His Holiness Pope Shenouda III explains the concept of sin in a deep spiritual way, showing that sin is not a word said easily, but a dangerous reality that carries separation from God, rebellion against His commandments, the loss of the soul, and the corruption of human nature.

Sin in your relationship with God

• Sin is a transgression of God’s commandments and represents rebellion and challenge against the Creator.

• Through sin, a person enters a state of hostility with God, loses spiritual fellowship with Him, grieves the Holy Spirit, and quenches His work inside him.

• Sin reveals a lack of love for God because it chooses the world and the self instead of loving God.

• Whoever lives in sin is like a branch separated from the vine, drying up and deprived of life and grace.

• Sin may reach the point of insulting one’s sonship to God, as the person abandons the image of God within him and loses the divine likeness.

Sin in your relationship with yourself

• Sin corrupts human nature, distorting thoughts, feelings, and looks, and introduces desire, weakness, and inner disorder.

• It is a fall from the spiritual height to the dust, transforming holiness into defeat and brokenness.

• The sinner lives in ignorance of his way, thinking pleasure is good while it leads him to death and separation from God.

• Sin robs the person of dignity, simplicity, and purity, and brings fear, anxiety, and inner exhaustion.

Sin toward others

• Sin makes a person lose love, making him unable to love his neighbor, thus departing from God’s commandment toward others.

The result of sin

• Sin is eternal destruction if a person does not repent and return, and it is separation from the light into the outer darkness.

• The sacrifices in the Old Testament were a declaration of the seriousness of sin, the need for divine justice, and the offering of atonement.

• Christ came to offer Himself as a pleasing sacrifice to God, fulfilling divine justice and saving the perishing human being.

Spiritual conclusion

Sin is not a simple mistake but separation, rebellion, loss, and corruption. Therefore His Holiness urges deep awareness of the danger of sin and a life of repentance, so that we may live in the light of Christ, abiding in Him as true children of God.

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