sin

• effect of sin › greatest punishment for s. is loss of existence

2:3.2How fu­tile to make puerile ap­peals to such a God to mod­ify his change­less de­crees so that we can avoid the just con­se­quences of the op­er­a­tion of his wise nat­u­ral laws and righ­teous spir­i­tual man­dates! “Be not de­ceived; God is not mocked, for what­so­ever a man sows that shall he also reap.” True, even in the jus­tice of reap­ing the har­vest of wrong­do­ing, this di­vine jus­tice is al­ways tem­pered with mercy. In­fi­nite wis­dom is the eter­nal ar­biter which de­ter­mines the pro­por­tions of jus­tice and mercy which shall be meted out in any given cir­cum­stance. The great­est pun­ish­ment (in re­al­ity an in­ev­i­ta­ble con­se­quence) for wrong­do­ing and de­lib­er­ate re­bel­lion against the gov­ern­ment of God is loss of ex­is­tence as an in­di­vid­ual sub­ject of that gov­ern­ment. The fi­nal re­sult of whole­hearted sin is an­ni­hi­la­tion. In the last anal­y­sis, such sin-iden­ti­fied in­di­vid­u­als have de­stroyed them­selves by be­com­ing wholly un­real through their em­brace of in­iq­uity. The fac­tual dis­ap­pear­ance of such a crea­ture is, how­ever, al­ways de­layed un­til the or­dained or­der of jus­tice cur­rent in that uni­verse has been fully com­plied with.

• effect of sin › greatest punishment for s. is loss of existence
• effect of sin › inherently suicidal

2:3.5In any uni­verse con­test be­tween ac­tual lev­els of re­al­ity, the per­son­al­ity of the higher level will ul­ti­mately tri­umph over the per­son­al­ity of the lower level. This in­ev­i­ta­ble out­come of uni­verse con­tro­versy is in­her­ent in the fact that di­vin­ity of qual­ity equals the de­gree of re­al­ity or ac­tu­al­ity of any will crea­ture. Undi­luted evil, com­plete er­ror, will­ful sin, and un­mit­i­gated in­iq­uity are in­her­ently and au­to­mat­i­cally sui­ci­dal. Such at­ti­tudes of cos­mic un­re­al­ity can sur­vive in the uni­verse only be­cause of tran­sient mercy-tol­er­ance pend­ing the ac­tion of the jus­tice-de­ter­min­ing and fair­ness-find­ing mech­a­nisms of the uni­verse tri­bu­nals of righ­teous ad­ju­di­ca­tion.

• defined as › hated by God and Jesus; Jesus is ruthless with s.
• defined as › not a person
• effect of sin › law of God destroys

2:6.8God loves the sin­ner and hates the sin: such a state­ment is true phil­o­soph­i­cally, but God is a tran­scen­dent per­son­al­ity, and per­sons can only love and hate other per­sons. Sin is not a per­son. God loves the sin­ner be­cause he is a per­son­al­ity re­al­ity (po­ten­tially eter­nal), while to­wards sin God strikes no per­sonal at­ti­tude, for sin is not a spir­i­tual re­al­ity; it is not per­sonal; there­fore does only the jus­tice of God take cog­nizance of its ex­is­tence. The love of God saves the sin­ner; the law of God de­stroys the sin. This at­ti­tude of the di­vine na­ture would ap­par­ently change if the sin­ner fi­nally iden­ti­fied him­self wholly with sin just as the same mor­tal mind may also fully iden­tify it­self with the in­dwelling spirit Ad­juster. Such a sin-iden­ti­fied mor­tal would then be­come wholly un­spir­i­tual in na­ture (and there­fore per­son­ally un­real) and would ex­pe­ri­ence even­tual ex­tinc­tion of be­ing. Un­re­al­ity, even in­com­plete­ness of crea­ture na­ture, can­not ex­ist for­ever in a pro­gress­ingly real and in­creas­ingly spir­i­tual uni­verse.

• effect of sin › torments indwelling gift of God

3:1.5Truly of the hu­man race has it been said, “You are of God” be­cause “he who dwells in love dwells in God, and God in him.” Even in wrong­do­ing you tor­ment the in­dwelling gift of God, for the Thought Ad­juster must needs go through the con­se­quences of evil think­ing with the hu­man mind of its in­car­cer­a­tion.

• effect of sin › does not alienate God’s affection

3:1.12The fluc­tu­a­tions of the Fa­ther’s pres­ence are not due to the change­able­ness of God. The Fa­ther does not re­tire in seclu­sion be­cause he has been slighted; his af­fec­tions are not alien­ated be­cause of the crea­ture’s wrong­do­ing. Rather, hav­ing been en­dowed with the power of choice (con­cern­ing Him­self), his chil­dren, in the ex­er­cise of that choice, di­rectly de­ter­mine the de­gree and lim­i­ta­tions of the Fa­ther’s di­vine in­flu­ence in their own hearts and souls. The Fa­ther has freely be­stowed him­self upon us with­out limit and with­out fa­vor. He is no re­specter of per­sons, plan­ets, sys­tems, or uni­verses. In the sec­tors of time he con­fers dif­fer­en­tial honor only on the Par­a­dise per­son­al­i­ties of God the Sev­en­fold, the co-or­di­nate cre­ators of the fi­nite uni­verses.

• does God choose to foreknow s.?

3:3.4We are not wholly cer­tain as to whether or not God chooses to fore­know events of sin. But even if God should fore­know the free­will acts of his chil­dren, such fore­knowl­edge does not in the least ab­ro­gate their free­dom. One thing is cer­tain: God is never sub­jected to sur­prise.

• possibility of default is opportunity for loyalty

3:5.127. Is loy­alty—de­vo­tion to high­est duty—de­sir­able? Then must man carry on amid the pos­si­bil­i­ties of be­trayal and de­ser­tion. The valor of de­vo­tion to duty con­sists in the im­plied dan­ger of de­fault.

• defined as › immature choosing willfully endorsed

3:5.15Through­out the uni­verse, ev­ery unit is re­garded as a part of the whole. Sur­vival of the part is de­pen­dent on co-op­er­a­tion with the plan and pur­pose of the whole, the whole­hearted de­sire and per­fect will­ing­ness to do the Fa­ther’s di­vine will. The only evo­lu­tion­ary world with­out er­ror (the pos­si­bil­ity of un­wise judg­ment) would be a world with­out free in­tel­li­gence. In the Ha­vona uni­verse there are a bil­lion per­fect worlds with their per­fect in­hab­i­tants, but evolv­ing man must be fal­li­ble if he is to be free. Free and in­ex­pe­ri­enced in­tel­li­gence can­not pos­si­bly at first be uni­formly wise. The pos­si­bil­ity of mis­taken judg­ment (evil) be­comes sin only when the hu­man will con­sciously en­dorses and know­ingly em­braces a de­lib­er­ate im­moral judg­ment.

• effect of sin › separates sinner from communion with God’s spirit

5:1.10The Fa­ther is not in spir­i­tual hid­ing, but so many of his crea­tures have hid­den them­selves away in the mists of their own will­ful de­ci­sions and for the time be­ing have sep­a­rated them­selves from the com­mu­nion of his spirit and the spirit of his Son by the choos­ing of their own per­verse ways and by the in­dul­gence of the self-as­sertive­ness of their in­tol­er­ant minds and un­spir­i­tual na­tures.

• defined as › deliberate transgression of divine will
• has never occurred in Havona

14:2.9Ha­vona is a spir­i­tu­ally per­fect and phys­i­cally sta­ble uni­verse. The con­trol and bal­anced sta­bil­ity of the cen­tral uni­verse ap­pear to be per­fect. Ev­ery­thing phys­i­cal or spir­i­tual is per­fectly pre­dictable, but mind phe­nom­ena and per­son­al­ity vo­li­tion are not. We do in­fer that sin can be reck­oned as im­pos­si­ble of oc­cur­rence, but we do this on the ground that the na­tive free­will crea­tures of Ha­vona have never been guilty of trans­gress­ing the will of De­ity. Through all eter­nity these su­per­nal be­ings have been con­sis­tently loyal to the Eter­nals of Days. Nei­ther has sin ap­peared in any crea­ture who has en­tered Ha­vona as a pil­grim. There has never been an in­stance of mis­con­duct by any crea­ture of any group of per­son­al­i­ties ever cre­ated in, or ad­mit­ted to, the cen­tral Ha­vona uni­verse. So per­fect and so di­vine are the meth­ods and means of se­lec­tion in the uni­verses of time that never in the rec­ords of Ha­vona has an er­ror oc­curred; no mis­takes have ever been made; no as­cen­dant soul has ever been pre­ma­turely ad­mit­ted to the cen­tral uni­verse.

• does not indicate fault in creatorship

35:9.7The large num­ber of these Sons who have lapsed from in­tegrity does not in­di­cate any fault in cre­ator­ship. They could have been made di­vinely per­fect, but they were so cre­ated that they might bet­ter un­der­stand, and draw near to, the evo­lu­tion­ary crea­tures dwell­ing on the worlds of time and space.

• effect of sin › justice demands adjudication of every default

39:1.8The se­raphic court ad­vis­ers serve ex­ten­sively as de­fend­ers of mor­tals. Not that there ever ex­ists any dis­po­si­tion to be un­fair to the lowly crea­tures of the realms, but while jus­tice de­mands the ad­ju­di­ca­tion of ev­ery de­fault in the climb to­wards di­vine per­fec­tion, mercy re­quires that ev­ery such mis­step be fairly ad­judged in ac­cor­dance with the crea­ture na­ture and the di­vine pur­pose. These an­gels are the ex­po­nents and ex­em­pli­fi­ca­tion of the el­e­ment of mercy in­her­ent in di­vine jus­tice—of fair­ness based on the knowl­edge of the un­der­ly­ing facts of per­sonal mo­tives and racial ten­den­cies.

• dealing with sin › cannot be entertained when no opening for evil

43:4.9Since the tri­umph of Christ, all Nor­la­ti­adek is be­ing cleansed of sin and rebels. Some­time be­fore Mi­chael’s death in the flesh the fallen Lu­cifer’s as­so­ciate, Sa­tan, sought to at­tend such an Eden­tia con­clave, but the so­lid­i­fi­ca­tion of sen­ti­ment against the arch­re­bels had reached the point where the doors of sym­pa­thy were so well-nigh uni­ver­sally closed that there could be found no stand­ing ground for the Sa­ta­nia ad­ver­saries. When there ex­ists no open door for the re­cep­tion of evil, there ex­ists no op­por­tu­nity for the en­ter­tain­ment of sin. The doors of the hearts of all Eden­tia closed against Sa­tan; he was unan­i­mously re­jected by the as­sem­bled Sys­tem Sov­er­eigns, and it was at this time that the Son of Man “be­held Sa­tan fall as light­ning from heaven.”

