Christ and the Human Soul III

What does it signify for the human soul when one, who may so speak, says in the Name of Christ: ‘Thy sins are forgiven thee’ It means that he is able to assert: ‘Thou hast indeed to await thy karmic settlement; but Christ has transformed thy guilt and sin so that later thou mayest not have the terrible pain of looking back upon thy guilt in such a way as to see that thou hast in it destroyed a part of the earth's existence.’ Christ blots it out. But a certain consciousness is necessary, one that is demanded, one that those who would forgive sins have the right to demand—consciousness of the guilt, and consciousness that Christ has the power to take it upon Himself. For the saying: ‘Thy sins are forgiven thee’ denotes a cosmic fact, and not a karmic fact.