The Shepherd, September 2004
THE NATURE OF SIN, 1
By the Blessed and Ever-Memorable
METROPOLITAN PHILARET
Of New York & Eastern America
(1903 - 1985 A.D.)
ALL ORTHODOX CHRISTIANS know from the Holy Scripture and believe that God created man in His own image and likeness. Therefore, in the creation man received a sinless nature. But not even the first man, Adam, remained sinless. He lost his original purity in the first fall into sin in Paradise. The toxin of this sinfulness contaminated the entire human race, which descended from its forebears who had sinned - just as poison water flows from a poisoned spring. Acting upon the inclination to sin inherited from our ancestors, each person commits his own personal sins, as the Scriptural indictment says: “There is no one who will live for a single day and not sin” (Eccl. 7:20, 2 Chr. 6:36). Only our Lord Jesus Christ is absolutely free from sin. Even the righteous, God’s saints, bore sin within themselves, and although with God’s help they struggled with it, yet they humbly acknowledged themselves to be sinners. So without exception all people are sinners, tainted with sin.
Sin is a spiritual leprosy, an illness and an ulcer which has stricken all of mankind, both in his soul and his body. Sin has damaged all three of the basic abilities and powers of the soul: the mind, the heart and the will. Man’s mind has become darkened and inclined towards error. Thus, man constantly errs - in science, in philosophy and in his practical activity.
What is even more harmed by sin is man’s heart - the centre of his experience of good and evil, and feelings of sorrow and joy. We see that our heart has been bound in the mire of sin; it has lost the ability to be pure, spiritual and Christian, to possess truly elevated feelings. Instead of this, it has become inclined toward pleasures of sensuality and earthly attachments. It is tainted with vainglory and often startles one with a complete absence of love and of the desire to do good towards one’s neighbour.
What is harmed most of all, however, is our will as the capability for action and effecting one’s intentions. Man proves to be without strength of will particularly when it is necessary to practice true Christian good, even though he might desire this good. The holy Apostle Paul speaks of this weakness of will, when he says:“For I fail to practice the good deeds I desire to do, but the evil deeds which I do not desire to do are what I am always doing.”That is why Christ the Saviour said of man the sinner, “Whoever practises sin is a slave of sin”(John 8:34), although to the sinner, alas, serving sin often seems to be freedom, while struggling to escape its nets appears to be slavery.
How does a sin develop in one’s soul? The holy fathers, strugglers of Christian asceticism and piety, knowing the sinful soul, explain it far better than all the learned psychiatrists. They distinguish the following stages in sin:
The first moment in sin is the suggestion, when some temptation becomes identified in a person’s conscience - a sinful impression, an unclean thought or some other temptation. If, in this first moment, a person decisively and at once rejects the sin, he does not sin, but defeats sin, and his soul will experience progress rather than degeneration. It is in the suggestion stage of sin that it is easiest of all to remove it. If the suggestion is not rejected, it passes over first into an ill-defined striving and then into a clear conscious desire for sin. At this point, one already begins to be inclined to sin of a given type. Even at this point, however, without an especially difficult struggle, one can avoid giving in to sin and refrain from sinning. One will be helped by the clear voice of conscience and by God’s aid, if one only turns to it.
Beyond this point, one has fallen into sin. The reproaches of the conscience sound loudly and clearly, eliciting a revulsion to the sin. The former self-assurance disappears and the man is humbled (compare the Apostle Peter before and after his denial of Christ: Matt. 16:21-22, 26:33 with Matt. 26:69-75). But even at this point, defeat of sin is not entirely difficult. This is shown by numerous examples, as in the lives of Peter, the holy Prophet King David, and other repentant sinners.
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