Article May 1, 1943 Issue

Repentance, Reformation, Resurrection

LINDEN E. JONES

Repentance follows wrong-doing, either because of the suffering which disobedience to a wise law has occasioned or through the heaven-born aspiration for a higher life. Man-made decrees are variable, but spiritual law, being of God, is immutable, demanding strict obedience to divine Principle and never pardoning transgression except through reform. The word "repent," meaning to change one's mind, applies solely to human thinking, for the divine Mind, God, is changeless. As Mary Baker Eddy writes in the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 242): "Through repentance, spiritual baptism, and regeneration, mortals put off their material beliefs and false individuality. It is only a question of time when 'they shall all know Me [God], from the least of them unto the greatest."

On one occasion, in reply to questioners, Christ Jesus referred to the fall of the tower of Siloam, which had resulted in the death of eighteen persons. The great Teacher repudiated the suggestion that these victims were sinful above those who had escaped this calamity. He perhaps startled his audience by declaring, "Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish." This statement indicated Jesus' understanding of the truth, now made clear in Christian Science, that sin is the result of false material thinking, which requires, as its remedy, a complete change of thought from the belief that man is material to a realization of the fact, revealed in Christian Science, that the real man is wholly spiritual, the forever reflection of God. At the commencement of his healing ministry Jesus' rousing cry, "Repent: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand," was the clarion call announcing to mortals the coming of the Christ, Truth, which, when understood, heals humanity's ills and destroys sin, as it is now doing in Christian Science.

As a beginner in Christian Science, a student of this Science was tormented by a human weakness which he urgently desired to overcome. For many years this failing had persisted, resulting in periods of sorrow, repentance, and repetition of the error. Persevering in his application of Christian Science to this problem, this young man began to realize and hold more firmly to the truth that the human frailty was no part of the real man, his true selfhood, which this Science taught him to discern. He saw that, inasmuch as the real man is the reflection of God, good, there is in reality no mortal man to which weakness, incompleteness, or frailty can be attached. Thus he was enabled truly to repent of the error, that is, to discern its unreality, replacing mortal thoughts with spiritual ideas, and in this way the difficulty was finally overcome.

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