Mid-century illustration of an oil lamp and an open scroll on a table, disciples talking by the sea of Galilee

John 16:9 · World English Bible

John 16:9 Meaning About Sin

about sin, because they don’t believe in me;

What does John 16:9 mean?

The single error underneath every other is the refusal to trust that love is what the mind truly is. What is named sin is not a catalogue of deeds but this one mistaken belief, that the mind is separate from love and therefore guilty, cut off from the innocence it fears it has thrown away.

From the Christian Psychology reading below.

John 16:9 through 2 lenses

The same verse, read by 2 traditions.

CHRISTIAN PSYCHOLOGY

Christian Psychology

The single error underneath every other is the refusal to trust that love is what the mind truly is. What is named sin is not a catalogue of deeds but this one mistaken belief, that the mind is separate from love and therefore guilty, cut off from the innocence it fears it has thrown away.

The correction is not punishment for unbelief but the quiet undoing of it. When the mind consents to trust love again, the whole idea of sin loses its ground, for it was never a real stain but only the conviction that separation had happened. Believing in love is simply remembering that the separation never occurred.

Comforter: the loving Voice within the mind that reveals sin to be a mistaken belief in separation, not a real stain to be paid for

Christian Psychology lensGo deeper in the app

EGO & BEING

Ego v. Being

The error is unconsciousness itself.

Sin is the state of missing the mark, of living entirely in thought. Unbelief is the refusal to recognize Being at all.

Ego v. Being lensGo deeper in the app

Christian Psychology lens

Live John 16:9 today

  1. When the familiar "something is wrong with me" feeling shows up, ask what the specific crime is supposed to be. Often there isn't one, just the old habit of assuming it.
  2. Tell someone close to you one small thing you've been quietly carrying as proof you are bad. Say it out loud and see how ordinary it sounds in air.
  3. After a mistake at work, write the correcting email and send it, then stop. The fixing is done. The extra hour of self punishment is adding nothing to anyone.

What verdict about yourself have you been treating as a fact rather than a thought?

The same truth in other traditions

Advaita Vedanta

The rope was never a snake. The fear you felt was real to you, but the thing you feared had no existence apart from the misreading.

Zen

You are already what you are looking for. Practice is not earning the thing, it is the slow end of believing you lost it.

Sufism · Rumi

You are not a drop in the ocean, you are the ocean in a drop. The separation you grieve was an idea, never a fact.

Mid-century illustration of Jesus teaching the crowd on a hillside above the sea

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