WHEN IS AN EVIL A SIN?
A Sermon by Rev. Willard L. D. Heinrichs
"And calling the multitude, [Jesus] . . . said unto them, Hear
and understand. Not that which enters the mouth defiles the
man, but that which comes out of the mouth, this defiles the
man" (Matt. 15:10,1l).
"Behold I come quickly and My reward is with Me, to give
everyone according as his work shall be" (Rev. 12:12).
It is a common teaching of the Word for the New Church
that the Lord cannot regenerate our natural mind and so
prepare us for heaven unless we, as if of ourselves, focus our
attention on repentance and seek to remove from our lives
those evils which have become sins. It then becomes a matter
of the greatest importance to know what evils may have become
sins with us.
The Lord, by acting into our minds from within and
speaking to us from without through His Word, continually
seeks to alert us to the presence of that which might spiritu-
ally poison and destroy us. Unfortunately, at the same time it
is the constant effort of the devils and satans to frustrate
the Lord's merciful concern for our salvation. If they cannot
banish all sense of what is a sin and seduce us willingly into
an evil life, they will try to convict us of, and depress us
with, every evil thought and inclination that has ever passed
through our mind. They try to so burden us with guilt that we
will give up the struggle with evil in confusion and despair.
How, then, shall we know when an evil in our mind is
becoming or has become a sin? Probably every day, perhaps
frequently within a single day, most if not all of us have
evil thoughts. Each day provides many occasions when our
perverse natural will is aroused to activity. Our native will
so aroused affects or moves our understanding to conscious-
ness. Depending on what has stimulated our will, we perceive
what is either pleasant or unpleasant. In a moment a whole
train of thoughts and reflections may be generated. We may
suddenly find ourselves thinking vindictively and critically
of another. Thoughts that are unchaste or downright lewd may
be excited. Perhaps we think of how we might cheat in our
occupational responsibilities or other duties, or how we may
gain some unfair advantage over another person.
In so thinking, have we sinned? Not necessarily. We have
entered only the first phase of a mental process or pathway
which may lead from first arousal to a confirmed evil of sin.
While we are not to seek out occasions when evil loves will be
excited, given the character of our inborn will, neither can
we entirely avoid them. Then what of those bad thoughts that
arise from those loves. Can we avoid them? To what degree are
we accountable for perverse thinking? The teaching of the Word
is very clear on this point. Evil thoughts by themselves do
not condemn. We are told that the human understanding is so
created that it can think both what is good and what is evil.
Like the world of spirits, our natural understanding stands
between the influence of the Lord and the heavens and that of
hell. Until we are wholly regenerate, we will have evil
thoughts. We cannot prevent this.
Where, then, does the possibility of deliberate evil or
sin arise? Where does our responsibility for evil begin? In
answer the Heavenly Doctrines turn our attention to the matter
of how we react to the presence of evil thoughts in our mind
once we have been made aware of the fact that they are evil.
The Lord urges us not to let those evils pass onward down the
path from our thought to our voluntary will, becoming deliber-
ate intentions there. We can, as it were, stop evil in its
tracks in our understanding. For our understanding can also
respond to the urging of the Lord, who constantly acts into us
through all those good states of loveþthose remainsþ imprinted
in the interior organics of our mind beginning in infancy. We
do not have to consent to the presence of evil in our
thoughts. We can spurn the pleasurable speculations it
generates. We can, from principles of conscience, coolly and
deliberately drive it out of our conscious thought and let the
Lord turn our attention to what is right and good.
But what if the evil returns and, moreover, with a sense
of delight? Does that mean that it has already become a matter
of sin with us? Again, the Word teaches that this need not be
the case. We need to ask ourselves, "Did I deliberately invite
it back? And now that it has come back, what will I do with it
now?" We are instructed by the Lord that sometimes evils are
permitted to appear as if they are already of the will,
touching us with their unclean pleasures, when in fact they
are not yet confirmed evils of will. We may be experiencing
what is elsewhere called a spiritual temptation. How do we
react to this situation?
The Word says, let us think and say to ourselves that the
evil in itself is a sin, that it is contrary to the Word. Let
us burden our conscience with its removal and so shake it off.
The fact of the matter is that an evil in our thoughts
only becomes a sinþbecomes oursþwhen we freely consent to its
presence, when we invite it back on subsequent occasions, when
we take pleasure in speculating on its commission, and espe-
cially when we begin to think of how we can arrange for a
situation in which we can actually do the evil without being
caught and punished for it. Then it is that evil is becoming
of the voluntary willþis becoming a sin with us.
Still we know that due to various fears and unforeseen
circumstances, evils planned in the mind frequently do not
become evils of the body. Do they then really become sins? We
are reminded here of the words of our Lord in Matthew 5:28: "I
say unto you, everyone who looks at a woman to lust after her
has already committed adultery with her in his heart." We are
reminded also of those teachings of the Heavenly Doctrine
which speak of "internal acts" which warn us that evil freely
willed is evil done, if not in the body, still in the spirit;
and the spirit, not the body, is the real person. Moreover,
the Word and common perception testify that internal acts will
become external acts whenever opportunity arises (see Div.
Love XIX).
