What a joy it is to find in Christian Science that, contrary to common belief, man is not cursed or condemned, but is eternally blessed and loved by the Father and is ever at one with Him. This revolutionary fact was of primary importance to Mary Baker Eddy. In her work "The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany" she writes (p. 113): "St. Paul was a follower but not an immediate disciple of our Lord, and Paul declares the truth of the complete system of Christian Science in these brief sentences: 'There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death.'"
Those first two verses from the eighth chapter of Paul's letter to the Romans are understandably precious to the student of Christian Science. This Science has come to mankind to destroy sin and thus to annul the so-called curse or condemnation placed on Adam and his offspring. It reveals that in Christ, in an understanding of God's infinite goodness and allness and of man's eternal oneness, or unity, with the Father, is found freedom from the false claims of material sense.
Religious belief generally has accepted as true the record of creation beginning in the second chapter of Genesis, recounting the allegory of Adam and Eve. Assuming that man was created of the dust of the ground, that he sinned and was condemned by God, this teaching places the individual under the burden of a sense of separation from God and under the belief that he must suffer his way back, if indeed he can get back at all. This theory contradicts the record in the first chapter of Genesis, in which man is created not of dust, but in the image and likeness of God, Spirit. It may be asked how God, good, could create sin or the capacity to sin. Discussing this point, Mrs. Eddy writes in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 357): "In common justice, we must admit that God will not punish man for doing what He created man capable of doing, and knew from the outset that man would do. God is 'of purer eyes than to behold evil.' "
