Hereafter we all have to be redeemed. The world is pulling with a thousand strings. We sin because of indifference and negligence and heap new guilt on the old original one. Our life is a
chain of sin and expiation controlled by a destiny that can not be understood.
Every person in the world is by nature a slave to sin. The world, by nature, is held in sin's grip. What a shock to our complacency- that everything of us by nature belongs to sin. Our silences belong to sin, our omissions belong to sin, our talents belong to sin, our actions belong to sin. Every facet of our personalities belong to sin; it own us and dominates us. We are its servants.
Every one of our sinful actions has a suicidal power on the faculties that put that action forth. When you sin with the mind, that sin shrivels the rationality. When you sin with the heart or the emotions, that sin shrivels the emotions. When you sin with the will, that sin destroys and dissolves your willpower and your self-control. Sin is the suicidal action of the self against itself. Sin destroys freedom because sin is an enslaving power.
Only the old are innocent. That is what the Victorians understood, and the Christians. Original sin is a property of the young. The old grow beyond corruption very quickly.
In the past we believed both sexes were born with original sin. Today, we have come to unconsciously believe in the original sin of boys, but the original innocence of girls.
The church latched on to that old doctrine of original sin like a dog to a stick, and before you knew it, the whole gospel got twisted around it. Instead of being God’s big message of saving love for the whole world, the gospel became a little bit of secret information on how to solve the pesky legal problem of original sin.
Besides the guilt of sin and the power of sin, there is the stain of sin.
God never excuses sin. And He is always consistent with that ethic. Whenever we start to question whether God really hates sin, we have only to think of the cross, where His Son was tortured, mocked, and beaten because of sin. Our sin
Nothing cuts the nerve of the desire to pursue holiness as much as a sense of guilt. On the contrary, nothing so motivates us to deal with sin in our lives as does the understanding and application of the two truth that our sins are forgiven and the dominion of sin is broken because of our union with Christ.
Blood sin and desecration of the race are the original sin in this world and the end of a humanity which surrenders to it.
Lukewarm people don't really want to be saved from their sin; they want only to be saved from the penalty of their sin. They don't genuinely hate sin and aren't truly sorry for it; they're merely sorry because God is going to punish them. Lukewarm people don't really believe that this new life Jesus offers is better than the old sinful one.
Christianity is, I believe, about expanded life, heightened consciousness and achieving a new humanity. It is not about closed minds, supernatural interventions, a fallen creation, guilt, original sin or divine rescue.
When my children were born, I didn't have them baptized because I felt baptism was about erasing Original Sin - something the Church said children got from their mother - and I absolutely refused to believe women carry Original Sin.
Original sin, the true original sin, is the blind destruction for the sake of greed of this natural paradise which lies all around us-if only we were worthy of it.
Our first problem is that our attitude towards sin is more self-centred than God-centred. We are more concerned about our own "Victory" over sin than we are about the fact that our sin grieve the heart of God. We cannot tolerate failure in our struggle with sin chiefly because we are success oriented, not because we know it is offensive to God.
If you're a reporter, the easiest thing in the world is to get a story. The hardest thing is to verify. The old sins were about getting something wrong, that was a cardinal sin. The new sin is to be boring.
I never get to the end of mortifying sin because sin in my heart, where it's still marauding even though it's no longer dominant, sin in my heart is constantly expressing itself in new disorderly desires.