Sin, Sacrifice, and Atonement

89:10.1An­cient man only at­tained con­scious­ness of fa­vor with God through sac­ri­fice. Mod­ern man must de­velop new tech­niques of achiev­ing the self-con­scious­ness of sal­va­tion. The con­scious­ness of sin per­sists in the mor­tal mind, but the thought pat­terns of sal­va­tion there­from have be­come out­worn and an­ti­quated. The re­al­ity of the spir­i­tual need per­sists, but in­tel­lec­tual prog­ress has de­stroyed the olden ways of se­cur­ing peace and con­so­la­tion for mind and soul.

89:10.2Sin must be re­de­fined as de­lib­er­ate dis­loy­alty to De­ity. There are de­grees of dis­loy­alty: the par­tial loy­alty of in­de­ci­sion; the di­vided loy­alty of con­flic­tion; the dy­ing loy­alty of in­dif­fer­ence; and the death of loy­alty ex­hib­ited in de­vo­tion to god­less ide­als.

89:10.3The sense or feel­ing of guilt is the con­scious­ness of the vi­o­la­tion of the mores; it is not nec­es­sar­ily sin. There is no real sin in the ab­sence of con­scious dis­loy­alty to De­ity.

89:10.4The pos­si­bil­ity of the rec­og­ni­tion of the sense of guilt is a badge of tran­scen­dent dis­tinc­tion for man­kind. It does not mark man as mean but rather sets him apart as a crea­ture of po­ten­tial great­ness and ever-as­cend­ing glory. Such a sense of un­wor­thi­ness is the ini­tial stim­u­lus that should lead quickly and surely to those faith con­quests which trans­late the mor­tal mind to the su­perb lev­els of moral no­bil­ity, cos­mic in­sight, and spir­i­tual liv­ing; thus are all the mean­ings of hu­man ex­is­tence changed from the tem­po­ral to the eter­nal, and all val­ues are el­e­vated from the hu­man to the di­vine.

89:10.5The con­fes­sion of sin is a man­ful re­pu­di­a­tion of dis­loy­alty, but it in no wise mit­i­gates the time-space con­se­quences of such dis­loy­alty. But con­fes­sion—sin­cere rec­og­ni­tion of the na­ture of sin—is es­sen­tial to re­li­gious growth and spir­i­tual prog­ress.

89:10.6The for­give­ness of sin by De­ity is the re­newal of loy­alty re­la­tions fol­low­ing a pe­riod of the hu­man con­scious­ness of the lapse of such re­la­tions as the con­se­quence of con­scious re­bel­lion. The for­give­ness does not have to be sought, only re­ceived as the con­scious­ness of re-es­tab­lish­ment of loy­alty re­la­tions be­tween the crea­ture and the Cre­ator. And all the loyal sons of God are happy, ser­vice-lov­ing, and ever-pro­gres­sive in the Par­a­dise as­cent.

89:10.7[Pre­sented by a Bril­liant Evening Star of Neb­a­don.]