• effect of sin › wages of s. is death

46:8.4There will come an end for rebels and re­bel­lion. The Su­preme Rulers are mer­ci­ful and pa­tient, but the law of de­lib­er­ately nour­ished evil is uni­ver­sally and unerringly ex­e­cuted. “The wages of sin is death”—eter­nal oblit­er­a­tion.

• defined as › urge of self and spurious personal liberty; disregard of fraternal obligations, blindness to cosmic relationships

53:0.1Lu­cifer was a bril­liant pri­mary La­non­an­dek Son of Neb­a­don. He had ex­pe­ri­enced ser­vice in many sys­tems, had been a high coun­selor of his group, and was dis­tin­guished for wis­dom, sagac­ity, and ef­fi­ciency. Lu­cifer was num­ber 37 of his or­der, and when com­mis­sioned by the Mel­chiz­e­deks, he was des­ig­nated as one of the one hun­dred most able and bril­liant per­son­al­i­ties in more than seven hun­dred thou­sand of his kind. From such a mag­nif­i­cent be­gin­ning, through evil and er­ror, he em­braced sin and now is num­bered as one of three Sys­tem Sov­er­eigns in Neb­a­don who have suc­cumbed to the urge of self and sur­ren­dered to the soph­istry of spu­ri­ous per­sonal lib­erty—re­jec­tion of uni­verse al­le­giance and dis­re­gard of fra­ter­nal obli­ga­tions, blind­ness to cos­mic re­la­tion­ships.

• defined as › requiring insincerity

53:2.5It is very dif­fi­cult to point out the ex­act cause or causes which fi­nally cul­mi­nated in the Lu­cifer re­bel­lion. We are cer­tain of only one thing, and that is: What­ever these first be­gin­nings were, they had their ori­gin in Lu­cifer’s mind. There must have been a pride of self that nour­ished it­self to the point of self-de­cep­tion, so that Lu­cifer for a time re­ally per­suaded him­self that his con­tem­pla­tion of re­bel­lion was ac­tu­ally for the good of the sys­tem, if not of the uni­verse. By the time his plans had de­vel­oped to the point of dis­il­lu­sion­ment, no doubt he had gone too far for his orig­i­nal and mis­chief-mak­ing pride to per­mit him to stop. At some point in this ex­pe­ri­ence he be­came in­sin­cere, and evil evolved into de­lib­er­ate and will­ful sin. That this hap­pened is proved by the sub­se­quent con­duct of this bril­liant ex­ec­u­tive. He was long of­fered op­por­tu­nity for re­pen­tance, but only some of his sub­or­di­nates ever ac­cepted the prof­fered mercy. The Faith­ful of Days of Eden­tia, on the re­quest of the Con­stel­la­tion Fa­thers, in per­son pre­sented the plan of Mi­chael for the sav­ing of these fla­grant rebels, but al­ways was the mercy of the Cre­ator Son re­jected and re­jected with in­creas­ing con­tempt and dis­dain.

• dealing with sin › faith is effective armor against

53:8.8But even so, no fallen spirit ever did have the power to in­vade the minds or to ha­rass the souls of the chil­dren of God. Nei­ther Sa­tan nor Cali­gas­tia could ever touch or ap­proach the faith sons of God; faith is an ef­fec­tive ar­mor against sin and in­iq­uity. It is true: “He who is born of God keeps him­self, and the wicked one touches him not.”

• effect of sin › inherently suicidal
• effect of sin › wages of s. is death
• effect of sin › way of transgressor is hard

53:9.8But for ages the seven prison worlds of spir­i­tual dark­ness in Sa­ta­nia have con­sti­tuted a solemn warn­ing to all Neb­a­don, elo­quently and ef­fec­tively pro­claim­ing the great truth “that the way of the trans­gres­sor is hard”; “that within ev­ery sin is con­cealed the seed of its own de­struc­tion”; that “the wages of sin is death.”

• defined as › immature choosing willfully endorsed
• defined as › inevitable if creature is to be free

54:0.2The Gods nei­ther cre­ate evil nor per­mit sin and re­bel­lion. Po­ten­tial evil is time-ex­is­tent in a uni­verse em­brac­ing dif­fer­en­tial lev­els of per­fec­tion mean­ings and val­ues. Sin is po­ten­tial in all realms where im­per­fect be­ings are en­dowed with the abil­ity to choose be­tween good and evil. The very con­flict­ing pres­ence of truth and un­truth, fact and false­hood, con­sti­tutes the po­ten­tial­ity of er­ror. The de­lib­er­ate choice of evil con­sti­tutes sin; the will­ful re­jec­tion of truth is er­ror; the per­sis­tent pur­suit of sin and er­ror is in­iq­uity.

• defined as › inevitable if creature is to be free

54:3.1The moral will crea­tures of the evo­lu­tion­ary worlds are al­ways both­ered with the un­think­ing ques­tion as to why the all-wise Cre­ators per­mit evil and sin. They fail to com­pre­hend that both are in­ev­i­ta­ble if the crea­ture is to be truly free. The free will of evolv­ing man or ex­qui­site an­gel is not a mere philo­sophic con­cept, a sym­bolic ideal. Man’s abil­ity to choose good or evil is a uni­verse re­al­ity. This lib­erty to choose for one­self is an en­dow­ment of the Su­preme Rulers, and they will not per­mit any be­ing or group of be­ings to de­prive a sin­gle per­son­al­ity in the wide uni­verse of this di­vinely be­stowed lib­erty—not even to sat­isfy such mis­guided and ig­no­rant be­ings in the en­joy­ment of this mis­named per­sonal lib­erty.

• defined as › conscious wholehearted identification with evil

54:3.2Al­though con­scious and whole­hearted iden­ti­fi­ca­tion with evil (sin) is the equiv­a­lent of nonex­is­tence (an­ni­hi­la­tion), there must al­ways in­ter­vene be­tween the time of such per­sonal iden­ti­fi­ca­tion with sin and the ex­e­cu­tion of the penalty—the au­to­matic re­sult of such a will­ful em­brace of evil—a pe­riod of time of suf­fi­cient length to al­low for such an ad­ju­di­ca­tion of such an in­di­vid­ual’s uni­verse sta­tus as will prove en­tirely sat­is­fac­tory to all re­lated uni­verse per­son­al­i­ties, and which will be so fair and just as to win the ap­proval of the sin­ner him­self.

• proves existence of free will

54:4.3The very fact that an evil-do­ing crea­ture can ac­tu­ally choose to do wrong—com­mit sin—es­tab­lishes the fact of free-will­ness and fully jus­ti­fies any length de­lay in the ex­e­cu­tion of jus­tice pro­vided the ex­tended mercy might con­duce to re­pen­tance and re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion.

• dealing with sin › mercy requires wrongdoer have sufficient time to formulate deliberate attitude regarding

54:5.21. Mercy re­quires that ev­ery wrong­doer have suf­fi­cient time in which to for­mu­late a de­lib­er­ate and fully cho­sen at­ti­tude re­gard­ing his evil thoughts and sin­ful acts.

• effect of sin › always deleterious to a family

54:5.54. While wrong­do­ing is al­ways dele­te­ri­ous to a fam­ily, wis­dom and love ad­mon­ish the up­right chil­dren to bear with an erring brother dur­ing the time granted by the af­fec­tion­ate fa­ther in which the sin­ner may see the er­ror of his way and em­brace sal­va­tion.

• dealing with sin › quickest final cure is full disclosure

54:5.98. The Faith­ful of Days on Eden­tia ad­vised the Con­stel­la­tion Fa­thers to al­low the rebels free course to the end that all sym­pa­thy for these evil­do­ers should be the sooner up­rooted in the hearts of ev­ery pres­ent and fu­ture cit­i­zen of Nor­la­ti­adek—ev­ery mor­tal, mor­ontia, or spirit crea­ture.

54:5.109. On Je­ru­sem the per­sonal rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Su­preme Ex­ec­u­tive of Or­von­ton coun­seled Ga­briel to fos­ter full op­por­tu­nity for ev­ery liv­ing crea­ture to ma­ture a de­lib­er­ate choice in those mat­ters in­volved in the Lu­cifer Dec­la­ra­tion of Lib­erty. The is­sues of re­bel­lion hav­ing been raised, the Par­a­dise emer­gency ad­viser of Ga­briel por­trayed that, if such full and free op­por­tu­nity were not given all Nor­la­ti­adek crea­tures, then would the Par­a­dise quar­an­tine against all such pos­si­ble half­hearted or doubt-stricken crea­tures be ex­tended in self-pro­tec­tion against the en­tire con­stel­la­tion. To keep open the Par­a­dise doors of as­cen­sion to the be­ings of Nor­la­ti­adek, it was nec­es­sary to pro­vide for the full de­vel­op­ment of re­bel­lion and to in­sure the com­plete de­ter­mi­na­tion of at­ti­tude on the part of all be­ings in any way con­cerned there­with.

54:5.1110. The Di­vine Min­is­ter of Sal­ving­ton is­sued as her third in­de­pen­dent procla­ma­tion a man­date di­rect­ing that noth­ing be done to half cure, cow­ardly sup­press, or oth­er­wise hide the hideous vis­age of rebels and re­bel­lion. The an­gelic hosts were di­rected to work for full dis­clo­sure and un­lim­ited op­por­tu­nity for sin-ex­pres­sion as the quick­est tech­nique of achiev­ing the per­fect and fi­nal cure of the plague of evil and sin.

• dealing with sin › summary suppression of Lucifer rebellion would have tripled number led astray

54:5.1211. An emer­gency coun­cil of ex-mor­tals con­sist­ing of Mighty Mes­sen­gers, glo­ri­fied mor­tals who had had per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence with like sit­u­a­tions, to­gether with their col­leagues, was or­ga­nized on Je­ru­sem. They ad­vised Ga­briel that at least three times the num­ber of be­ings would be led astray if ar­bi­trary or sum­mary meth­ods of sup­pres­sion were at­tempted. The en­tire Uversa corps of coun­selors con­curred in ad­vis­ing Ga­briel to per­mit the re­bel­lion to take its full and nat­u­ral course, even if it should re­quire a mil­lion years to wind up the con­se­quences.

