In one of my papers, from one of my classes, we had the opportunity to virtually write about anything. I chose to write on a very unspoken subject. A subject well known to Jewish culture.
Iniquity.
I spent hours making sure the paper made sense. And in the time I wrote it - I was learning it myself.
This topic grabbed me to learn about my Bible. Never had I searched, cross referenced, and spent hours learning about God. This topic opened the Word of God to speak to me in a way I had never experienced before. It became alive.
I became so inspired by this topic and the material I found that I felt God prompt me to write a book on it last Winter (2013). I spent hours researching and getting to know this subject, and in learning, God opened up things in my life that needed to be and showed me things in His Word I never saw before. I also began to see healing in my family's life.
Iniquity.
What is it?
What does it have to do with me?
It has everything to do with us. The best scripture that explains the simplicity of it comes from Exodus 34:6-7
'And the Lord passed before him and proclaimed, "The Lord, the Lord God merciful and gracious, long-suffering, and abounding in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and the children's children to the third and the fourth generation." '
While studying iniquity, I began to see the reality of God as a generational God. Nothing in this world that was created leans on one person alone, because one person is such a small picture of the grand painting. God's existence is so large that it is saturated in the principle of generations. I've learned more and more that this is why those long genealogies are so important in the Bible. God's plan exists far beyond our ideas of time. God's plan exists in generations. They fully incorporate each person in a family, combining one person to another.
What I also learned was the importance of "AND" used in this passage. "Forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin," there is a really good reason why "and" is put there. They AREN'T the same. Each word means something different, and the difference is important to know. Sin is missing the mark. Transgression is knowingly rebelling against God's righteous law. Iniquity is the character of the sin in your life. The sin is so familiar in your life that it becomes part of who you are.
Iniquity is known as a generational curse. It's also characterized as a familiar family spirit. It begins in one generation either by a negative vow or by a malpractice (a negative circumstance/situation happens to you, but you are of an innocent party - you become the victim and it effects you for the rest of your life). The best way to describe the three of these parties is this; a tree. Trees have a root, a trunk and branches. The branches are sin and transgression. They are the fruit, and the fruit that you see is the iniquity within (the root). What springs out of that root is the fruit, or branches. That is why, it is unspoken.
The reason I took such interest into this subject is because of the freedom that comes from understanding it. I've learned much of the Israeli culture from studying this subject, and because it is a subject so widely talked about in scripture - there's so much to study!
I feel as though I could go on and on... until next time - I will explain more!
Credit to the beginning of my study is thanks to Pastor Tom Deuschle from Celebration Ministries International, Zimbabwe.
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