(Note: This article is the second of a four-part series. The first three parts are edited versions of a series of questions by a reader named Rami, and my answers. The original versions appear in the comments section of the recent article, “What is the Unpardonable Sin? Am I Doomed?” The fourth part will be a response to a related Spiritual Conundrum submitted earlier by Rami.)

For Part 1, click here.

In a comment following up on my response to an earlier question, which formed Part 1 of this article, a reader named Rami said:

Yes Lee, quite a bit of mind-bending material to be had, intersecting with so many different areas of Swedenborg’s theology (and I suppose it’s ultimately impossible to broach one subject without broaching all of the interconnected ones). Sorry if I hadn’t properly clarified what I was asking with the way I had worded my question, and you did (more than adequately) address many of the issues linked to that question, though I think my central one still remains: what is the role and meaning of forgiveness if God does not judge us into heaven or hell, and heaven and hell rather being something we choose ourselves (with heavenly states ultimately being the work of Divine grace)? If heaven or hell is something we naturally gravitate toward based upon the inner state we forge through our choices, what is there to necessarily forgive?

Is ‘forgiveness’ to imply that sin is an offense against God (which I equate with offenses against each other), and is as such something that drags us down to hellish states unless forgiven or pardoned? Or is forgiveness something that is maybe understood as making a conscious decision to accept the Divine grace that enables us to make an inward transformation out of hellishness and into more heavenly modes of thinking, acting, and being? If so, is the term ‘forgiveness’ ultimately symbolic of this more ineffable transformative experience?

Here is my response, originally contained in two comments. (Note: This response did not deal much with the issue of the nature of sin raised in the question. We’ll take that up more specifically in Part 4 of this series.)

Hi Rami,

Thanks for clarifying your question. I’ll take another swing at it, and we’ll see how far it flies this time.

I do think you’re moving in the right direction with the questions of your second paragraph. Forgiveness is much more than God simply saying, “I forgive you,” and making things all better. Yes, God forgiving us does have good effects in itself. But it is also inextricably connected to the inner transformation of which you speak.

To take the first one first, we humans by ourselves are never anything but evil. That’s because by ourselves means without God, and all good comes from God, and is God. So when we are separated from God, the only thing we have is the evil that we humans create by twisting the good that comes to us from God into something it was never meant to be.

Further, even when we have accepted God into our lives, and are on the path of “regeneration,” or spiritual rebirth, we are still not clean and pure.

For more on God, forgiveness, freedom, and hell, please click here to read on.