• effect of sin › always deleterious to a family

54:6.3If an af­fec­tion­ate fa­ther of a large fam­ily chooses to show mercy to one of his chil­dren guilty of griev­ous wrong­do­ing, it may well be that the ex­ten­sion of mercy to this mis­be­hav­ing child will work a tem­po­rary hard­ship upon all the other and well-be­haved chil­dren. Such even­tu­al­i­ties are in­ev­i­ta­ble; such a risk is in­sep­a­ra­ble from the re­al­ity sit­u­a­tion of hav­ing a lov­ing par­ent and of be­ing a mem­ber of a fam­ily group. Each mem­ber of a fam­ily prof­its by the righ­teous con­duct of ev­ery other mem­ber; like­wise must each mem­ber suf­fer the im­me­di­ate time-con­se­quences of the mis­con­duct of ev­ery other mem­ber. Fam­i­lies, groups, na­tions, races, worlds, sys­tems, con­stel­la­tions, and uni­verses are re­la­tion­ships of as­so­ci­a­tion which pos­sess in­di­vid­u­al­ity; and there­fore does ev­ery mem­ber of any such group, large or small, reap the ben­e­fits and suf­fer the con­se­quences of the right­do­ing and the wrong­do­ing of all other mem­bers of the group con­cerned.

54:6.4But one thing should be made clear: If you are made to suf­fer the evil con­se­quences of the sin of some mem­ber of your fam­ily, some fel­low cit­i­zen or fel­low mor­tal, even re­bel­lion in the sys­tem or else­where—no mat­ter what you may have to en­dure be­cause of the wrong­do­ing of your as­so­ciates, fel­lows, or su­pe­ri­ors—you may rest se­cure in the eter­nal as­sur­ance that such tribu­la­tions are tran­sient af­flic­tions. None of these fra­ter­nal con­se­quences of mis­be­hav­ior in the group can ever jeop­ar­dize your eter­nal prospects or in the least de­gree de­prive you of your di­vine right of Par­a­dise as­cen­sion and God at­tain­ment.

• defined as › isolated

56:10.14Ev­ery im­pulse of ev­ery elec­tron, thought, or spirit is an act­ing unit in the whole uni­verse. Only sin is iso­lated and evil grav­ity re­sist­ing on the men­tal and spir­i­tual lev­els. The uni­verse is a whole; no thing or be­ing ex­ists or lives in iso­la­tion. Self-re­al­iza­tion is po­ten­tially evil if it is an­ti­so­cial. It is lit­er­ally true: “No man lives by him­self.” Cos­mic so­cial­iza­tion con­sti­tutes the high­est form of per­son­al­ity uni­fi­ca­tion. Said Je­sus: “He who would be great­est among you, let him be­come server of all.”

• defined as › conscious choosing to oppose spiritual progress
• defined as › purposeful resistance to divine reality

67:1.4There are many ways of look­ing at sin, but from the uni­verse philo­sophic view­point sin is the at­ti­tude of a per­son­al­ity who is know­ingly re­sist­ing cos­mic re­al­ity. Er­ror might be re­garded as a mis­con­cep­tion or dis­tor­tion of re­al­ity. Evil is a par­tial re­al­iza­tion of, or mal­ad­just­ment to, uni­verse re­al­i­ties. But sin is a pur­pose­ful re­sis­tance to di­vine re­al­ity—a con­scious choos­ing to op­pose spir­i­tual prog­ress—while in­iq­uity con­sists in an open and per­sis­tent de­fi­ance of rec­og­nized re­al­ity and sig­ni­fies such a de­gree of per­son­al­ity dis­in­te­gra­tion as to bor­der on cos­mic in­san­ity.

• defined as › suggests abject spiritual poverty

67:1.5Er­ror sug­gests lack of in­tel­lec­tual keen­ness; evil, de­fi­ciency of wis­dom; sin, ab­ject spir­i­tual pov­erty; but in­iq­uity is in­dica­tive of van­ish­ing per­son­al­ity con­trol.

• effect of sin › habitual s. easily becomes iniquity

67:1.6And when sin has so many times been cho­sen and so of­ten been re­peated, it may be­come ha­bit­ual. Ha­bit­ual sin­ners can eas­ily be­come in­iq­ui­tous, be­come whole­hearted rebels against the uni­verse and all of its di­vine re­al­i­ties. While all man­ner of sins may be for­given, we doubt whether the es­tab­lished in­iq­ui­ter would ever sin­cerely ex­pe­ri­ence sor­row for his mis­deeds or ac­cept for­give­ness for his sins.

• effect of sin › personal consequences of s. of concern only to Deity and individual sinner
• effect of sin › soul-destroying

67:7.1The per­sonal (cen­tripetal) con­se­quences of the crea­ture’s will­ful and per­sis­tent re­jec­tion of light are both in­ev­i­ta­ble and in­di­vid­ual and are of con­cern only to De­ity and to that per­sonal crea­ture. Such a soul-de­stroy­ing har­vest of in­iq­uity is the in­ner reap­ing of the in­iq­ui­tous will crea­ture.

67:7.2But not so with the ex­ter­nal reper­cus­sions of sin: The im­per­sonal (cen­trifu­gal) con­se­quences of em­braced sin are both in­ev­i­ta­ble and col­lec­tive, be­ing of con­cern to ev­ery crea­ture func­tion­ing within the af­fect-range of such events.

67:7.3By fifty thou­sand years af­ter the col­lapse of the plan­e­tary ad­min­is­tra­tion, earthly af­fairs were so dis­or­ga­nized and re­tarded that the hu­man race had gained very lit­tle over the gen­eral evo­lu­tion­ary sta­tus ex­ist­ing at the time of Cali­gas­tia’s ar­rival three hun­dred and fifty thou­sand years pre­vi­ously. In cer­tain re­spects prog­ress had been made; in other di­rec­tions much ground had been lost.

• defined as › attitude of person toward reality
• defined as › purposeful resistance to divine reality
• effect of sin › fatal only when it is attitude of whole being
• effect of sin › no person suffers vital spiritual deprivation because of another’s s.

67:7.4Sin is never purely lo­cal in its ef­fects. The ad­min­is­tra­tive sec­tors of the uni­verses are or­gan­is­mal; the plight of one per­son­al­ity must to a cer­tain ex­tent be shared by all. Sin, be­ing an at­ti­tude of the per­son to­ward re­al­ity, is des­tined to ex­hibit its in­her­ent neg­a­tivis­tic har­vest upon any and all re­lated lev­els of uni­verse val­ues. But the full con­se­quences of er­ro­neous think­ing, evil-do­ing, or sin­ful plan­ning are ex­pe­ri­enced only on the level of ac­tual per­for­mance. The trans­gres­sion of uni­verse law may be fa­tal in the phys­i­cal realm with­out se­ri­ously in­volv­ing the mind or im­pair­ing the spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence. Sin is fraught with fa­tal con­se­quences to per­son­al­ity sur­vival only when it is the at­ti­tude of the whole be­ing, when it stands for the choos­ing of the mind and the will­ing of the soul.

67:7.5Evil and sin visit their con­se­quences in ma­te­rial and so­cial realms and may some­times even re­tard spir­i­tual prog­ress on cer­tain lev­els of uni­verse re­al­ity, but never does the sin of any be­ing rob an­other of the re­al­iza­tion of the di­vine right of per­son­al­ity sur­vival. Eter­nal sur­vival can be jeop­ar­dized only by the de­ci­sions of the mind and the choice of the soul of the in­di­vid­ual him­self.

• effect of sin › retards intellectual development, moral growth, social progress, and mass spiritual attainment

67:7.6Sin on Uran­tia did very lit­tle to de­lay bi­o­logic evo­lu­tion, but it did op­er­ate to de­prive the mor­tal races of the full ben­e­fit of the Adamic in­her­i­tance. Sin enor­mously re­tards in­tel­lec­tual de­vel­op­ment, moral growth, so­cial prog­ress, and mass spir­i­tual at­tain­ment. But it does not pre­vent the high­est spir­i­tual achieve­ment by any in­di­vid­ual who chooses to know God and sin­cerely do his di­vine will.

67:7.7Cali­gas­tia re­belled, Adam and Eve did de­fault, but no mor­tal sub­se­quently born on Uran­tia has suf­fered in his per­sonal spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence be­cause of these blun­ders. Ev­ery mor­tal born on Uran­tia since Cali­gas­tia’s re­bel­lion has been in some man­ner time-pe­nal­ized, but the fu­ture wel­fare of such souls has never been in the least eter­nity-jeop­ar­dized. No per­son is ever made to suf­fer vi­tal spir­i­tual de­pri­va­tion be­cause of the sin of an­other. Sin is wholly per­sonal as to moral guilt or spir­i­tual con­se­quences, not­with­stand­ing its far-flung reper­cus­sions in ad­min­is­tra­tive, in­tel­lec­tual, and so­cial do­mains.

67:7.8While we can­not fathom the wis­dom that per­mits such catas­tro­phes, we can al­ways dis­cern the ben­e­fi­cial out­work­ing of these lo­cal dis­tur­bances as they are re­flected out upon the uni­verse at large.

• among primitives › s. was ritual, not rational; transgression of taboo

70:11.4Crime was an as­sault upon the tribal mores, sin was the trans­gres­sion of those taboos which en­joyed ghost sanc­tion, and there was long con­fu­sion due to the fail­ure to seg­re­gate crime and sin.

• pleasant adjustment to paths of

75:2.4It was far­thest from Eve’s in­ten­tion ever to do any­thing which would mil­i­tate against Adam’s plans or jeop­ar­dize their plan­e­tary trust. Know­ing the ten­dency of woman to look upon im­me­di­ate re­sults rather than to plan far­sight­edly for more re­mote ef­fects, the Mel­chiz­e­deks, be­fore de­part­ing, had es­pe­cially en­joined Eve as to the pe­cu­liar dan­gers be­set­ting their iso­lated po­si­tion on the planet and had in par­tic­u­lar warned her never to stray from the side of her mate, that is, to at­tempt no per­sonal or se­cret meth­ods of fur­ther­ing their mu­tual un­der­tak­ings. Eve had most scrupu­lously car­ried out these in­struc­tions for more than one hun­dred years, and it did not oc­cur to her that any dan­ger would at­tach to the in­creas­ingly pri­vate and con­fi­den­tial vis­its she was en­joy­ing with a cer­tain Nod­ite leader named Ser­a­p­ata­tia. The whole af­fair de­vel­oped so grad­u­ally and nat­u­rally that she was taken un­awares.

