The Church Plays the Role of the Heart

To expand on the symbolism of the words I will destroy them together with the earth (I have decided to destroy all living creatures –Genesis 6:13 NLT) as the fact that the human race would meet its end along with the church: If the Lord’s church were completely obliterated from the planet, the human race could never survive. Every last person would die.

The church resembles the heart. As long as the heart thrives, so can the surrounding organs and limbs. But as soon as the heart dies, everything else dies too. The Lord’s church on earth is like the heart; from it the human race—including people outside the church—receives life. Since no one has the faintest idea why this is so, I wish to explain.

The situation of the earth’s entire population resembles that of the human body with all its parts. In this body, the church plays the role of the heart. If there were no church supplying the heart’s place—a church with which the Lord could be united by means of heaven and the world of spirits—a break would occur. And if there were a break between the human race and the Lord, we would be annihilated immediately.

For this reason, a church has always existed, ever since the first moment of humanity’s creation. Even when the church has begun to die out, it has always remained alive in a few people.

The Lord came into the world for the same reason. Had divine mercy not prompted him to come, the whole human race on this planet would have been destroyed, because at that time the church had reached its last stages and hardly any goodness or truth was left.

Because we humans, regarded in ourselves, are much lower than animals, we have no chance at survival unless we are intimately connected with the Lord through heaven and the world of spirits. Left on our own we would plunge headlong into destroying ourselves and everyone else, because the ruination of ourselves and everyone else is all we long for.

Our proper code of life is to love one another as we love ourselves, but what we actually do these days is to love ourselves more than others and thus hate everyone else. Now, with unreasoning animals the case is totally different. Their proper code is the one they live by, and so they live in thorough harmony with their destiny. We humans, though, live exactly opposite to the pattern ordained for us, so if the Lord did not take pity on us, if he did not bind us to him through angels, we could not possibly survive a single moment.

Of this fact humanity is unaware.

from Secrets of Heaven, Volume 1, Section 637

Angels are in the Lord and the Lord is in them; and since angels are vessels, the Lord alone is heaven (Continued)

However, this calls for an explanation of how angels can feel and sense this as their own and so accept and retain it when in fact it is not theirs, given the statement that angels are not angels on their own but by virtue of what is within them from the Lord. The essence of the matter is this. There is freedom and rationality in every angel. These two qualities are there so that angels can be open to love and wisdom from the Lord. Neither of these, though—neither the freedom nor the rationality—belongs to the angels. They are in them but belong to the Lord. However, since these two elements are intimately united to angels’ life, so intimately united that you could call them linked to their life, it seems as though they belong to the angels. Freedom and rationality enable them to think and intend and to speak and act; and what they think, intend, speak, and act as a result seems to be done on their own. This gives rise to the reciprocal element that is the means to union.

Still, the more that angels believe that love and wisdom are within them and claim them for themselves as their own, the more there is nothing angelic within them. To the same extent, then, there is no union with the Lord for them. They are outside the truth; and since truth is identical with heaven’s light, they are correspondingly unable to be in heaven. This leads to a denial that they live from the Lord and a belief that they live on their own and therefore that they possess some divine essence. The life called angelic and human consists of these two elements—freedom and rationality.

This leads to the conclusion that angels have a reciprocal ability for the sake of their union with the Lord, but that the reciprocal element, seen as an ability, is the Lord’s and not theirs. As a result, angels fall from angelhood if they abuse this reciprocal element that enables them to feel and sense what is the Lord’s as their own by actually claiming it for themselves. The Lord himself teaches us in John 14:20–24 and 15:4, 5, 6 that union is reciprocal, and in John 15:7 that the Lord’s union with us and ours with him occurs in things that belong to him, things called “his words.”

There are people who think that Adam had a kind of freedom or ability to choose that enabled him to love God and be wise on his own, and that this freedom to choose was lost in his descendants. This, however, is wrong. We are not life, but life-receivers (see Sections 4–6 and 55–60 above); and people who are life-receivers cannot love and be wise from their own resources. So when Adam wanted to love and be wise from his own resources, he fell from wisdom and love and was cast out of the garden.

We can say much the same about the heaven that is made up of angels as we have said about individual angels, since Divinity is the same in the largest and smallest things (see Sections 77–82 above). What we have said about angels and heaven needs to be said about us and the church as well, since angels of heaven and we of the church act in consort because of our union. Further, as to the inner reaches of our minds, we of the church are angels—but “we of the church” means people who have the church within themselves.

from Divine Love and Wisdom, Sections 116-118

Notes:

Sections 4: Published 4/14/2016

Section 5-6: Published 4/9/2018

Sections 55-60: Published 5/23/2018-5/24/2018

Sections 77-82: Published 6/1/2018-6/2/2018

REPENTANCE: REPENTANCE IS THE BEGINNING OF THE CHURCH WITHIN US

The extended community that is known as the church consists of all the people who have the church within them. The church takes hold in us when we are regenerated, and we are all regenerated when we abstain from things that are evil and sinful and run away from them as we would run if we saw hordes of hellish spirits pursuing us with flaming torches, intending to attack us and throw us onto a bonfire.

