A Course
In Miracles

Authorized Online Edition
Workbook For Students

 
 

4.

What Is Sin?

1. 1Sin is insanity. 2It is the means by which the mind is driven mad, and seeks to let illusions take the place of truth. 3And being mad, it sees illusions where the truth should be, and where it really is. 4Sin gave the body eyes, for what is there the sinless would behold? 5What need have they of sights or sounds or touch? 6What would they hear or reach to grasp? 7What would they sense at all? 8To sense is not to know. 9And truth can be but filled with knowledge, and with nothing else.

2. 1The body is the instrument the mind made in its efforts to deceive itself. 2Its purpose is to strive. 3Yet can the goal of striving change. 4And now the body serves a different aim for striving. 5What it seeks for now is chosen by the aim the mind has taken as replacement for the goal of self-deception. 6Truth can be its aim as well as lies. 7The senses then will seek instead for witnesses to what is true.

3. 1Sin is the home of all illusions, which but stand for things imagined, issuing from thoughts that are untrue. 2They are the “proof” that what has no reality is real. 3Sin “proves” God’s Son is evil; timelessness must have an end; eternal life must die. 4And God Himself has lost the Son He loves, with but corruption to complete Himself, His Will forever overcome by death, love slain by hate, and peace to be no more.

4. 1A madman’s dreams are frightening, and sin appears indeed to terrify. 2And yet what sin perceives is but a childish game. 3The Son of God may play he has become a body, prey to evil and to guilt, with but a little life that ends in death. 4But all the while his Father shines on him, and loves him with an everlasting Love which his pretenses cannot change at all.

5. 1How long, O Son of God, will you maintain the game of sin? 2Shall we not put away these sharp-edged children’s toys? 3How soon will you be ready to come home? 4Perhaps today? 5There is no sin. 6Creation is unchanged. 7Would you still hold return to Heaven back? 8How long, O holy Son of God, how long?