First Love/Sin Sequence Doctrine
The doctrine that sin is never primary but always the consequence of a prior failure of love — “Adam sinned because he forgot that I loved him and he forgot to love Me… first love ceased, and then began sin; and as soon as he stopped loving his God, true love for himself ceased. His members and powers rebelled against him; he lost dominion, order, and he became fearful” — the sequence being: (1) forgetting divine love (the creature’s awareness of being loved by God ceases), (2) forgetting to love (responsive love toward God ceases), (3) sin arises in the space left by love’s absence, (4) love for self becomes disordered (without God as its referent, self-love loses its true form), (5) interior rebellion follows (members and powers no longer subject to the will that is no longer subject to God). The scriptural ground is Revelation 2:4–5 (you have left your first love — the explicit naming of the first-love loss as the root of the fall from the original state), Hosea 2:13 (she forgot me — the prophetic form of the original human forgetting), Deuteronomy 6:5 (the Shema’s command to love with all — its violation being the theological form of the forgetting), and 1 John 4:18 (perfect love casts out fear — the FLS-1 structure confirmed negatively: fear’s presence in Adam is the evidence that love had already departed). (E)
Anchors: Revelation 2:4-5; Hosea 2:13; Deuteronomy 6:5; 1 John 4:18; Genesis 3:10; Romans 7:23; Genesis 4:8 — Appearances: 13. Full Registry entry.