We must distinguish three types of sin: personal, ancestral, and original. Personal sin is that which every person commits, violating the voice of conscience, the voice of reason, the voice of God’s Law.
The concept of ancestral sin is of great significance for understanding the question of salvation and for evaluating our life in general.
Ancestral sin is not the sin for which we are responsible, not the sin in which a person is personally guilty. No, it is the disease of the moral order, the disease with which a person is born, but the source of which is not the person themselves but their parents, their ancestors. What specifically is the source of this disease? As a rule, and perhaps this is just so, – some serious moral crimes.
It turns out that severe sins, or those called mortal sins, have a powerful effect on the soul and body of a person.
We must remember that a person is one being in their unity, although we divide them into soul and body. In reality, a person is a single being (body and soul in wholeness, not separately soul or body). And thus, a mortal sin, strongly affecting a person’s conscience, the soul, leaves an imprint on the whole being of a person, including their heredity. Thus, in this way, we receive a terrible consequence.
The crime of a progenitor inflicts such a wound, which is transmitted during the existence of several generations. When the Bible speaks of the sin of the father affecting the third and fourth generation, it can be assumed that the particularly strong effect of this wound, which a person inflicts with their crime and which is transmitted from generation to generation, affects subsequent generations, and is especially palpable in these first three or four generations. Sometimes a wound (soul-body) does not heal in us for some time, and so this wound (sin) is particularly effective (“does not heal,” “hurts”) for a certain period of time. Such sin we call ancestral. That this is not a theological abstraction but a reality of our life, everyone can be convinced of.
In many children, we notice vividly expressed passions, diseases. The child does not understand anything yet, but these passions, that is, symptoms of the disease, manifest themselves fully. The child is not responsible for this. Thus, ancestral sin (although we call it sin, in reality, it is a disease) is not a personal act of a person, but a disease inherited by them. (However, this disease is not eternal, that is, it especially affects three or four generations and can be cured by the proper spiritual life. If during the life of these generations there are people who resist the disease, overcome it in themselves, and ultimately defeat it, then ancestral sin ceases to act. From this follows a very important spiritual law, which everyone should not only know but literally preach: parents, fear sin if you truly love your children! Do not think that your life has no meaning for your children! Do not think about this, and do not dream! All our crimes and sins are reflected in our children. Thus, when today people often ask, “What should we do with our children?” The answer must always be unambiguous:
“First, let’s think about what to do with the parents and mothers, that is, with ourselves, then we will know what to do with the children.”
In some families and even tribes, certain passions manifest with particular force, thus in history the line of Cainites, bandit families, thief dynasties, and others remained. There, a particularly strong moral disease acts. Therefore, these people need compassion, because we usually condemn them, speaking of them:
“Scoundrels, criminals…” Do not rush to judge them. First think about where they come from, in what environment they were raised. Sick people should be pitied, not judged, and helped if possible.
And the third category – the so-called original sin. This issue is of particular importance to us, as it is directly related to understanding what Christ did for humanity. Regarding this, there are various opinions, and they are of great significance to us, because an incorrect understanding of the issue will lead us to an incorrect understanding of the essence of Christ’s feat. What is original sin? Two concepts are distinguished: there is the sin of the forefathers, that is, sin as an action contrary to the will of God, the personal sin committed by the progenitors of humanity, – their personal sin, for which they are responsible. Original sin, however, is the consequences that arose as a result of personal sin.
This is damage to our human nature, distortion of properties. Our properties, good by nature, turned out to be deeply distorted, anger at evil turned into anger at a person. Envy, that is, the desire for holiness, envy as a good feeling of striving for the ideal, turned into a bad feeling regarding the one who has something better than me. This is the distortion of our good properties, and then the “split” of the single human being into opposing each other mind, heart, as an organ of sensation, and body. This led humanity and humanity to a state in which we all sigh and complain, as if we could arrange life a little better for humanity. And we all look at each other, forgetting to look at ourselves. The history of humanity and the personal life of each person testify to the fact that indeed we constantly err against our reason, our rationality (“wisdom-stupidity”), and against our whole life. History leads us into some terrible unknown, and the longer we live, the worse it becomes.
Therefore, original sin (damage) is not the sin for which every person is guilty – no one is guilty in it, except Adam and Eve, of course, but this is not very consoling. From the fact that a person, say, was born hunchbacked or blind (and innocent in this!), this does not particularly comfort them, they would still prefer to be healthy and seeing. So too, the fact that we are in such a state, where the mind says, “you need to act like this,” and the heart is attracted to the absolute opposite, and the body does not want to heed either the mind or the heart, does not bring any joy, and from this, the person is all fragmented. And from this begins the chaos of all her life – both personal, and family, and social, and state, etc. This is what original sin is – damage to nature, which a person cannot heal by their own efforts.
Sin is always a falling out of the Divine flow of life into the realm of death. Sin becomes for a person a blurred sea of debauchery, blindness, irresponsibility, insincerity, incoherence. The essence of sin lies in the fact that a person, who is given the opportunity to “walk in the light” and reside in the fire (cf. Lk.12:49), does not walk in the light, but plunges into darkness and the shadow of death.