I was reading Ezekiel 18 today and I wrote a little of what I got from it. I hope you'll read it and refer to the verses in there.
In this chapter of Ezekiel God reproves Israel about their unequal judgement. One of the main points that came out for me was the issue of repentance and turning from one's sins. Verse 4 speaks about God's ownership of all souls, (see Genesis 2:7), and then has a correlation with the first part of Romans 6:23 which even speaks about the judgement of God, and reward of the righteous and the wicked. (see Revelation 22:11-12).
He then defines what is just of man to do in verses 5-9, and says that they which do these things shall sure live. But the righteous man has a child which does not do justly and walk in God's statutes and judgements as their parents did, as expounded in verses 10-13, then that child shall die and his/her own blood shall be on himself/herself because they had committed sin in the sight of God. Alternately in verses 14-17, if the child has an unrighteous parent, and sees the sins of the parent and does not follow in the sins of the parent but rather does righteously in helping the poor and living for God, he shall live.
The parent bears their own sin and so does the child their own sin. I guess you could say, "every man for himself" for in these cases they knew what was right and did not do it.
The concept it seems according to the following verses, Israel questions why the child doesn't bear the sins of the parent and goes as far as to say that God's judgement is unfair because when the wicked changes his way and becomes righteous all his sins are forgotten and he shall live, but if the inverse happens where the righteous in all his years of righteousness, becomes wicked in the end,his righteousness is not remembered. (see Ezekiel 18:20-24)
The righteousness of one's mother or father or family and friends cannot save us? It is not that the reputation of a godly friends or family that can save us. Each individual must have faith in Christ and live for Him, the problem is that we put of Christianity as the bible puts it for a "cultural Christianity", meaning we just grow up in it, having fellowship with brethren and family in Christ but never having a true intimate relationship with Jesus Christ, and we as humans have the very outstanding ability to justify ourselves and our actions so that we don't seem to bad, saying hings like, "they had it coming", "I couldn't do any better", "that's just how di ting set", scripture says that "the heart is deceitful..." But we always have the choice, to sin or not to sin, to live or to die. Not only does God show us that their is life and death, as a Father loves His children He say, choose life.
God has no pleasure in the death of the wicked. (see Ezekiel 18:23)
Here is the Love of God!
