Recently I read through the Old Testament books of Ezra and Nehemiah. I was especially struck by Ezra’s repentance in chapter 9.
He finds out that other Israelites have sinned. He hasn’t committed this particular sin. Others have. And yet, when he hears about it, he spends a full day in mourning, and then prays in full identification with his fellow Israelites who have sinned.
My God, I’m too ashamed to lift up my face to you. Our iniquities have risen higher than our heads, and our guilt has grown to the heavens.
Ezra 9:6, emphasis mine
I often have the opposite impulse. When I hear about the latest ways Christians have failed to care for the orphan and widow, when I hear of their complicity in acts of violence and oppression, I don’t immediate identify with them and ask God to forgive our sins.
Instead, my temptation is mostly to distance myself from such Christians.
But there appears to be some power in this kind of repenting on behalf of others. Ezra’s repentance in chapter 9 paves the way for the rest of the people to repent in chapter 10. They mourn their sins and renew the covenant and return to the Lord.
Yeah, the Pentecostals call this “identificational repentance” and you’ll see it all over the place. Daniel, Ezra, Nehemiah all do it.
When deliverance ministers are helping you break generational sins and curses from the 4th gen above you, they will have you pray, “Father, on behalf of myself, my children and my upline, I confess that…and I repent…and I bring the cross against every curse coming against us and coming down the family line.”
Of course, this flies in the face of the reformational view of God ONLY seeing us as individuals before him and not also as families.
Notice how it works with faith too. Jesus heals AND FORGIVES the paralytic, not because of his faith, but because of the faith of his friends.
Then notice in Hebrews how Levi gets blessed because Abraham tithed to Melchizedek because, watch this, “Levi was in his loins”!?
You see that? There are all kinds of blessings and cursings, and in this case, abilities like confessing the sins of others whom you identify with, that we can’t teach anymore due to the roughed individualism that America and the Reformation brought into Christianity.
Yep, I’ve participated in identificational repentance, etc. Definitely flies in the face of our individualist fantasies.