One of the moving stories in the Bible is about a woman of ill fame who entered the house of Simon the Pharisee where Jesus was a guest at dinner. As a token of her contrition for her sins, she washed and anointed Jesus' feet. By her genuine grief and reverent love for and desire to serve the Master she showed that she was truly repentant. He said of her, "Her sins, which are many, are forgiven; for she loved much."Luke 7:47

While teaching that man, the image and likeness of God, is sinless and perfect. Christian Science does not ignore that sin claims reality and power. On the contrary, it teaches that as long as we believe in sin and practice it, we shall receive the punishment due for such indulgence. Every thought and action which is not Christlike must be forsaken and replaced by the truths of spiritual being Christ Jesus revealed. Christ, the true idea of God, admitted to consciousness, destroys the belief in sin.

To be truly humble and penitent for sin is to gain that state of mind which enables the Christ to enter and destroy sin. To adopt the position that we may claim our perfection now as the child of God without specifically uncovering and denying the false claims of sin that we have held as real is inadmissible. A lawn which is closely cut still contains the roots of weeds unless they are rooted out. A little neglect, and the weeds once more spring up. The sin that is not radically destroyed still retains, in belief, the power that we have not taken from it, and it will lie latent in our thought.

Contrition, or sorrow for sin growing out of love for God, good, is a stage in our progress in realizing man's true status as a child of God. The belief in sin cannot be merely forgotten. It must be eradicated. The Psalmist said, "The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise."Ps. 51:17  Yet true contrition does not imply continuing sorrow so much as increasing gladness to admit our error and to accept and live the Christ, Truth.

The woman who washed Jesus' feet was an example of true contrition. She expressed genuine repentance and humility and was willing to sit at the feet of Jesus. Genuine contrition means forgiveness of sins; for when sins are truly forsaken, they are deprived of attraction and power in our thought, which is the only place where our individual concept of sin can seem to have existence. "A contrite heart" gains a greater understanding of true identity as the reflection of God, Spirit.

Genuine contrition inevitably leads to reformation of character, for it gives one the strength to resist the temptation to return to old ways of thinking and acting. In "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, points out: "Sorrow for wrong-doing is but one step towards reform and the very easiest step. The next and great step required by wisdom is the test of our sincerity,—namely, reformation."Science and Health, p. 5

Contrition for sins leads us to see the falsity of their claims. It enables us to recognize and accept the Christ as the Way and to acknowledge God as All. On the basis of the allness of God and the unreality of evil, Christian Science is practiced. To practice scientifically means that we work according to definite laws, emanating from divine Principle, and one of these laws is that in order to heal ourselves and others, we must first detect, then deny, then destroy sin in ourselves.

In Science man is perfect and sinless, for he is the image of God, divine Mind, and can never be unlike the Mind that created him. Man is God's infinite expression of Himself, and he remains that expression eternally. He is the child of God, in whom sin is unknown, for God can never create anything unlike Himself, and He is the only creator. This reflection is our true identity, which we can claim now in spite of the testimony of the physical senses.

But from the human standpoint thoughts and acts that are unlike God, good, do seem to be real, and progress is not made if we ignore them. They have first to be seen for what they are—nothing claiming to be something desirable and to be part of us—and the falseness of their claims must be recognized. Then genuine contrition enables us to overcome the obduracy of mortal mind which would have us believe that sin is a necessity and is not blameworthy.

The Christ, Truth, which comes to the "contrite heart" is gentle and compassionate. It comes to heal and not to hurt, to help and not to condemn, to uplift and not to cast down. In prophesying the coming of the Christ, Isaiah said, "A bruised reed shall he not break, and the smoking flax shall he not quench: he shall bring forth judgment unto truth."Isa. 42:3  It is interesting that the Hebrew word translated "contrite" also means "bruised."

In reality sin is part of the false belief that life is material and that there is truth, substance, and intelligence in matter. It is necessary to depart from this false belief in the way that Christ, Truth, prescribes, or we shall never fully recognize its unreality. We should realize that Life is God and that man is the reflection of God; and we should claim our true being as a present spiritual fact. Mrs. Eddy writes, "Truth, in divine Science, is the stepping-stone to the understanding of God; but the broken and contrite heart soonest discerns this truth, even as the helpless sick are soonest healed by it."Unity of Good, p. 61  

The claims of the physical senses must be resisted. If we merely fix our gaze on what we believe to be real in the hope that the false beliefs of sin which we have been entertaining will sometime and somehow go away, we are not handling evil and destroying it, because we are virtually believing in two realities of being—one good and one bad. We are not really willing to overcome error until our human pride is broken down and we feel genuinely contrite. Then we are ready to deny our false beliefs and leave all for Christ.

Each one of us must, in his human progress Spiritward, experience purification and redemption. Mrs. Eddy writes: "The more I understand true humanhood, the more I see it to be sinless,—as ignorant of sin as is the perfect Maker. To me the reality and substance of being are good, and nothing else. Through the eternal reality of existence I reach, in thought, a glorified consciousness of the only living God and the genuine man."p. 49