• defined as › deliberate transgression of divine will

75:4.3Eve had con­sented to par­tic­i­pate in the prac­tice of good and evil. Good is the car­ry­ing out of the di­vine plans; sin is a de­lib­er­ate trans­gres­sion of the di­vine will; evil is the mis­adap­ta­tion of plans and the mal­ad­just­ment of tech­niques re­sult­ing in uni­verse dishar­mony and plan­e­tary con­fu­sion.

75:5.1Eve’s dis­il­lu­sion­ment was truly pa­thetic. Adam dis­cerned the whole predica­ment and, while heart­bro­ken and de­jected, en­ter­tained only pity and sym­pa­thy for his erring mate.

75:5.2It was in the de­spair of the re­al­iza­tion of fail­ure that Adam, the day af­ter Eve’s mis­step, sought out Laotta, the bril­liant Nod­ite woman who was head of the west­ern schools of the Gar­den, and with pre­med­i­ta­tion com­mit­ted the folly of Eve. But do not mis­un­der­stand; Adam was not be­guiled; he knew ex­actly what he was about; he de­lib­er­ately chose to share the fate of Eve. He loved his mate with a super­mor­tal af­fec­tion, and the thought of the pos­si­bil­ity of a lonely vigil on Uran­tia with­out her was more than he could en­dure.

75:5.3When they learned what had hap­pened to Eve, the in­fu­ri­ated in­hab­i­tants of the Gar­den be­came un­man­age­able; they de­clared war on the near-by Nod­ite set­tle­ment. They swept out through the gates of Eden and down upon these un­pre­pared peo­ple, ut­terly de­stroy­ing them—not a man, woman, or child was spared. And Cano, the fa­ther of Cain yet un­born, also per­ished.

75:5.4Upon the re­al­iza­tion of what had hap­pened, Ser­a­p­ata­tia was over­come with con­ster­na­tion and be­side him­self with fear and re­morse. The next day he drowned him­self in the great river.

75:5.5The chil­dren of Adam sought to com­fort their dis­tracted mother while their fa­ther wan­dered in soli­tude for thirty days. At the end of that time judg­ment as­serted it­self, and Adam re­turned to his home and be­gan to plan for their fu­ture course of ac­tion.

• effect of sin › innocent children often share in consequences of parents’ follies

75:5.6The con­se­quences of the fol­lies of mis­guided par­ents are so of­ten shared by their in­no­cent chil­dren. The up­right and no­ble sons and daugh­ters of Adam and Eve were over­whelmed by the in­ex­pli­ca­ble sor­row of the un­be­liev­able tragedy which had been so sud­denly and so ruth­lessly thrust upon them. Not in fifty years did the older of these chil­dren re­cover from the sor­row and sad­ness of those tragic days, es­pe­cially the ter­ror of that pe­riod of thirty days dur­ing which their fa­ther was ab­sent from home while their dis­tracted mother was in com­plete ig­no­rance of his where­abouts or fate.

75:5.7And those same thirty days were as long years of sor­row and suf­fer­ing to Eve. Never did this no­ble soul fully re­cover from the ef­fects of that ex­cru­ci­at­ing pe­riod of men­tal suf­fer­ing and spir­i­tual sor­row. No fea­ture of their sub­se­quent de­pri­va­tions and ma­te­rial hard­ships ever be­gan to com­pare in Eve’s mem­ory with those ter­ri­ble days and aw­ful nights of lone­li­ness and un­bear­able un­cer­tainty. She learned of the rash act of Ser­a­p­ata­tia and did not know whether her mate had in sor­row de­stroyed him­self or had been re­moved from the world in ret­ri­bu­tion for her mis­step. And when Adam re­turned, Eve ex­pe­ri­enced a sat­is­fac­tion of joy and grat­i­tude that never was ef­faced by their long and dif­fi­cult life part­ner­ship of toil­ing ser­vice.

75:5.8Time passed, but Adam was not cer­tain of the na­ture of their of­fense un­til sev­enty days af­ter the de­fault of Eve, when the Mel­chiz­e­dek re­ceivers re­turned to Uran­tia and as­sumed ju­ris­dic­tion over world af­fairs. And then he knew they had failed.

75:5.9But still more trou­ble was brew­ing: The news of the an­ni­hi­la­tion of the Nod­ite set­tle­ment near Eden was not slow in reach­ing the home tribes of Ser­a­p­ata­tia to the north, and pres­ently a great host was as­sem­bling to march on the Gar­den. And this was the be­gin­ning of a long and bit­ter war­fare be­tween the Adamites and the Nod­ites, for these hos­til­i­ties kept up long af­ter Adam and his fol­low­ers em­i­grated to the sec­ond gar­den in the Eu­phrates val­ley. There was in­tense and last­ing “en­mity be­tween that man and the woman, be­tween his seed and her seed.”

• effect of sin › way of transgressor is hard

75:6.4It was a sad, sad car­a­van that pre­pared to jour­ney on. Could any­thing have been more tragic! To have come to a world in such high hopes, to have been so aus­pi­ciously re­ceived, and then to go forth in dis­grace from Eden, only to lose more than three fourths of their chil­dren even be­fore find­ing a new abid­ing place!

• defined as › inevitable if creature is to be free

75:8.6All in all, there prob­a­bly never was a more dis­heart­en­ing mis­car­riage of wis­dom on any planet in all Neb­a­don. But it is not sur­pris­ing that these mis­steps oc­cur in the af­fairs of the evo­lu­tion­ary uni­verses. We are a part of a gi­gan­tic cre­ation, and it is not strange that ev­ery­thing does not work in per­fec­tion; our uni­verse was not cre­ated in per­fec­tion. Per­fec­tion is our eter­nal goal, not our ori­gin.

75:8.7If this were a mech­a­nis­tic uni­verse, if the First Great Source and Cen­ter were only a force and not also a per­son­al­ity, if all cre­ation were a vast ag­gre­ga­tion of phys­i­cal mat­ter dom­i­nated by pre­cise laws char­ac­ter­ized by un­vary­ing en­ergy ac­tions, then might per­fec­tion ob­tain, even de­spite the in­com­plete­ness of uni­verse sta­tus. There would be no dis­agree­ment; there would be no fric­tion. But in our evolv­ing uni­verse of rel­a­tive per­fec­tion and im­per­fec­tion we re­joice that dis­agree­ment and mis­un­der­stand­ing are pos­si­ble, for thereby is ev­i­denced the fact and the act of per­son­al­ity in the uni­verse. And if our cre­ation is an ex­is­tence dom­i­nated by per­son­al­ity, then can you be as­sured of the pos­si­bil­i­ties of per­son­al­ity sur­vival, ad­vance­ment, and achieve­ment; we can be con­fi­dent of per­son­al­ity growth, ex­pe­ri­ence, and ad­ven­ture. What a glo­ri­ous uni­verse, in that it is per­sonal and pro­gres­sive, not merely me­chan­i­cal or even pas­sively per­fect!

• among primitives › s. was ritual, not rational; transgression of taboo

84:4.8The so-called mod­esty of women re­spect­ing their cloth­ing and the ex­po­sure of the per­son grew out of the deadly fear of be­ing ob­served at the time of a men­strual pe­riod. To be thus de­tected was a griev­ous sin, the vi­o­la­tion of a taboo. Un­der the mores of olden times, ev­ery woman, from ado­les­cence to the end of the child­bear­ing pe­riod, was sub­jected to com­plete fam­ily and so­cial quar­an­tine one full week each month. Ev­ery­thing she might touch, sit upon, or lie upon was “de­filed.” It was for long the cus­tom to bru­tally beat a girl af­ter each monthly pe­riod in an ef­fort to drive the evil spirit out of her body. But when a woman passed be­yond the child­bear­ing age, she was usu­ally treated more con­sid­er­ately, be­ing ac­corded more rights and priv­i­leges. In view of all this it was not strange that women were looked down upon. Even the Greeks held the men­stru­at­ing woman as one of the three great causes of de­file­ment, the other two be­ing pork and gar­lic.

89:2.1The fear of chance and the dread of bad luck lit­er­ally drove man into the in­ven­tion of prim­i­tive re­li­gion as sup­posed in­sur­ance against these calami­ties. From magic and ghosts, re­li­gion evolved through spir­its and fe­tishes to taboos. Ev­ery prim­i­tive tribe had its tree of for­bid­den fruit, lit­er­ally the ap­ple but fig­u­ra­tively con­sist­ing of a thou­sand branches hang­ing heavy with all sorts of taboos. And the for­bid­den tree al­ways said, “Thou shalt not.”

• among primitives › penalty for s. was death
• among primitives › s. made natural death logical
• among primitives › s. was ritual, not rational; transgression of taboo

89:2.2As the sav­age mind evolved to that point where it en­vis­aged both good and bad spir­its, and when the taboo re­ceived the solemn sanc­tion of evolv­ing re­li­gion, the stage was all set for the ap­pear­ance of the new con­cep­tion of sin. The idea of sin was uni­ver­sally es­tab­lished in the world be­fore re­vealed re­li­gion ever made its en­try. It was only by the con­cept of sin that nat­u­ral death be­came log­i­cal to the prim­i­tive mind. Sin was the trans­gres­sion of taboo, and death was the penalty of sin.

89:2.3Sin was rit­ual, not ra­tio­nal; an act, not a thought. And this en­tire con­cept of sin was fos­tered by the lin­ger­ing tra­di­tions of Dil­mun and the days of a lit­tle par­a­dise on earth. The tra­di­tion of Adam and the Gar­den of Eden also lent sub­stance to the dream of a one­time “golden age” of the dawn of the races. And all this con­firmed the ideas later ex­pressed in the be­lief that man had his ori­gin in a spe­cial cre­ation, that he started his ca­reer in per­fec­tion, and that trans­gres­sion of the taboos—sin—brought him down to his later sorry plight.

• among primitives › community calamity regarded as punishment for tribal s.

