One of the richest blessings of Christian Science is that it opens to us the way of release from the feelings of condemnation that are intrinsic to the mortal sense of our identity.
According to Christian Science, sinful states of thought are condemned to suffering and to their own self-destruction, because they are excluded from the reality of God's harmonious creation. But this Science makes an important distinction between the sin and the real nature of the individual. It shows that sin has no real identity, and that the individual who has accepted sin as his own is deluded—because sin and mortality are no part of his true identity as the offspring of God. When he awakes from the delusion through the influence of Christ, Truth—when he repents and reforms in both thought and action—he no longer suffers the penalty incurred by sin. When he stops sinning, the concepts of both a sin and a sinner are proved unreal and thus are destroyed; and man's true individuality is brought to light.
The resolution of the agonizing problem of sin and punishment is summarized with great precision and accuracy in the third tenet of Christian Science, written by Mary Baker Eddy: "We acknowledge God's forgiveness of sin in the destruction of sin and the spiritual understanding that casts out evil as unreal. But the belief in sin is punished so long as the belief lasts." Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 497.
