoidable: you sin, you die.
The Gospel According to Ezekiel
Now, this might sound like the bleakest news imaginable. And if this were the final word, it would be. If the story ended with "the soul who sins will die," we would all be without hope. We have all eaten the sour grapes. We have all ratified Adam's rebellion. Our teeth are rightly set on edge by our own transgressions.
But this declaration of perfect justice is precisely what makes the gospel such glorious news. God did not abolish this principle of justice. He satisfied it. The law, "the soul who sins will die," was never repealed. It was fulfilled.
God, in His infinite mercy, looked upon a world of sinners, each one guilty, each one deserving of death, and He provided a substitute. He sent His own Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, who had no sin of His own. He was the one man in all of history who did not deserve to die. And on the cross, He stood in the place of every soul who would ever believe in Him. He took our sin upon Himself.
On that cross, the justice of God was fully executed. The soul who sins must die. And so, in our place, Christ died. He drank the cup of God's wrath down to the dregs. He exhausted the curse. The Father treated Him as if He had committed every sin of every one of His people. The full, unmitigated penalty of the law was poured out on Him.
And because He died our death, we who are in Him can receive His life. God's declaration, "The soul who sins will die," still stands. But for the Christian, the answer is, "I have already died in my substitute, Jesus Christ." And because He rose from the dead, we are raised with Him to new life.
Therefore, this passage in Ezekiel, which begins by demolishing our excuses, ends by demolishing our despair. It strips us of our self-righteous blame-shifting so that we might be clothed in the perfect righteousness of another. It forces us to own our sin so that we can be forgiven of our sin. God cancels the proverb of the sour grapes so that He can invite us to the wedding supper of the Lamb. He tells you that your father's sin cannot condemn you, so that you might understand that only your own sin can, and then He points you to the only one who can take that sin away.
The blame game is over. The only sane response is to cast yourself upon the mercy of the God who judges justly, who owns your soul, and who, in Christ, has made a way for the soul who sins to live.