89:2.4The ha­bit­ual vi­o­la­tion of a taboo be­came a vice; prim­i­tive law made vice a crime; re­li­gion made it a sin. Among the early tribes the vi­o­la­tion of a taboo was a com­bined crime and sin. Com­mu­nity calamity was al­ways re­garded as pun­ish­ment for tribal sin. To those who be­lieved that pros­per­ity and righ­teous­ness went to­gether, the ap­par­ent pros­per­ity of the wicked oc­ca­sioned so much worry that it was nec­es­sary to in­vent hells for the pun­ish­ment of taboo vi­o­la­tors; the num­bers of these places of fu­ture pun­ish­ment have var­ied from one to five.

89:2.5The idea of con­fes­sion and for­give­ness early ap­peared in prim­i­tive re­li­gion. Men would ask for­give­ness at a pub­lic meet­ing for sins they in­tended to com­mit the fol­low­ing week. Con­fes­sion was merely a rite of re­mis­sion, also a pub­lic no­ti­fi­ca­tion of de­file­ment, a rit­ual of cry­ing “un­clean, un­clean!” Then fol­lowed all the rit­u­al­is­tic schemes of pu­rifi­ca­tion. All an­cient peo­ples prac­ticed these mean­ing­less cer­e­monies. Many ap­par­ently hy­gienic cus­toms of the early tribes were largely cer­e­mo­nial.

• defined as › deliberate transgression of divine will

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.

• among primitives › belief sickness was punishment for

90:3.84. Sin—pun­ish­ment for taboo vi­o­la­tion. In com­par­a­tively re­cent times it has been be­lieved that sick­ness is a pun­ish­ment for sin, per­sonal or racial. Among peo­ples travers­ing this level of evo­lu­tion the pre­vail­ing the­ory is that one can­not be af­flicted un­less one has vi­o­lated a taboo. To re­gard sick­ness and suf­fer­ing as “ar­rows of the Al­mighty within them” is typ­i­cal of such be­liefs. The Chi­nese and Mes­o­po­ta­mi­ans long re­garded dis­ease as the re­sult of the ac­tion of evil demons, al­though the Chaldeans also looked upon the stars as the cause of suf­fer­ing. This the­ory of dis­ease as a con­se­quence of di­vine wrath is still preva­lent among many re­put­edly civ­i­lized groups of Uran­tians.

• defined as › hated by God and Jesus; Jesus is ruthless with s.

100:7.11He was can­did, but al­ways kind. Said he, “If it were not so, I would have told you.” He was frank, but al­ways friendly. He was out­spo­ken in his love for the sin­ner and in his ha­tred for sin. But through­out all this amaz­ing frank­ness he was unerringly fair.

• defined as › hated by God and Jesus; Jesus is ruthless with s.

100:7.14His cour­age was equaled only by his pa­tience. When pressed to act pre­ma­turely, he would only re­ply, “My hour has not yet come.” He was never in a hurry; his com­po­sure was sub­lime. But he was of­ten in­dig­nant at evil, in­tol­er­ant of sin. He was of­ten might­ily moved to re­sist that which was in­im­i­cal to the wel­fare of his chil­dren on earth. But his in­dig­na­tion against sin never led to anger at the sin­ner.

• defined as › honest doubts are not s.

102:1.1The work of the Thought Ad­juster con­sti­tutes the ex­pla­na­tion of the trans­la­tion of man’s prim­i­tive and evo­lu­tion­ary sense of duty into that higher and more cer­tain faith in the eter­nal re­al­i­ties of rev­e­la­tion. There must be per­fec­tion hunger in man’s heart to in­sure ca­pac­ity for com­pre­hend­ing the faith paths to su­preme at­tain­ment. If any man chooses to do the di­vine will, he shall know the way of truth. It is lit­er­ally true, “Hu­man things must be known in or­der to be loved, but di­vine things must be loved in or­der to be known.” But hon­est doubts and sin­cere ques­tion­ings are not sin; such at­ti­tudes merely spell de­lay in the pro­gres­sive jour­ney to­ward per­fec­tion at­tain­ment. Child­like trust se­cures man’s en­trance into the king­dom of heav­enly as­cent, but prog­ress is wholly de­pen­dent on the vig­or­ous ex­er­cise of the ro­bust and con­fi­dent faith of the full-grown man.

• effect of sin › man can reject survival by s.

111:1.9Mind is your ship, the Ad­juster is your pi­lot, the hu­man will is cap­tain. The mas­ter of the mor­tal ves­sel should have the wis­dom to trust the di­vine pi­lot to guide the as­cend­ing soul into the mor­ontia har­bors of eter­nal sur­vival. Only by self­ish­ness, sloth­ful­ness, and sin­ful­ness can the will of man re­ject the guid­ance of such a lov­ing pi­lot and even­tu­ally wreck the mor­tal ca­reer upon the evil shoals of re­jected mercy and upon the rocks of em­braced sin. With your con­sent, this faith­ful pi­lot will safely carry you across the bar­ri­ers of time and the hand­i­caps of space to the very source of the di­vine mind and on be­yond, even to the Par­a­dise Fa­ther of Ad­justers.

• effect of sin › may evolve if self becomes proud and arrogant

111:6.2The cour­age re­quired to ef­fect the con­quest of na­ture and to tran­scend one’s self is a cour­age that might suc­cumb to the temp­ta­tions of self-pride. The mor­tal who can tran­scend self might yield to the temp­ta­tion to de­ify his own self-con­scious­ness. The mor­tal dilemma con­sists in the dou­ble fact that man is in bond­age to na­ture while at the same time he pos­sesses a unique lib­erty—free­dom of spir­i­tual choice and ac­tion. On ma­te­rial lev­els man finds him­self sub­servient to na­ture, while on spir­i­tual lev­els he is tri­umphant over na­ture and over all things tem­po­ral and fi­nite. Such a para­dox is in­sep­a­ra­ble from temp­ta­tion, po­ten­tial evil, de­ci­sional er­rors, and when self be­comes proud and ar­ro­gant, sin may evolve.

• defined as › originating in misuse, distortion, and perversion

111:6.3The prob­lem of sin is not self-ex­is­tent in the fi­nite world. The fact of finite­ness is not evil or sin­ful. The fi­nite world was made by an in­fi­nite Cre­ator—it is the hand­i­work of his di­vine Sons—and there­fore it must be good. It is the mis­use, dis­tor­tion, and per­ver­sion of the fi­nite that gives ori­gin to evil and sin.

• defined as › inevitable if creature is to be free

118:7.3Er­ror in fi­nite choos­ing is time bound and time lim­ited. It can ex­ist only in time and within the evolv­ing pres­ence of the Su­preme Be­ing. Such mis­taken choos­ing is time pos­si­ble and in­di­cates (be­sides the in­com­plete­ness of the Su­preme) that cer­tain range of choice with which im­ma­ture crea­tures must be en­dowed in or­der to en­joy uni­verse pro­gres­sion by mak­ing free­will con­tact with re­al­ity.

• defined as › failure to perceive obligations of cosmic citizenship

118:7.4Sin in time-con­di­tioned space clearly proves the tem­po­ral lib­erty—even li­cense—of the fi­nite will. Sin de­picts im­ma­tu­rity daz­zled by the free­dom of the rel­a­tively sov­er­eign will of per­son­al­ity while fail­ing to per­ceive the su­preme obli­ga­tions and du­ties of cos­mic cit­i­zen­ship.

• defined as › immature choosing willfully endorsed

130:1.5Je­sus’ last visit with Ga­diah had to do with a dis­cus­sion of good and evil. This young Phil­is­tine was much trou­bled by a feel­ing of in­jus­tice be­cause of the pres­ence of evil in the world along­side the good. He said: “How can God, if he is in­finitely good, per­mit us to suf­fer the sor­rows of evil; af­ter all, who cre­ates evil?” It was still be­lieved by many in those days that God cre­ates both good and evil, but Je­sus never taught such er­ror. In an­swer­ing this ques­tion, Je­sus said: “My brother, God is love; there­fore he must be good, and his good­ness is so great and real that it can­not con­tain the small and un­real things of evil. God is so pos­i­tively good that there is ab­so­lutely no place in him for neg­a­tive evil. Evil is the im­ma­ture choos­ing and the un­think­ing mis­step of those who are re­sis­tant to good­ness, re­ject­ful of beauty, and dis­loyal to truth. Evil is only the mis­adap­ta­tion of im­ma­tu­rity or the dis­rup­tive and dis­tort­ing in­flu­ence of ig­no­rance. Evil is the in­ev­i­ta­ble dark­ness which fol­lows upon the heels of the un­wise re­jec­tion of light. Evil is that which is dark and un­true, and which, when con­sciously em­braced and will­fully en­dorsed, be­comes sin.

130:1.6“Your Fa­ther in heaven, by en­dow­ing you with the power to choose be­tween truth and er­ror, cre­ated the po­ten­tial neg­a­tive of the pos­i­tive way of light and life; but such er­rors of evil are re­ally nonex­is­tent un­til such a time as an in­tel­li­gent crea­ture wills their ex­is­tence by mischoos­ing the way of life. And then are such evils later ex­alted into sin by the know­ing and de­lib­er­ate choice of such a will­ful and re­bel­lious crea­ture. This is why our Fa­ther in heaven per­mits the good and the evil to go along to­gether un­til the end of life, just as na­ture al­lows the wheat and the tares to grow side by side un­til the har­vest.” Ga­diah was fully sat­is­fied with Je­sus’ an­swer to his ques­tion af­ter their sub­se­quent dis­cus­sion had made clear to his mind the real mean­ing of these mo­men­tous state­ments.

• defined as › despicable; make no excuse for

131:3.3“Un­righ­teous­ness is con­temptible; sin is de­spi­ca­ble. Evil is de­grad­ing, whether held in thought or wrought out in deeds. Pain and sor­row fol­low in the path of evil as the dust fol­lows the wind. Hap­pi­ness and peace of mind fol­low pure think­ing and vir­tu­ous liv­ing as the shadow fol­lows the sub­stance of ma­te­rial things. Evil is the fruit of wrongly di­rected think­ing. It is evil to see sin where there is no sin; to see no sin where there is sin. Evil is the path of false doc­trines. Those who avoid evil by see­ing things as they are gain joy by thus em­brac­ing the truth. Make an end of your mis­ery by loathing sin. When you look up to the No­ble One, turn away from sin with a whole heart. Make no apol­ogy for evil; make no ex­cuse for sin. By your ef­forts to make amends for past sins you ac­quire strength to re­sist fu­ture ten­den­cies thereto. Re­straint is born of re­pen­tance. Leave no fault un­con­fessed to the No­ble One.

