T. 19. II. 1 – 3. Jesus: “It is essential that error be not confused with sin, and it is this distinction that makes your salvation possible. For error can be corrected, and the wrong made right. But sin, were it possible, would be irreversible!
Consciously or not, the belief in sin as real must necessarily be based on the firm conviction that minds, not bodies, can attack! And thus, in this belief, the mind is made guilty, and will forever so remain unless a mind ‘not part of it’ can give it absolution! ‘Sin’ calls for punishment just as error calls for correction, and the belief that ‘punishment is correction’ is clearly insane!
As conceived by the ego, sin is not just an error, easily corrected, for the concept of sin entails an arrogance which the idea of error lacks. To ‘sin’ would be to violate reality, and to succeed!
Sin is the ego’s proclamation that ‘attack is real’ and guilt is thereby justified. It assumes ‘the Son of God is guilty,’ and has thus succeeded in losing his innocence and making himself what God created not! Thus is God’s Creation seen as not eternal, and the Will of God open to opposition and defeat. Sin is the grand illusion underlying all the ego’s grandiosity. For by it God Himself is changed, and rendered incomplete.
In honesty, the Son of God can be mistaken; he can deceive himself; he can even turn the power of his mind against himself. But he cannot sin! There is nothing he can do that would really change his reality in any way, nor could it make him really guilty. That is what sin would do, for such is its purpose to the ego.
Yet for all the wild insanity inherent in the whole idea of sin, it is simply impossible. For the wages of sin is death, and how can the immortal die?”