Does this mean that it does not matter very much whether
we merely plan in our mind to do what is wrong or we actually
do what is wrong in the body? Should we make any distinction
between cruel and uncharitable schemes and cruel and unchari-
table behavior, between an unseemly and lascivious phantasy
and an unseemly and unchaste act, a theft or lie planned and
one brought into execution? Depending on the circumstances,
the hells give one answer, the Word another. Who has not heard
the serpent whisper in his ear: "You are doing it in your mind
already. You might just as well do it in the body also. You
are needlessly frustrating yourself when you could be enjoying
something that is quite natural and pleasurable."
The Word for the New Church teaches just the opposite.
The Lord repeatedly urges us not to allow evil, serious or
light, to become actual in the life of our body. Intention
introduces evil into the will, where sin begins. The actual
doing of it in the body establishes and provides for its
continuance there. In acts of the body, the will comes into
effect. It builds a permanent foundation for itself in our
life. It provides itself with a body there through which it
can express its power and progressively strengthen itself.
In actions of the body, the will finds a home in which it
can feed and recreate itself. In actions an evil of the will
finds its enjoyments and pleasures. They may be temporary, but
they are convincing. With each occasion of delight the will of
evil grows more powerful. The influence of hell in our
understanding becomes greater, the influence of the heavens
weaker. We find that we are less and less inclined to recog-
nize or admit to the presence of evil in our thinking. As it
becomes more habitual, it seems more natural and acceptable.
With barely any effort we can find numerous excuses and
justifications for feeling, thinking and acting the way we do.
If any truth of the Word challenges our orientation, we are
moved to negative doubt, and then on to denial. "After all, we
know from experience that it is not that bad. How could God
possibly say that it is wrong? After all, it is our life to do
with what we please." Should we continue on this road to folly
into serious evils of sin, at length our will will not even
consult our understanding. What the will commands, the under-
standing as an abject slave will arrange whenever the opportu-
nity to do is there. So it is that the Lord says, "Let a
person beware of actual evils; in this way only can anyone at
last abstain from them, for actualities bring on habits and
put on a kind of nature, as happens with those who have
exercised themselves in thievery; and thus evils are increased
together with their delights, and people are carried away by
an increasing number of evil spirits, like a piece of wood in
a rapid stream" (SD 4479).
Is there any remedy for this rather frightening condi-
tion? What hope is there for those who over the years have
allowed themselves to be so swept along into the power of the
hells? The Word responds that to the end of our life in the
world there is hopeþif only we are willing to repent of our
deliberate internal and external acts of evil, our sins. True,
the more we indulge in an evil, the more trouble we will have
in searching it out, recognizing it, and shunning it as a sin.
But the Lord never gives up. We should recall that the Lord at
His advent overcame the universal hells. Surely He can
overcome the comparably few hells that bother us. All we need
to do is to be candid with ourselves when we have sinned,
tolerating no deceptions. We must exert ourselves to deter-
mined abstention from the disorderly and uncharitable acts.
Let us brush aside that subtle urging to do it just one more
time. If we will so act to stem the power of the hells in
ourselves, we are given the comforting assurance that the Lord
will secure our release from their influence, and to quote,
"always with less resistance and struggle, and therefore with
less effort, than in our first attempts" (AE 973).
Indeed, the picture is really much brighter and happier
than that. The fact is that with each sincere act of repen-
tance, what is good from the Lord enters into the interiors of
our understanding. This triggers the formation there of a new
voluntary will, one that intends naught but good. Through this
will the Lord quietly urges us, moves us to the thinking of
good thoughts and to the doing of good deeds. He then lovingly
fills these thoughts and deeds with a growing and enduring
heavenly pleasure and delight. At length what the Lord wills
we will, and our good works or deeds become a tabernacle or
little kingdom of God in which we may find, at length, the joy
of eternal life. Amen.
Lessons: Matt. 15:1,2,10-20; TCR 659; AC 6204
Preached in Bryn Athyn April 1, 1990True Christian Religion 659
No evil that a man thinks is imputed to him, because he
was so created as to be able to understand and thus think
either good or evilþgood from the Lord and evil from hellþfor
he is between these two, and from his freedom of choice in
spiritual things has the ability to choose either one or the
other. This freedom of choice has been treated of in its own
chapter. And because man has the ability to choose from
freedom, he can will or not will, and what he wills is
received by the will and appropriated, while what he does not
will is not received and thus is not appropriated. All the
evils to which man inclines by birth are inscribed upon the
will of his natural man, and so far as the man draws upon
these evils they flow into his thoughts; in like manner goods
with truths flow from above the Lord into the thoughts and
there they are balanced like weights in the scales of a
balance. If the man then adopts the evils, they are received
by the old will and added to those in it; but if he adopts
goods with truths, the Lord forms a new will and a new
understanding above the old, and there by means of truths He
gradually implants new goods, and by means of these subjugates
the evils that are below and removes them, and arranges all
things in order. From this also it is clear that thought is
the seat of purification and excretion of the evils resident
in man from his parents; consequently, if the evils that a man
thinks were to be imputed to him, reformation and regeneration
would be impossible.
Arcana Coelestia 6204
Be it known that the evil which enters into the thought
does no harm to the man, because evil is continually infused
by spirits from hell and is continually repelled by angels.
But when evil enters into the will, then it does harm, for
then it also goes forth into act whenever external bonds do
not restrain. Evil enters into the will by being kept in the
thought, by consent, especially by act and the consequent
delight.