• defined as › despicable; make no excuse for
• effect of sin › ends in pain

131:3.5“No re­li­gion­ist may hope to at­tain the en­light­en­ment of im­mor­tal wis­dom who per­sists in be­ing sloth­ful, in­do­lent, fee­ble, idle, shame­less, and self­ish. But whoso is thought­ful, pru­dent, re­flec­tive, fer­vent, and earnest—even while he yet lives on earth—may at­tain the su­preme en­light­en­ment of the peace and lib­erty of di­vine wis­dom. Re­mem­ber, ev­ery act shall re­ceive its re­ward. Evil re­sults in sor­row and sin ends in pain. Joy and hap­pi­ness are the out­come of a good life. Even the evil­doer en­joys a sea­son of grace be­fore the time of the full ripen­ing of his evil deeds, but in­evitably there must come the full har­vest of evil-do­ing. Let no man think lightly of sin, say­ing in his heart: ‘The penalty of wrong­do­ing shall not come near me.’ What you do shall be done to you, in the judg­ment of wis­dom. In­jus­tice done to your fel­lows shall come back upon you. The crea­ture can­not es­cape the des­tiny of his deeds.

• among primitives › community calamity regarded as punishment for tribal s.

136:2.1Je­sus was bap­tized at the very height of John’s preach­ing when Pales­tine was aflame with the ex­pectancy of his mes­sage—“the king­dom of God is at hand”—when all Jewry was en­gaged in se­ri­ous and solemn self-ex­am­i­na­tion. The Jew­ish sense of racial sol­i­dar­ity was very pro­found. The Jews not only be­lieved that the sins of the fa­ther might af­flict his chil­dren, but they firmly be­lieved that the sin of one in­di­vid­ual might curse the na­tion. Ac­cord­ingly, not all who sub­mit­ted to John’s bap­tism re­garded them­selves as be­ing guilty of the spe­cific sins which John de­nounced. Many de­vout souls were bap­tized by John for the good of Is­rael. They feared lest some sin of ig­no­rance on their part might de­lay the com­ing of the Mes­siah. They felt them­selves to be­long to a guilty and sin-cursed na­tion, and they pre­sented them­selves for bap­tism that they might by so do­ing man­i­fest fruits of race pen­i­tence. It is there­fore ev­i­dent that Je­sus in no sense re­ceived John’s bap­tism as a rite of re­pen­tance or for the re­mis­sion of sins. In ac­cept­ing bap­tism at the hands of John, Je­sus was only fol­low­ing the ex­am­ple of many pi­ous Is­raelites.

• defined as › prostituting divine talents for selfish gain

136:6.9In this de­ci­sion Je­sus of Naz­a­reth por­trayed to an on­look­ing uni­verse the folly and sin of pros­ti­tut­ing di­vine tal­ents and God-given abil­i­ties for per­sonal ag­gran­dize­ment or for purely self­ish gain and glo­ri­fi­ca­tion. That was the sin of Lu­cifer and Cali­gas­tia.

• pleasant adjustment to paths of

139:12.5Ju­das was a good busi­ness man. It re­quired tact, abil­ity, and pa­tience, as well as painstak­ing de­vo­tion, to man­age the fi­nan­cial af­fairs of such an ide­al­ist as Je­sus, to say noth­ing of wrestling with the hel­ter-skel­ter busi­ness meth­ods of some of his apos­tles. Ju­das re­ally was a great ex­ec­u­tive, a farsee­ing and able fi­nancier. And he was a stick­ler for or­ga­ni­za­tion. None of the twelve ever crit­i­cized Ju­das. As far as they could see, Ju­das Is­car­iot was a match­less trea­surer, a learned man, a loyal (though some­times crit­i­cal) apos­tle, and in ev­ery sense of the word a great suc­cess. The apos­tles loved Ju­das; he was re­ally one of them. He must have be­lieved in Je­sus, but we doubt whether he re­ally loved the Mas­ter with a whole heart. The case of Ju­das il­lus­trates the truth­ful­ness of that say­ing: “There is a way that seems right to a man, but the end thereof is death.” It is al­to­gether pos­si­ble to fall vic­tim to the peace­ful de­cep­tion of pleas­ant ad­just­ment to the paths of sin and death. Be as­sured that Ju­das was al­ways fi­nan­cially loyal to his Mas­ter and his fel­low apos­tles. Money could never have been the mo­tive for his be­trayal of the Mas­ter.

• Nalda was more sinned against

143:5.8This was the first di­rect, pos­i­tive, and undis­guised pro­nounce­ment of his di­vine na­ture and son­ship which Je­sus had made on earth; and it was made to a woman, a Samar­i­tan woman, and a woman of ques­tion­able char­ac­ter in the eyes of men up to this mo­ment, but a woman whom the di­vine eye be­held as hav­ing been sinned against more than as sin­ning of her own de­sire and as now be­ing a hu­man soul who de­sired sal­va­tion, de­sired it sin­cerely and whole­heart­edly, and that was enough.

• defined as › hated by God and Jesus; Jesus is ruthless with s.

147:5.9But Je­sus earnestly warned his apos­tles against the fool­ish­ness of the child of God who pre­sumes upon the Fa­ther’s love. He de­clared that the heav­enly Fa­ther is not a lax, loose, or fool­ishly in­dul­gent par­ent who is ever ready to con­done sin and for­give reck­less­ness. He cau­tioned his hear­ers not mis­tak­enly to ap­ply his il­lus­tra­tions of fa­ther and son so as to make it ap­pear that God is like some overindul­gent and un­wise par­ents who con­spire with the fool­ish of earth to en­com­pass the moral un­do­ing of their thought­less chil­dren, and who are thereby cer­tainly and di­rectly con­tribut­ing to the delin­quency and early de­mor­al­iza­tion of their own off­spring. Said Je­sus: “My Fa­ther does not in­dul­gently con­done those acts and prac­tices of his chil­dren which are self-de­struc­tive and sui­ci­dal to all moral growth and spir­i­tual prog­ress. Such sin­ful prac­tices are an abom­i­na­tion in the sight of God.”

• defined as › deliberate transgression of divine will

148:4.4“Sin is the con­scious, know­ing, and de­lib­er­ate trans­gres­sion of the di­vine law, the Fa­ther’s will. Sin is the mea­sure of un­will­ing­ness to be di­vinely led and spir­i­tu­ally di­rected.

• defined as › deliberate transgression of divine will

148:4.6“By na­ture, be­fore the re­birth of the spirit, mor­tal man is sub­ject to in­her­ent evil ten­den­cies, but such nat­u­ral im­per­fec­tions of be­hav­ior are nei­ther sin nor in­iq­uity. Mor­tal man is just be­gin­ning his long as­cent to the per­fec­tion of the Fa­ther in Par­a­dise. To be im­per­fect or par­tial in nat­u­ral en­dow­ment is not sin­ful. Man is in­deed sub­ject to evil, but he is in no sense the child of the evil one un­less he has know­ingly and de­lib­er­ately cho­sen the paths of sin and the life of in­iq­uity. Evil is in­her­ent in the nat­u­ral or­der of this world, but sin is an at­ti­tude of con­scious re­bel­lion which was brought to this world by those who fell from spir­i­tual light into gross dark­ness.

• effect of sin › sooner or later punished

148:5.3“But, my son, you should know that the Fa­ther does not pur­posely af­flict his chil­dren. Man brings down upon him­self un­nec­es­sary af­flic­tion as a re­sult of his per­sis­tent re­fusal to walk in the bet­ter ways of the di­vine will. Af­flic­tion is po­ten­tial in evil, but much of it has been pro­duced by sin and in­iq­uity. Many un­usual events have tran­spired on this world, and it is not strange that all think­ing men should be per­plexed by the scenes of suf­fer­ing and af­flic­tion which they wit­ness. But of one thing you may be sure: The Fa­ther does not send af­flic­tion as an ar­bi­trary pun­ish­ment for wrong­do­ing. The im­per­fec­tions and hand­i­caps of evil are in­her­ent; the penal­ties of sin are in­ev­i­ta­ble; the de­stroy­ing con­se­quences of in­iq­uity are in­ex­orable. Man should not blame God for those af­flic­tions which are the nat­u­ral re­sult of the life which he chooses to live; nei­ther should man com­plain of those ex­pe­ri­ences which are a part of life as it is lived on this world. It is the Fa­ther’s will that mor­tal man should work per­sis­tently and con­sis­tently to­ward the bet­ter­ment of his es­tate on earth. In­tel­li­gent ap­pli­ca­tion would en­able man to over­come much of his earthly mis­ery.

• effect of sin › sooner or later punished

148:6.3“Al­though trans­gres­sion of di­vine law is sooner or later fol­lowed by the har­vest of pun­ish­ment, while men cer­tainly even­tu­ally do reap what they sow, still you should know that hu­man suf­fer­ing is not al­ways a pun­ish­ment for an­te­ced­ent sin. Both Job and his friends failed to find the true an­swer for their per­plex­i­ties. And with the light you now en­joy you would hardly as­sign to ei­ther Sa­tan or God the parts they play in this unique para­ble. While Job did not, through suf­fer­ing, find the res­o­lu­tion of his in­tel­lec­tual trou­bles or the so­lu­tion of his phil­o­soph­i­cal dif­fi­cul­ties, he did achieve great vic­to­ries; even in the very face of the break­down of his the­o­log­i­cal de­fenses he as­cended to those spir­i­tual heights where he could sin­cerely say, ‘I ab­hor my­self’; then was there granted him the sal­va­tion of a vi­sion of God. So even through mis­un­der­stood suf­fer­ing, Job as­cended to the super­hu­man plane of moral un­der­stand­ing and spir­i­tual in­sight. When the suf­fer­ing ser­vant ob­tains a vi­sion of God, there fol­lows a soul peace which passes all hu­man un­der­stand­ing.

• dealing with sin › voluntary repentance of, cleansing from, all known s.

150:5.5In sum­ming up his fi­nal state­ment, Je­sus said: “You can­not buy sal­va­tion; you can­not earn righ­teous­ness. Sal­va­tion is the gift of God, and righ­teous­ness is the nat­u­ral fruit of the spirit-born life of son­ship in the king­dom. You are not to be saved be­cause you live a righ­teous life; rather is it that you live a righ­teous life be­cause you have al­ready been saved, have rec­og­nized son­ship as the gift of God and ser­vice in the king­dom as the su­preme de­light of life on earth. When men be­lieve this gospel, which is a rev­e­la­tion of the good­ness of God, they will be led to vol­un­tary re­pen­tance of all known sin. Re­al­iza­tion of son­ship is in­com­pat­i­ble with the de­sire to sin. King­dom be­liev­ers hunger for righ­teous­ness and thirst for di­vine per­fec­tion.”

