Prayer and Sin
A mere confession of sins and shortcomings in prayer does not avail anything. If we think that by mere confession our sins can be washed off and we can once again indulge in them freely we are wrong. Such an attitude, far from being a saving force, keeps us perpetually down in sins. Redemption is the gift that comes either from God or the Godman who specifically comes for the benefit of sinners. Our job is just to understand his commandments and to keep them scrupulously, leaving the rest to him.
How may one know the Truth and break through the cloud of falsehood?
There is a Way, 0 Nanak: To make His Will our own,
His Will which is already wrought in our existence. 54
GURU NANAK
Every action has a reaction. Every act of omission
or commission has an appropriate penalty. We cannot escape from sin as
long as we consider ourselves as born of the flesh, for flesh is the root
cause of all evils in the world. Until a spirit learns to leave the sensual
plane at will, enjoyments and distractions do thrive like a bay tree.
Too much indulgence means distress,God is all love. To think that it is because of our forgiveness that He forgives us for trespasses, or else He would not do so, is to misunderstand Him and make a misuse of prayers as means for doing more wrongs.
Enjoyments lead ultimately to disease.
Pleasures cannot chase away pain,
Without His acceptance one wanders in the wilderness. 56
GURU NANAK
The man of God, on the other hand, has a twofold plan of Dispensation. While granting forgiveness for faults on the one hand he remonstrates severely against repetition. "Thus far and no further," is his admonition. "Go and sin no more," was a familiar phrase with Christ when he used to forgive the sinners. In this way he works out his purificatory process and the spirit is chiseled into a shape and form that may be acceptable to God.
Prayer per se cannot alter His Law of Dispensation nor help to reach Him. It is only the loving and intense longing for God and strict obedience to the commandments of the Godman that make a prayer a means leading Godward. Love, and not loud prayers, is the cornerstone of God's Law of Redemption.
If we lovingly depend upon the strong arm of the Godman, his Grace gushes out spontaneously from the fountain of love in him. "Reciprocity in love" is proverbial indeed, and there is no limit to his saving Grace. Even the penalty that he imposes is tinted with rays of love, with no trace of rancor in it.