About sin

In his short essay “On Sin,” St. Tikhon Zadonsky discusses the essence of sin, which is defined as apostasy from God, betrayal of Him and mental leprosy. Sin appears as vile slavery, bringing shame to the soul, pangs of conscience, misfortune and, ultimately, eternal death. This article is an excerpt from lessons read by Saint Tikhon, when he was still the rector and teacher of theology at the Tver Seminary, to the students of the seminary (1759–1761). These lessons were later, already in Zadonsk, supplemented and in this form included in the extensive work “On True Christianity.” Seminar lessons of St. Tikhon is thus presented with the interest of the first writing experience of the later famous church teacher, and, at the same time, is introduced to a brief edition of his so famous work “On True Christianity”. Reasoning about sin can, with God's help, lead away from sin. 1. The beginning of sin. The leader and inventor of sin is the devil, the first, with his evil angels, an apostate from God and his Creator. This rebel and adversary of God is followed by people who were created in the image of God and so in great honor - in the image, I say, of God - venerable by God, who retreat from God and their Creator, Father and Provider, who sin according to their own will, and so from God's children they become sons of the devil, and instead of God's image, they are marked in the soul with a devilish image, like some kind of terrible monster. From this devilish evil seed, godless fruits are born and appear. For just as true Christians, who bear the image of God to God their Father, from whom they were born by water and the Spirit (see John 3:5), are conformed by love, patience, mercy, truth and other virtues, so those who have the image of Satan in themselves are likened to Satan by evil deeds: hatred, malice, envy, wickedness and others. The leader and leader of sin is vile before God, and his followers, poor and accursed people, are vile. Listen and reason, beloved Christian, that there is a sin that seems sweet to man, God’s rational creation. This is a departure from the Living and Life-Giving God. This is treason by which we violate the oath given to God at Baptism. This is the destruction of God's holy, righteous and eternal law. This is resistance to the holy and good will of the Good God. This is a grief of God's eternal and infinite truth. This is an insult to the great, infinite, indescribable, terrible, holy, good and eternal God, the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, before whom the blessed spirits and holy angels are in great reverence. This is mental leprosy, which emits its stench and infects others, and cannot be cleansed by anyone except Jesus Christ, the Physician of souls and bodies. Sin is “more evil than the demon itself,” according to St. John Chrysostom (Discourse 41 on the Acts of the Apostles), because sin made a demon even the demon who was created by the Creator as his good Angel. Oh, if you, sin-loving sinner, could see the sin that you commit with sweetness, you would see a terrible monster, which is even more vile than the demon himself, and you would certainly want to run away from yourself and hide, since you carry such abomination inside yourself! His abomination is not visible to you now, since it is inside you, hidden in your heart, but it will be revealed to you when, to the shame of the world, it appears, and what was now hidden in the heart will then appear outwardly. When you appear body and soul, like a terrible Ethiopian, before the inexorable Court of God, and you want to hide and turn into nothing, but you cannot, since this abomination will always be with you and your conscience, like a worm, will endlessly bite. Imagine now this abomination and beware of sin, and if you are captivated by any sin, try to get rid of it by the power of the suffering Christ before time runs out. 3. Vile slavery to sin. Do you see, beloved Christian, the abomination of sin? But the poor sinner clings to this abomination with his heart, loves it and serves it when he commits a sin, for “everyone who commits sin is a slave of sin,” according to the true testimony of the Son of God (John 8:34). Saint John Chrysostom, depicting the vileness of sin and the vile slavery to it, likens it to a bestial, barbaric, fire-breathing, ugly, black woman (Discourse 9 on the First Epistle to the Corinthians). To this vile monster, God’s intelligent creation “and venerable in His Divine image,” man, subserviently, obeys, serves, worships and cleaves, and acts like one who, being the son of a king and dressed in royal purple, despised the high royal honor, dignity and title, and threw off his multi-colored robe, and clothed himself in vile rags, and left the beautiful woman dressed in valuable jewelry. his wife, cleaves to the vile and bestial harlot, loves her and pleases her. This is what a sinner does senselessly, who in holy Baptism by grace was created the son of the Heavenly King and dressed in the purest purple of the truth of Christ, but, not judging this high honor and throwing off this beautiful purple, puts on the stinking sinful rags, and leaving virtue, like a beautiful maiden, cleaves to sinful lust, as vile and all sorts of things. a woman soiled with vices, or more - leaving Christ, the Son of God, “more beautiful in beauty than the sons of men” (Ps. 44:3), to whom he was betrothed by faith, he is given into grievous and vile slavery to the devil, and from the son of God he becomes the son of Belial. A deplorable disgrace and terrible blindness! Man, placed in such a high dignity, created by the Great and Infinite God according to the most special Council, venerable in His image, at the price of the priceless Blood of Christ, having been fallen, redeemed, called to such great bliss, such a noble creature - a man for whose sake this whole beautiful world was created, a fellow citizen of the Angels, a son of God, an heir to future glory, a member of Christ, the dwelling place of the Holy Spirit - into such baseness without permission. descends into becoming a slave of sin and the vile tormentor - the devil - and destroys all his bliss!? People would have marveled at the madness and fury of the king's son if they had seen him voluntarily descend into the above-mentioned vileness and fury. The holy Angels and the councils of saints are amazed, seeing a man, a Christian, spontaneously descending from such a height into such lowness, and from the dear freedom that Christ bought so dearly, into such a heavy and vile slavery, from which He redeemed him with His Blood! Oh, if the poor sinner’s eyes were opened and he saw his captivity, in which he is, and his heavy and vile slavery, which is not to man, the creation of God, but to sin - evil, the culprit of all evils - and through sin - he furiously serves the devil, then he would consider himself more blessed than those who are chained in captivity and in dungeons and are in captivity, ridicule and embitterment barbarians! For this is slavery and captivity - physical and temporary. The same is spiritual and eternal, unless one gets rid of it by the grace of the Redeemer of the world, Christ. For mental and eternal disaster is incomparably greater than physical and temporary, since the temporary has an end - death - but the eternal does not end with death, but only begins and does not end forever. Believe me, beloved Christian, that a sinner, having learned about the misery of this slavery, would constantly sigh and cry, and would try in every way to free himself from it, and would rather be in any physical distress than to endure mental distress. Then he would truly know what sin is and its vile slavery. We are delivered from this slavery by nothing other than true repentance and faith in Christ Jesus, according to His true testimony: “If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed” (John 8:36). Sigh to this Savior, sinner, while “the time is favorable and the day of salvation” (2 Cor. 6:2), so as not to groan forever without benefit. 4. Sin torments the conscience. For sin, conscience, like a worm, constantly torments the soul of a sinner until he is cleansed by true repentance. (See above). 5. Sin creates shame and disgrace before people. Sin creates shame and disgrace before people. Therefore, fornicators seek hidden places to commit wicked deeds; thieves and robbers carry out their lawless deeds secretly and at night; drunkards get drunk at night and secretly, and those who clearly do this have already lost their human shame. Money lovers, evil people, crafty people and cunning people try in every possible way to hide their passions, and other sinners do the same. Nobody obviously wants to sin, only the shameless. Therefore Christ says: “Everyone who does evil hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds be exposed, because they are evil” (John 3:20). This is the reason why everyone abhors an obvious sinner. 6. Sin brings all sorts of troubles. Sin causes all sorts of troubles in the world. If there were no sin, there would be no troubles. (See above). 7. Sin gives birth to death. Sin brought about temporary and eternal death, “for the wages of sin is death,” according to the testimony of the apostle (Rom. 6:23). How great is its (sin’s) sorrow, the dying know when they are faced with a feat against despair and the fear of God’s judgment, when they are sick, sad and tormented, consumed by their conscience, and especially those dying an eternal death, where all hope of deliverance from this disaster is cut off. Nowadays people are running away from death, but then they would like to die, but they cannot. And this is eternal death: sinners will wish to die or turn into nothing from the unbearable torment of Gehenna, but they will not be able to. 8. Sin multiplies the penalty. The more a person sins, the more he accumulates the wrath of God, as the apostle says: “Because of your cruelty and unrepentant heart, you store up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God” (Rom. 2:5). (See the chapter on sin and the chapter on passion and blindness in the first book).