Curses Affecting Christians? You’re Joking!

“Why should my ancestor’s sin affect me?” you ask.

If it were not for our ancestors we wouldn’t exist. For example, were it not for sexual sin somewhere in our family tree, probably none of us would have been born. We bear our ancestors’ genes. Most societies have been very conscious of how much we are a product of our ancestors, but in modern western society we have so emphasized individuality that we often lose sight of it, except that we are very aware of the disconnectedness and distress felt by people who, due to adoption or for some other reason, are unaware of their parentage. Our ancestors are the roots from which we grow. They are a significant part of who we are.

We know very well that babies can be born with HIV or born affected by illicit drugs because of their parents’ sin. Science is even discovering that our grandparents’ lifestyle – such as what they ate – can switch on or off genes that affect our health today. Our present understanding of such things is crude but if our eyes could be opened, we would discover that the sins of our forebears have the power to affect us far more than we currently realize. We see the principle in the effect of Adam’s and Eve’s sin on their descendants, but just as they are not the only humans to sin and have children, they are not the only ones to affect descendants by sinning.

Consider a king. All of his descendants should be royalty but because he is cruel there is a revolution. The people scrap the monarch and establish a republic. All of the king’s descendants are affected. Few of us are kings, but spiritually we each have authority that can affect our descendants.

“But Jesus was cursed for us, so we were immediately freed from any curse the instant we made Jesus our Lord and Savior,” I hear you say. Actually, Paul applies this not to all curses, but only to the curse of God upon everyone who has broken God’s law (Galatians 3:13). The Bible teaches that there are many other curses.

A reason why many Christians do not bother to activate God’s deliverance from curses is because they confuse “the curse of the law” with other curses. This confusion leads people to wrongly presume that just because they are protected from the curse of breaking the Mosaic law, they are automatically protected from quite different curses without needing to pray or specifically believe for those curses to be broken in their lives. That’s like living in a malaria-infested jungle, blissfully supposing you cannot contract malaria just because you have been inoculated against cholera.

We might even broaden the curse of breaking the Mosaic law to the curse of breaking the law of God that is written even on pagan hearts (Romans 2:14-15). Either way, it is a curse that comes upon a person through his/her personal sin.

In contrast, generational curses are activated not by our sins but solely because of the sins of our ancestors. Such curses first started appearing long before the giving of the law. The most famous is the curse brought upon all of Adam’s descendants. Although Christ’s death has broken this particular curse, only those who put their faith in Christ’s sacrifice can enjoy the benefits, and even then there are aspects of the curse (such as aging and physical death) that still afflict believers.

Generational curses typically have nothing to do with the law. A curse affecting vast numbers of people before the giving of the law was the curse that came upon Canaan’s descendants because of the sin of his father, Ham. At the same time, a blessing fell upon the descendants of Noah’s more righteous sons:

Genesis 9:22-27 Ham, the father of Canaan, saw his father’s nakedness and told his two brothers outside. But Shem and Japheth took a garment and laid it across their shoulders; then they walked in backward and covered their father’s nakedness. . . . When Noah awoke from his wine and found out what his youngest son had done to him, he said, “Cursed be Canaan! [Ham’s son] The lowest of slaves will he be to his brothers.” He also said, “Blessed be the LORD, the God of Shem! May Canaan be the slave of Shem. May God extend the territory of Japheth; may Japheth live in the tents of Shem, and may Canaan be his slave.”

This curse was not limited to the third or fourth generation. As is the norm for curses, the issue was not the spiritual destiny of the descendants. In this case, it focused on who would be the underdog. Likewise the blessing involved material prosperity (land) – “May God extend the territory . . .”

Some curses can remain dormant for generations, but still in force. Jericho was the first city taken by Joshua and the Israelites when they entered the promised land. In what I presume to be the principle of the first fruits belonging to the Lord, God commanded that the entire city be destroyed and that no plunder be taken. Against this background we read:

Joshua 6:26 At that time Joshua pronounced this solemn oath: “Cursed before the LORD is the man who undertakes to rebuild this city, Jericho: At the cost of his firstborn son will he lay its foundations; at the cost of his youngest will he set up its gates.”

Generations later, we read:

1 Kings 16:34 In Ahab’s time, Hiel of Bethel rebuilt Jericho. He laid its foundations at the cost of his firstborn son Abiram, and he set up its gates at the cost of his youngest son Segub, in accordance with the word of the LORD spoken by Joshua son of Nun.