Does Immorality Degrade Our Genetic Code?

Romans 1 is a frighteningly specific description of the moral degradation that is the result of hating God. (To know that God is GOD and to refuse Him either thanks or glory and honor is to hate Him. Full stop.) I’ve always viewed the spiritual descent into deeper evil on purely moral grounds, but that’s not the whole picture at all. The state of my soul affects my physical body, not just my spirit. That’s something that I’ve understood to some extent, but it goes deeper than just sickness and disease. What if the moral degradation of the human soul directly impacts our genetic code?

Hating God Curses Our Genetic Code

Scripture is very clear that the choices we make in this life not only determine our own personal eternal fate but also the familial line we leave behind.

…for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generation of those who hate Me,

But showing mercy and steadfast love to a thousand generations of those who love Me and keep My commandments.
Exodus 20:5-6 AMPC

When we refuse to make Jesus Christ LORD of our lives through the redemptive salvation He secured for us through the shedding of His precious Blood unto death on the Cross, we remain under the law. And under the law, there are inescapable consequences for hating God and rejecting His Son—consequences that pass down through our bloodline. This is where the terrible picture of Romans 1 takes on new meaning.

The generational curse of hating God is neither general nor indiscriminate. It doesn’t fall on just any random assortment of the people in our lives; it falls on those who share our blood. Our children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren inherit the curse of hating God. Blood is everything, both spiritually and physically. Blood is life. The oxygen we breathe in is carried throughout our bodies by our blood. The nutrients in the food we eat are transported by blood. When viruses, bacteria, or parasites invade our bodies, it is white blood cells that defend against them. White blood cells also carry our DNA. Enter Romans 1.

And so, since they did not see fit to acknowledge God or approve of Him or consider Him worth the knowing, God gave them over to a base and condemned mind to do things not proper or decent but loathsome, until they were filled (permeated and saturated) with every kind of unrighteousness, iniquity, grasping and covetous greed, and malice.
Romans 1:28 AMPC

Degrading My Genetic Code with Sin

The consequences in this scripture are even more chilling when I stop viewing a person’s morality (their spiritual state) as separate from their physical health, down to their genetic code. What if the Dorian-Grey-effect of sin on the body isn’t relegated just to its immediate lifespan but goes all the way down to its governing code of DNA? If a body is “permeated and saturated” then it’s a condition that is total, right down to the genetic code. In this way do we ensure that our children inherit not just the spiritual curse of our own iniquity but also the physical degradation that was a direct consequence of that sin.

There is order in this universe. Actions have consequences and those consequences go down to the very smallest bit of matter. Degradation, decay, and eventual death are consequences that only the redemptive power of the Blood of Christ can counter. We are bound by the genetic code of our forefathers – and every curse it contains – until we are born again from above and given a whole New Creation that carries a whole new Bloodline. Then we are gifted with the genetic code of Christ Himself.

By His boundless mercy we have been born again to an ever-living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, [Born anew] into an inheritance which is beyond the reach of change and decay [imperishable], unsullied and unfading, reserved in heaven for you…
1 Peter 1:3, 4 AMPC