Forgiven Sins, Page 5

What is objective karma? When one sins, there are two kinds of con-sequences (though some sins, if not affecting others, may perhaps create only objective karma, as in the case of a lustful or covetous heart [Mt 5,29; Rom 13,9]. One is to the person who sins and to any person or creature directly affected thereby. That is subjective karma, which creates a debt upon the sinner that must be paid in this lifetime or another, whether or not Christ has forgiven the sins. The other type of consequence is to the world—a broader form of karma, which becomes a burden upon all humanity and creation. Every sin, however slight, actually generates evil spiritual beings (e.g., demons) or food for such evil beings, and generates a karmic burden upon humankind. It is beyond the capacity of the sinner to erase this burden, once launched, even when restitution has been made. Evil objective karma must be overcome by humanity as a whole by positive good—not restitutive action, but spontaneous, affirmative good. Thus we are told to “overcome evil with good” (Rom 12,21). Hence, once a person has sinned, overcoming the consequences to the world is beyond that person and rests upon a different agency, either humanity as a whole or Christ. These are the objective sins. When one’s sins are “forgiven by Christ,” it completely erases the objective sins. What one has loosed as evil, as bad karma upon humanity and the world, is canceled out. Those who truly take Christ into their being want to make (even have to want to make) full restitution to those harmed, in this life or another (as in the case when the harmed one has died or disappeared), but they receive the health-giving blessing of knowing in their inner (“super-sensible”) being that the ill of their past sins has been lifted from the shoulders of the rest of creation. This is not unrelated to Paul’s statement about the “eager longing” of the rest of creation in Rom 8,19-23.

For some it will not be easy to let go of the prevailing idea that Christ immediately frees us from all the consequences of our sin. That he frees us from all is true, but the process is immediate only as it applies to objective karma, that which lies beyond the power of restitution. (It is analogous to the dropping of charges the state has against an accused in a criminal proceeding on condition that restitution be made to the injuredparty. Note that restitution is a matter of legal right even if the accused is convicted. The state has no power to release that civil obligation.) The prevailing idea is of long standing, though it is only doctrine formed by humanity on the basis of its darkened understanding of what is expressed in the scriptures. No scripture actually says it in explicit nullification of the many scriptural contraindications cited above. The doctrine could have arisen from any number of passages, but probably from none more powerfully than Rev 1,5b, “To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood.” From the same Lazarus/John came the words, “.. . not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the expiation for our sins.”(1 Jn 4,10). Yet we find he also gave us those in Rev 2,23b; 20,12 and 22,12 quoted above.

Let us recognize that this doctrine rises and falls with the belief that we each live only once. They are corollaries of each other. But we shall see in the immediately following essays how and why it was that Christ himself instructed that reincarnation was not to be taught in exoteric Christendom for two thousand years, that is until commencement of the “Second Coming” in the twentieth century, during the 2,160 year Cultural Era of the Consciousness Soul which began with the rebirth, the Renaissance, of humanity in the 15th century (see I-19, I-24 and I-25). We have already seen how the acceptance of Christ frees us from the “objective” karma of sin. In “Lord of Karma” we shall also see how through the administration of karmic justice Christ also frees us from its “subjective” aspect. See the discussion early in that essay that starts, “How is it that Christ is Lord of Karma?”

The concept of subjective and objective sin, when fully comprehended, can be seen to fit perfectly every instance of forgiveness of sin spoken of in the Bible; to give meaning to otherwise seemingly countervailing passages such as Mt 5,23-26, Gal 6,7, and Deut 32,35; and to eliminate the immorality inherent in the concept of divine forgiveness as heretofore generally perceived. Nothing in the nature of the subjective/objective sin distinction does any violence to the concept of grace, for indeed the highest view of grace is the opportunity given to the human being under the karmic law to make good, for the sacrifice of Christ which made salvation, i.e., “perfection,” ultimately possible for all of creation that wills it. Humanity can hardly come to a more effective agency for curing its evils than a full recognition of the nature and consequences of the subjective/objective sin distinction. But a fuller appreciation of such distinction must yet await an understanding of Christ as the “Lord of Karma.”