leastone
Well-Known Member
What seems to be missing here is the command: "Go and sin no more."
These well-known words of Christ followed a "forgiveness," an act of compassion, expressed as, "...neither do I condemn you."
One has an obligation to turn from sin. As one turns and shuns sin because it is sin against God, it is removed, and God's holiness fills the central place that sin once occupied.
Once I have learned to ride a bicycle, and spend years practising riding various bikes, I have made it part of my life. I confirm that I am a biker everytime I exercise my love for riding a bicycle. It makes a central part of my life and I build my life around it. My thoughts and actions, and the intentions of my heart all work together to have me in the saddle. Then I take a fall and sustain injuries. The doctor that helps me regain my health warns me, "Now, don't do that again!"
I vow for the sake of my life that I won't touch a bicycle again. But it is hard; temptations abound. It's all I want to do, because it is part of me. It will remain part of me forever, for I have confirmed it in myself, loved it, and thus lived it. It can never be "taken away."
But it can be removed: taken from the center of my life and moved to the extremities of my being. Gradually I begin to think less and less of getting on a bicycle. It moves from ruling my life to something I once did. I replace the habit with something more worthwhile, such as forum reading and writing. I get to love it instead, and soon my mind is filled with the things of God and the search for Wisdom. My love for it grows and soon Love and Truth rules my heart and mind, and I never think of bicycle riding. Because it never gets any attention anymore, it withers and dies in the darkness of the outer extremities of my being. I fell free, cleansed.
In the afterlife my ruling loves determine where I fit in, where I feel ''at home," because I will be judged according to my loves, (expressed in what I did while in the body). If I loved God with all my heart and mind and strength, and my fellows as one like myself, I should not be too uncomfortable among the "spirits of just men" and angels. If, however I loved self and the world completely and gave my life and all my devotion to my idol, my bicycle, I will only feel at home with others of my kind, my "kindred spirits" whose lives were dominated by the same loves.
In the same way those who loved to lie and steal, and confirmed themselves as liars and thieves, loving nothing better, will be at home with one another, and since they love to lie and steal, heaven's mercy grants them their loves, for love rules the spirit world, and they may cheat and defraud one another for ever, consuming themselves and one another in the fire and heat of their passions. So also for fornicators, adulterers, and others given over to shameful passions and perversions.
The fact that, as we all know, once able to ride a bicycle, you are always able to do so, explains why, contrary to what Christians believe --- that their sins are "washed away" --- any old sin that they had made part of themselves and was now supposedly gone, can be recalled in an instant, and be given life by acting on it, causing them to "fall" once more.
Respectfully,
Learner
"It is an error of the age to believe that evils are separated and in fact cast out when they are remitted.
It has been granted me to learn from heaven that no evil into which man is born and which he has
made actual in him is separated from him, but is removed so as not to appear.
Earlier I shared the belief of most persons in the world that when evils are remitted they are cast out and are washed and wiped away as dirt is from the face by water.
It is not like this with evils or sins. They all remain.
When they are remitted on repentance, they are thrust from the center to the sides.
What is in the center, being directly under view, appears as in the light of day, and what is to one
side is in shadow and at times in the darkness of night.
Inasmuch as evils are not separated but only removed, that is, thrust to one side, and as man can go from the center to the periphery, he can return, as it may happen, to his evils, which he supposed had been cast out.
For the human being is such that he can go from one affection to another and sometimes to the opposite, and thus from one center into another; the affection in which he is at the time makes the center, for he is then in the enjoyment and light of it."
Divine Providence, Emanuel Swedenborg
These well-known words of Christ followed a "forgiveness," an act of compassion, expressed as, "...neither do I condemn you."
One has an obligation to turn from sin. As one turns and shuns sin because it is sin against God, it is removed, and God's holiness fills the central place that sin once occupied.
Once I have learned to ride a bicycle, and spend years practising riding various bikes, I have made it part of my life. I confirm that I am a biker everytime I exercise my love for riding a bicycle. It makes a central part of my life and I build my life around it. My thoughts and actions, and the intentions of my heart all work together to have me in the saddle. Then I take a fall and sustain injuries. The doctor that helps me regain my health warns me, "Now, don't do that again!"
I vow for the sake of my life that I won't touch a bicycle again. But it is hard; temptations abound. It's all I want to do, because it is part of me. It will remain part of me forever, for I have confirmed it in myself, loved it, and thus lived it. It can never be "taken away."
But it can be removed: taken from the center of my life and moved to the extremities of my being. Gradually I begin to think less and less of getting on a bicycle. It moves from ruling my life to something I once did. I replace the habit with something more worthwhile, such as forum reading and writing. I get to love it instead, and soon my mind is filled with the things of God and the search for Wisdom. My love for it grows and soon Love and Truth rules my heart and mind, and I never think of bicycle riding. Because it never gets any attention anymore, it withers and dies in the darkness of the outer extremities of my being. I fell free, cleansed.
In the afterlife my ruling loves determine where I fit in, where I feel ''at home," because I will be judged according to my loves, (expressed in what I did while in the body). If I loved God with all my heart and mind and strength, and my fellows as one like myself, I should not be too uncomfortable among the "spirits of just men" and angels. If, however I loved self and the world completely and gave my life and all my devotion to my idol, my bicycle, I will only feel at home with others of my kind, my "kindred spirits" whose lives were dominated by the same loves.
In the same way those who loved to lie and steal, and confirmed themselves as liars and thieves, loving nothing better, will be at home with one another, and since they love to lie and steal, heaven's mercy grants them their loves, for love rules the spirit world, and they may cheat and defraud one another for ever, consuming themselves and one another in the fire and heat of their passions. So also for fornicators, adulterers, and others given over to shameful passions and perversions.
The fact that, as we all know, once able to ride a bicycle, you are always able to do so, explains why, contrary to what Christians believe --- that their sins are "washed away" --- any old sin that they had made part of themselves and was now supposedly gone, can be recalled in an instant, and be given life by acting on it, causing them to "fall" once more.
Respectfully,
Learner
"It is an error of the age to believe that evils are separated and in fact cast out when they are remitted.
It has been granted me to learn from heaven that no evil into which man is born and which he has
made actual in him is separated from him, but is removed so as not to appear.
Earlier I shared the belief of most persons in the world that when evils are remitted they are cast out and are washed and wiped away as dirt is from the face by water.
It is not like this with evils or sins. They all remain.
When they are remitted on repentance, they are thrust from the center to the sides.
What is in the center, being directly under view, appears as in the light of day, and what is to one
side is in shadow and at times in the darkness of night.
Inasmuch as evils are not separated but only removed, that is, thrust to one side, and as man can go from the center to the periphery, he can return, as it may happen, to his evils, which he supposed had been cast out.
For the human being is such that he can go from one affection to another and sometimes to the opposite, and thus from one center into another; the affection in which he is at the time makes the center, for he is then in the enjoyment and light of it."
Divine Providence, Emanuel Swedenborg
