In Exodus chapter thirty-four, verse seven, the Lord speaks to Moses about visiting the fathers upon the children and upon the children’s children unto the third and fourth generation. Parents should note that their sins, spiritual neglect, or failure to separate themselves from the ungodliness can have tragic consequences on their children. Children suffer for the sins of their parents in the sense that they generally follow their parents along the path of temptation or spiritual compromise, thereby adopting evil habits and attitudes that will lead them away from God and toward destruction.
The Lord sees the sin the parents did while living on the earth, which is still a choice they made without any thought of how it would affect their future or family. No matter how big or small the iniquity was, the result from it may encounter the potential life that comes next through that family line. However, the parent’s lifestyle effect of that sin may manifest in the child when born to a high degree or less or even none. Only God knows when that time comes. On the other hand, the evil one and his cohorts will be there to enforce that temptation on the children, and if they do not have God’s ways instilled in them when that time comes, chances are they will get cornered into committing the same sin without even knowing the past.
For example, if the parent was a thief most of his life and the mother was a compulsive liar, the children may have some percentage of both sins. If there is one kid only in the family, that child may be more of a thief than a liar or vice versa. If the parents have more than one, maybe one lies more, and the other may steal. Again, only God knows. We must understand this like the features of a child.
The iniquity of the fathers and children is similar to a kid’s inheritance of external features. Externally, a child may have the father’s eyes and cheekbone while inheriting the mother’s nose and mouth. The same may go with internal living. How parents live is a possible template for how their children will live. Parents have the opportunity to stop this pattern by praying to God and asking Him how we could prevent this reoccurrence in the family. Secondly, if the child is mature enough to tell them how we live, it is entirely up to you. Pray about it because we do not want this to continue in our generation.