• examples

153:3.5Je­sus then di­rected his re­marks to all pres­ent. He said: “But hear­ken to me, all of you. It is not that which en­ters into the mouth that spir­i­tu­ally de­files the man, but rather that which pro­ceeds out of the mouth and from the heart.” But even the apos­tles failed fully to grasp the mean­ing of his words, for Si­mon Pe­ter also asked him: “Lest some of your hear­ers be un­nec­es­sar­ily of­fended, would you ex­plain to us the mean­ing of these words?” And then said Je­sus to Pe­ter: “Are you also hard of un­der­stand­ing? Know you not that ev­ery plant which my heav­enly Fa­ther has not planted shall be rooted up? Turn now your at­ten­tion to those who would know the truth. You can­not com­pel men to love the truth. Many of these teach­ers are blind guides. And you know that, if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the pit. But hear­ken while I tell you the truth con­cern­ing those things which morally de­file and spir­i­tu­ally con­tam­i­nate men. I de­clare it is not that which en­ters the body by the mouth or gains ac­cess to the mind through the eyes and ears, that de­files the man. Man is only de­filed by that evil which may orig­i­nate within the heart, and which finds ex­pres­sion in the words and deeds of such un­holy per­sons. Do you not know it is from the heart that there come forth evil thoughts, wicked projects of mur­der, theft, and adul­ter­ies, to­gether with jeal­ousy, pride, anger, re­venge, rail­ings, and false wit­ness? And it is just such things that de­file men, and not that they eat bread with cer­e­mo­ni­ally un­clean hands.”

• dealing with sin › go forward in righteousness or retrogress into

156:2.6The theme of Je­sus’ in­struc­tions dur­ing the so­journ at Sidon was spir­i­tual pro­gres­sion. He told them they could not stand still; they must go for­ward in righ­teous­ness or ret­rogress into evil and sin. He ad­mon­ished them to “for­get those things which are in the past while you push for­ward to em­brace the greater re­al­i­ties of the king­dom.” He be­sought them not to be con­tent with their child­hood in the gospel but to strive for the at­tain­ment of the full stature of di­vine son­ship in the com­mu­nion of the spirit and in the fel­low­ship of be­liev­ers.

• dealing with sin › voluntary repentance of, cleansing from, all known s.

156:2.7Said Je­sus: “My dis­ci­ples must not only cease to do evil but learn to do well; you must not only be cleansed from all con­scious sin, but you must refuse to har­bor even the feel­ings of guilt. If you con­fess your sins, they are for­given; there­fore must you main­tain a con­science void of of­fense.”

• cannot prevail against kingdom of heaven

157:4.5Je­sus, still stand­ing, then said to the twelve: “You are my cho­sen am­bas­sadors, but I know that, in the cir­cum­stances, you could not en­ter­tain this be­lief as a re­sult of mere hu­man knowl­edge. This is a rev­e­la­tion of the spirit of my Fa­ther to your in­most souls. And when, there­fore, you make this con­fes­sion by the in­sight of the spirit of my Fa­ther which dwells within you, I am led to de­clare that upon this foun­da­tion will I build the broth­er­hood of the king­dom of heaven. Upon this rock of spir­i­tual re­al­ity will I build the liv­ing tem­ple of spir­i­tual fel­low­ship in the eter­nal re­al­i­ties of my Fa­ther’s king­dom. All the forces of evil and the hosts of sin shall not pre­vail against this hu­man fra­ter­nity of the di­vine spirit. And while my Fa­ther’s spirit shall ever be the di­vine guide and men­tor of all who en­ter the bonds of this spirit fel­low­ship, to you and your suc­ces­sors I now de­liver the keys of the out­ward king­dom—the au­thor­ity over things tem­po­ral—the so­cial and eco­nomic fea­tures of this as­so­ci­a­tion of men and women as fel­lows of the king­dom.” And again he charged them, for the time be­ing, that they should tell no man that he was the Son of God.

• defined as › hated by God and Jesus; Jesus is ruthless with s.

159:3.9In preach­ing the gospel of the king­dom, you are sim­ply teach­ing friend­ship with God. And this fel­low­ship will ap­peal alike to men and women in that both will find that which most truly sat­is­fies their char­ac­ter­is­tic long­ings and ide­als. Tell my chil­dren that I am not only ten­der of their feel­ings and pa­tient with their frail­ties, but that I am also ruth­less with sin and in­tol­er­ant of in­iq­uity. I am in­deed meek and hum­ble in the pres­ence of my Fa­ther, but I am equally and re­lent­lessly in­ex­orable where there is de­lib­er­ate evil-do­ing and sin­ful re­bel­lion against the will of my Fa­ther in heaven.

• defined as › hated by God and Jesus; Jesus is ruthless with s.

161:2.65. He seems to know the thoughts of men’s minds and to un­der­stand the long­ings of their hearts. And he is al­ways sym­pa­thetic with our trou­bled spir­its. He seems to pos­sess all our hu­man emo­tions, but they are mag­nif­i­cently glo­ri­fied. He strongly loves good­ness and equally hates sin. He pos­sesses a super­hu­man con­scious­ness of the pres­ence of De­ity. He prays like a man but per­forms like a God. He seems to fore­know things; he even now dares to speak about his death, some mys­tic ref­er­ence to his fu­ture glo­ri­fi­ca­tion. While he is kind, he is also brave and coura­geous. He never fal­ters in do­ing his duty.

• effect of sin › light which saves if accepted, condemns if knowingly rejected

162:5.3“I have al­ready told you that I am go­ing away, and that you will seek me and not find me, for where I am go­ing you can­not come. You who would re­ject this light are from be­neath; I am from above. You who pre­fer to sit in dark­ness are of this world; I am not of this world, and I live in the eter­nal light of the Fa­ther of lights. You all have had abun­dant op­por­tu­nity to learn who I am, but you shall have still other ev­i­dence con­firm­ing the iden­tity of the Son of Man. I am the light of life, and ev­ery one who de­lib­er­ately and with un­der­stand­ing re­jects this sav­ing light shall die in his sins. Much I have to tell you, but you are un­able to re­ceive my words. How­ever, he who sent me is true and faith­ful; my Fa­ther loves even his erring chil­dren. And all that my Fa­ther has spo­ken I also pro­claim to the world.

• who convicts Jesus of s.?

162:7.4“Which of you con­victs me of sin? If I, then, pro­claim and live the truth shown me by the Fa­ther, why do you not be­lieve? He who is of God hears gladly the words of God; for this cause many of you hear not my words, be­cause you are not of God. Your teach­ers have even pre­sumed to say that I do my works by the power of the prince of dev­ils. One near by has just said that I have a devil, that I am a child of the devil. But all of you who deal hon­estly with your own souls know full well that I am not a devil. You know that I honor the Fa­ther even while you would dis­honor me. I seek not my own glory, only the glory of my Par­a­dise Fa­ther. And I do not judge you, for there is one who judges for me.

• if false shepherd were blind, he would have no

165:2.3“Tonight, here be­fore me are men who would be will­ing to die for me and for this gospel of the king­dom, and some of them will so of­fer them­selves in the years to come; and here also are some of you, slaves of tra­di­tion, who have fol­lowed me down from Je­ru­sa­lem, and who, with your dark­ened and de­luded lead­ers, seek to kill the Son of Man. The life which I now live in the flesh shall judge both of you, the true shep­herds and the false shep­herds. If the false shep­herd were blind, he would have no sin, but you claim that you see; you pro­fess to be teach­ers in Is­rael; there­fore does your sin re­main upon you.

• defined as › deliberate transgression of divine will

170:2.23Je­sus taught that sin is not the child of a de­fec­tive na­ture but rather the off­spring of a know­ing mind dom­i­nated by an un­sub­mis­sive will. Re­gard­ing sin, he taught that God has for­given; that we make such for­give­ness per­son­ally avail­able by the act of for­giv­ing our fel­lows. When you for­give your brother in the flesh, you thereby cre­ate the ca­pac­ity in your own soul for the re­cep­tion of the re­al­ity of God’s for­give­ness of your own mis­deeds.

• defined as › not part of God’s consciousness

174:1.4“When a wise man un­der­stands the in­ner im­pulses of his fel­lows, he will love them. And when you love your brother, you have al­ready for­given him. This ca­pac­ity to un­der­stand man’s na­ture and for­give his ap­par­ent wrong­do­ing is God­like. If you are wise par­ents, this is the way you will love and un­der­stand your chil­dren, even for­give them when tran­sient mis­un­der­stand­ing has ap­par­ently sep­a­rated you. The child, be­ing im­ma­ture and lack­ing in the fuller un­der­stand­ing of the depth of the child-fa­ther re­la­tion­ship, must fre­quently feel a sense of guilty sep­a­ra­tion from a fa­ther’s full ap­proval, but the true fa­ther is never con­scious of any such sep­a­ra­tion. Sin is an ex­pe­ri­ence of crea­ture con­scious­ness; it is not a part of God’s con­scious­ness.

• defined as › saying what is good but not doing it

175:1.8“This af­ter­noon my apos­tles stand here be­fore you in si­lence, but you shall soon hear their voices ring­ing out with the call to sal­va­tion and with the urge to unite with the heav­enly king­dom as the sons of the liv­ing God. And now I call to wit­ness these, my dis­ci­ples and be­liev­ers in the gospel of the king­dom, as well as the un­seen mes­sen­gers by their sides, that I have once more of­fered Is­rael and her rulers de­liv­er­ance and sal­va­tion. But you all be­hold how the Fa­ther’s mercy is slighted and how the mes­sen­gers of truth are re­jected. Nev­er­the­less, I ad­mon­ish you that these scribes and Phar­isees still sit in Moses’ seat, and there­fore, un­til the Most Highs who rule in the king­doms of men shall fi­nally over­throw this na­tion and de­stroy the place of these rulers, I bid you co-op­er­ate with these el­ders in Is­rael. You are not re­quired to unite with them in their plans to de­stroy the Son of Man, but in ev­ery­thing re­lated to the peace of Is­rael you are to be sub­ject to them. In all these mat­ters do what­so­ever they bid you and ob­serve the es­sen­tials of the law but do not pat­tern af­ter their evil works. Re­mem­ber, this is the sin of these rulers: They say that which is good, but they do it not. You well know how these lead­ers bind heavy bur­dens on your shoul­ders, bur­dens griev­ous to bear, and that they will not lift as much as one fin­ger to help you bear these weighty bur­dens. They have op­pressed you with cer­e­monies and en­slaved you by tra­di­tions.

