In the Word three terms are used to refer to bad actions: transgression, iniquity, and sin. Transgression is the least bad. It means a violation of what is true in an external context, a violation of what is right and orderly. Iniquity is next and denotes acts that violate more interior truths. Sin is the worst. It is a violation of what is holy and righteous, a violation against the Lord. Sin is the deepest kind of evil. Regarding iniquity -- to be in charity, or live a life of charity is to live a life where the acts and thoughts that have top priority are those that have within them a love for the neighbor. Sometimes our love of self, our inborn desire to put ourselves first, is stronger than our charity and we do something for ourselves at the expense of our neighbor, or even do harm to our neighbor. Such an act, if our motive is selfish, is an iniquity.

(Verweise: Arcana Coelestia 9156, 9965 [2-3])

247. The ancient churches. The first and earliest church on this planet was the one described in the first chapters of Genesis; it was a heavenly church, the finest of them all: 607, 895, 920, 1121, 1122, 1123, 1124, 2896, 4493, 8891, 9942, 10545. What the people of the earliest church are like in heaven: 1114-1125. They live in the best light: 1116, 1117. There were several churches after the Flood, which are collectively referred to as "the ancient church": 1126, 1127, 1128, 1327, 10355 (which contain further discussion of these churches). The ancient church was spread across all the countries of the Middle East: 1238, 2385. What the people of the ancient church were like: 609, 895. The ancient church was a representative church; ¹ the symbols it used had been gathered together by certain people of the earliest church: 519, 521, 2896. There was a Word in the ancient church, but it has been lost: 2897. What the ancient church was like when it began to go into decline: 1128. The difference between the earliest church and the ancient church: 597, 607, 640, 641, 765, 784, 895, 4493. The earliest and ancient churches were present in the land of Canaan, and this is the source of the symbolism of its particular places: 3686, 4447, 4454. On the church that began with Eber and was called "the Hebrew church": 1238, 1241, 1343, 4516, 4517. The difference between the ancient church and the Hebrew church: 1343, 4874. The Hebrew nation began the practice of ritual sacrifices, a practice utterly unknown to the ancient churches: 1343. The inward aspects of the ancient churches agree with those of the Christian church, but the outward aspects do not: 3478, 4489, 4772, 4904, 10149. In the earliest church, revelation was direct; in the ancient church it came through correspondences; in the Jewish church it came by audible speech; and in the Christian church it came through the Word: 10355. The Lord was the God of the earliest church and was known as Jehovah: 1343, 6846. The Lord is heaven, and the Lord is the church: 4766, 10125, 10151, 10157. On the fact that the Lord's divine nature makes heaven, see Heaven and Hell 7-12, 78-86; so it also makes the church, since what makes heaven for us also makes the church, as stated earlier in these teachings [§§60, 241].

Fußnoten: