The Sins of the Father
In the blue reflection of Charlotte’s eyes, I see myself. Her mischief and playfulness resemble me. It’s true what they say: a daughter can wrap her daddy around her little finger. For better or worse, I understand her inner thoughts.
A push. A prod. Even at five years old, she has mastered the art of testing limits—each ‘mistake’ more calculated than the last.
Charlotte knocked down her brother’s pillow fort. Three times I heard him pleading, “Stop, Sissy!” as I cooked.
I turned the corner to find her already looking up at me, hand-in-hand. “It was an accident.”
I knew better. I know because I was once the older sibling. I know what it’s like to push buttons to see what happens. To stroke frustration like a flickering fire, just to watch it catch. I know the thrill of teasing, of poking at someone’s patience until it unravels by the thread. I see the sin because God has reproved me of it.
Now, I see it in my baby.
Sin runs through generations. Left unmanaged or unaddressed, it leaves canyons, deep wounds, pain, and suffering. Scripture teaches that “through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men” (Romans 5:12). My children didn’t learn sin from the world; they inherited it from me, just as I inherited it from my father before me.
Keep tracing the sins of the father back, and we see plainly the evil it produces. Noah saw dishonor and disrespect in his son, Ham. That same sin rippled through generations, marking the Canaanites long after the days of Ham (Genesis 9:24-25).
Everyone has been born a sinner. We don’t become sinners by sinning; we sin because it’s woven into our nature. But where sin leaves a curse, Christ speaks a better word.
“If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, behold, the new has come” (2 Corinthians 5:17). Generational sin can be broken.
What sin has sown, Christ can uproot!
By grace, believers are not bound to repeat the sins of their fathers. By the power of the cross, we are not slaves to our past.
But we must take sin seriously.
It’s easy to overlook in our children the sins we excuse in ourselves.
It’s easy to call it “harmless” when we don’t want to confront it.
It’s easy to correct behavior without shepherding the heart.
And all the more so when the culture we live in celebrates “pot stirrers” and a slew of other attitudes that contradict biblically prescribed ways of living.
But love does not overlook. Love intercedes. Love disciplines. Love disciples.
Parents, we are called to more than raising well-behaved kids.
We are called to shepherd their hearts toward Jesus.
Not just stopping sin, but being freed from it.
Not just obeying, but being made new.
Not just behaving but being transformed.
That starts with you.
Lord, help me take my own sin seriously so I can lead my family into Your grace. Break what needs to be broken. Heal what needs to be healed. Help me rest in You, the One who makes all things new.