• effect of sin › light which saves if accepted, condemns if knowingly rejected

180:3.2“Many of those who will as­sail you are ig­no­rant of the light of heaven, but this is not true of some who now per­se­cute us. If we had not taught them the truth, they might do many strange things with­out falling un­der con­dem­na­tion, but now, since they have known the light and pre­sumed to re­ject it, they have no ex­cuse for their at­ti­tude. He who hates me hates my Fa­ther. It can­not be oth­er­wise; the light which would save you if ac­cepted can only con­demn you if it is know­ingly re­jected. And what have I done to these men that they should hate me with such a ter­ri­ble ha­tred? Noth­ing, save to of­fer them fel­low­ship on earth and sal­va­tion in heaven. But have you not read in the Scrip­ture the say­ing: ‘And they hated me with­out a cause’?

• Spirit of Truth illuminates difference between s. and righteousness

180:6.2“Now that I am leav­ing you, see­ing that the hour has come when I am about to go to the Fa­ther, I am sur­prised that none of you have asked me, Why do you leave us? Nev­er­the­less, I know that you ask such ques­tions in your hearts. I will speak to you plainly, as one friend to an­other. It is re­ally prof­itable for you that I go away. If I go not away, the new teacher can­not come into your hearts. I must be di­vested of this mor­tal body and be re­stored to my place on high be­fore I can send this spirit teacher to live in your souls and lead your spir­its into the truth. And when my spirit comes to in­dwell you, he will il­lu­mi­nate the dif­fer­ence be­tween sin and righ­teous­ness and will en­able you to judge wisely in your hearts con­cern­ing them.

• effect of sin › creates dead level of evil inertia

182:1.8Je­sus prayed for unity among his fol­low­ers, but he did not de­sire uni­for­mity. Sin cre­ates a dead level of evil in­er­tia, but righ­teous­ness nour­ishes the cre­ative spirit of in­di­vid­ual ex­pe­ri­ence in the liv­ing re­al­i­ties of eter­nal truth and in the pro­gres­sive com­mu­nion of the di­vine spir­its of the Fa­ther and the Son. In the spir­i­tual fel­low­ship of the be­liever-son with the di­vine Fa­ther there can never be doc­tri­nal fi­nal­ity and sec­tar­ian su­pe­ri­or­ity of group con­scious­ness.

• effect of sin › light which saves if accepted, condemns if knowingly rejected

184:1.5An­nas was con­sid­er­ably dis­turbed by Je­sus’ re­fusal to an­swer his ques­tions, so much so that he said to him: “Do you have no care as to whether I am friendly to you or not? Do you have no re­gard for the power I have in de­ter­min­ing the is­sues of your com­ing trial?” When Je­sus heard this, he said: “An­nas, you know that you could have no power over me un­less it were per­mit­ted by my Fa­ther. Some would de­stroy the Son of Man be­cause they are ig­no­rant; they know no bet­ter, but you, friend, know what you are do­ing. How can you, there­fore, re­ject the light of God?”

• effect of sin › light which saves if accepted, condemns if knowingly rejected

185:7.2But Je­sus could hardly an­swer such ques­tions when asked by a man-fear­ing, weak, and vac­il­lat­ing judge who was so un­just as to sub­ject him to flog­ging even when he had de­clared him in­no­cent of all crime, and be­fore he had been duly sen­tenced to die. Je­sus looked Pi­late straight in the face, but he did not an­swer him. Then said Pi­late: “Do you refuse to speak to me? Do you not re­al­ize that I still have power to re­lease you or to cru­cify you?” Then said Je­sus: “You could have no power over me ex­cept it were per­mit­ted from above. You could ex­er­cise no au­thor­ity over the Son of Man un­less the Fa­ther in heaven al­lowed it. But you are not so guilty since you are ig­no­rant of the gospel. He who be­trayed me and he who de­liv­ered me to you, they have the greater sin.”

• glamor, fascination, and intoxication of committing

186:1.6As Ju­das left the San­hedrin cham­ber, he re­moved the thirty pieces of sil­ver from the bag and threw them broad­cast over the tem­ple floor. When the be­trayer left the tem­ple, he was al­most be­side him­self. Ju­das was now pass­ing through the ex­pe­ri­ence of the re­al­iza­tion of the true na­ture of sin. All the glamor, fas­ci­na­tion, and in­tox­i­ca­tion of wrong­do­ing had van­ished. Now the evil­doer stood alone and face to face with the judg­ment ver­dict of his dis­il­lu­sioned and dis­ap­pointed soul. Sin was be­witch­ing and ad­ven­tur­ous in the com­mit­ting, but now must the har­vest of the naked and un­ro­man­tic facts be faced.

• defined as › deliberate transgression of divine will

186:5.7Je­sus is not about to die as a sac­ri­fice for sin. He is not go­ing to atone for the in­born moral guilt of the hu­man race. Man­kind has no such racial guilt be­fore God. Guilt is purely a mat­ter of per­sonal sin and know­ing, de­lib­er­ate re­bel­lion against the will of the Fa­ther and the ad­min­is­tra­tion of his Sons.

• effect of sin › no person suffers vital spiritual deprivation because of another’s s.

188:4.3Mor­tal man was never the prop­erty of the archde­ceivers. Je­sus did not die to ran­som man from the clutch of the apos­tate rulers and fallen princes of the spheres. The Fa­ther in heaven never con­ceived of such crass in­jus­tice as damn­ing a mor­tal soul be­cause of the evil-do­ing of his an­ces­tors. Nei­ther was the Mas­ter’s death on the cross a sac­ri­fice which con­sisted in an ef­fort to pay God a debt which the race of man­kind had come to owe him.

• defined as › deliberate transgression of divine will
• effect of sin › no person suffers vital spiritual deprivation because of another’s s.

188:4.5The an­i­mal na­ture—the ten­dency to­ward evil-do­ing—may be hered­i­tary, but sin is not trans­mit­ted from par­ent to child. Sin is the act of con­scious and de­lib­er­ate re­bel­lion against the Fa­ther’s will and the Sons’ laws by an in­di­vid­ual will crea­ture.

• dealing with sin › believers should not worry much about punishment of

188:4.10Nei­ther do gen­uine be­liev­ers trou­ble them­selves so much about the fu­ture pun­ish­ment of sin. The real be­liever is only con­cerned about pres­ent sep­a­ra­tion from God. True, wise fa­thers may chas­ten their sons, but they do all this in love and for cor­rec­tive pur­poses. They do not pun­ish in anger, nei­ther do they chas­tise in ret­ri­bu­tion.

• often appears to prevail

194:3.2Many things which hap­pen in the course of a hu­man life are hard to un­der­stand, dif­fi­cult to rec­on­cile with the idea that this is a uni­verse in which truth pre­vails and in which righ­teous­ness tri­umphs. It so of­ten ap­pears that slan­der, lies, dis­hon­esty, and un­righ­teous­ness—sin—pre­vail. Does faith, af­ter all, tri­umph over evil, sin, and in­iq­uity? It does. And the life and death of Je­sus are the eter­nal proof that the truth of good­ness and the faith of the spirit-led crea­ture will al­ways be vin­di­cated. They taunted Je­sus on the cross, say­ing, “Let us see if God will come and de­liver him.” It looked dark on that day of the cru­ci­fix­ion, but it was glo­ri­ously bright on the res­ur­rec­tion morn­ing; it was still brighter and more joy­ous on the day of Pen­te­cost. The re­li­gions of pes­simistic de­spair seek to ob­tain re­lease from the bur­dens of life; they crave ex­tinc­tion in end­less slum­ber and rest. These are the re­li­gions of prim­i­tive fear and dread. The re­li­gion of Je­sus is a new gospel of faith to be pro­claimed to strug­gling hu­man­ity. This new re­li­gion is founded on faith, hope, and love.

• dealing with sin › prayer mobilizes soul to withstand

196:0.10Je­sus brought to God, as a man of the realm, the great­est of all of­fer­ings: the con­se­cra­tion and ded­i­ca­tion of his own will to the ma­jes­tic ser­vice of do­ing the di­vine will. Je­sus al­ways and con­sis­tently in­ter­preted re­li­gion wholly in terms of the Fa­ther’s will. When you study the ca­reer of the Mas­ter, as con­cerns prayer or any other fea­ture of the re­li­gious life, look not so much for what he taught as for what he did. Je­sus never prayed as a re­li­gious duty. To him prayer was a sin­cere ex­pres­sion of spir­i­tual at­ti­tude, a dec­la­ra­tion of soul loy­alty, a recital of per­sonal de­vo­tion, an ex­pres­sion of thanks­giv­ing, an avoid­ance of emo­tional ten­sion, a pre­ven­tion of con­flict, an ex­al­ta­tion of in­tel­lec­tion, an en­no­ble­ment of de­sire, a vin­di­ca­tion of moral de­ci­sion, an en­rich­ment of thought, an in­vig­o­ra­tion of higher in­cli­na­tions, a con­se­cra­tion of im­pulse, a clar­i­fi­ca­tion of view­point, a dec­la­ra­tion of faith, a tran­scen­den­tal sur­ren­der of will, a sub­lime as­ser­tion of con­fi­dence, a rev­e­la­tion of cour­age, the procla­ma­tion of dis­cov­ery, a con­fes­sion of su­preme de­vo­tion, the val­i­da­tion of con­se­cra­tion, a tech­nique for the ad­just­ment of dif­fi­cul­ties, and the mighty mo­bi­liza­tion of the com­bined soul pow­ers to with­stand all hu­man ten­den­cies to­ward self­ish­ness, evil, and sin. He lived just such a life of prayer­ful con­se­cra­tion to the do­ing of his Fa­ther’s will and ended his life tri­umphantly with just such a prayer. The se­cret of his un­par­al­leled re­li­gious life was this con­scious­ness of the pres­ence of God; and he at­tained it by in­tel­li­gent prayer and sin­cere wor­ship—un­bro­ken com­mu­nion with God—and not by lead­ings, voices, vi­sions, or ex­traor­di­nary re­li­gious prac­tices.