As we go through the early stages of our lives, there are many things that prepare us for the church and introduce us into it; but acts of repentance are the things that actually produce the church within us. Acts of repentance include any and all actions that result in our not willing, and consequently not doing, evil things that are sins against God.

Before repentance, we stand outside regeneration. In that condition, if any thought of eternal salvation somehow makes its way into us, we at first turn toward it but soon turn away. That thought does not penetrate us any farther than the outer areas where we have ideas; it then goes out into our spoken words and perhaps into a few gestures that go along with those words. When the thought of eternal salvation penetrates our will, however, then it is truly inside us. The will is the real self, because it is where our love dwells; our thoughts are outside us, unless they come from our will, in which case our will and our thought act as one, and together make us who we are. From these points it follows that in order for repentance to be genuine and effective within us, it has to be done both by our will and by thinking that comes from our will. It cannot be done by thought alone. Therefore it has to be a matter of actions, and not of words alone.

The Word makes it obvious that repentance is the beginning of the church. John the Baptist was sent out in advance to prepare people for the church that the Lord was about to establish. At the same time as he was baptizing people he was also preaching repentance; his baptism was therefore called a baptism of repentance. Baptism means a spiritual washing, that is, being cleansed from sins. John baptized in the Jordan River because the Jordan means introduction into the church, since it was the first border of the land of Canaan, where the church was. The Lord himself also preached that people should repent so that their sins would be forgiven. He taught, in effect, that repentance is the beginning of the church; that if we repent, the sins within us will be removed; and that if our sins are removed, they are also forgiven. Furthermore, when the Lord sent out his twelve apostles and also the seventy, he commanded them to preach repentance. From all this it is clear that repentance is the beginning of the church.

It can also be illustrated through the following comparisons. No one can pasture flocks of sheep, goats, and lambs in fields or woodlands that are already occupied by all kinds of predatory animals, without first driving away the predators. No one can turn land that is full of thorny bushes, brambles, and stinging nettles into a garden without first uprooting those harmful plants. No one can go into a city that is occupied by hostile enemy forces, set up a new administration devoted to justice and judgment, and make it a good place for citizens to live without first expelling the enemy. It is similar with the evils that are inside us. They are like predatory animals, brambles and thorny bushes, and enemies. The church could no more live alongside them than we could live in a cage full of tigers and leopards; or lie down in a bed whose sheets were lined, and pillows stuffed, with poisonous plants; or sleep at night in a church building under whose stone floor there are tombs with dead bodies in them—would we not be harassed there by ghosts that were like the Furies? . . .

from Regeneration, Pages 23-25

LOVE AND THE SELF: Love for Our Neighbor, or Goodwill (Continued)

These are also ascending levels of neighbor. A community of many is a neighbor on a higher level than a single individual. On a level still higher is our country, on a level still higher is the church, and on a level still higher is the Lord’s kingdom; but on the highest level, our neighbor is the Lord. These ascending levels are like the rungs of a ladder with the Lord at the top.

A community is a neighbor to a greater extent than an individual is because it is made up of many individuals. We are to exercise goodwill toward it just the way we do with respect to individuals, namely, according to the goodness that we find in it. This means that the exercise of goodwill directed toward a community of honest people is totally different from goodwill directed toward a community of dishonest people. We love a community when we are concerned for its welfare because of our love of what is good.

Our country is our neighbor to a greater extent than our community because it is a kind of parent. It is where we were born; it nourishes us and protects us from harm.

We should do good to our country out of love according to its needs, which focus particularly on nourishment for it and on the civil life and the spiritual life of the people who live in it.

If we love our country and do what is good for it because we care about it, then in the other life we love the Lord’s kingdom because there the Lord’s kingdom is our country. Further, anyone who loves the Lord’s kingdom loves the Lord because the Lord is absolutely all there is to his kingdom.

The church is our neighbor to a greater extent than our country because if we care about the church we are caring about the souls and the eternal life of the people of our country. This means that if we care for the church out of love we are loving our neighbor on a higher level because we are longing and striving for heaven and eternal, happy lives for others.

The Lord’s kingdom is our neighbor on a still higher level because the Lord’s kingdom is made up of all who are engaged in doing what is good, both people on earth and people in the heavens. This means that the Lord’s kingdom is where everything that is good is gathered together. When we love this, we love every individual who is engaged in doing what is good. These are the levels of neighbor, the levels by which love increases for people devoted to love for their neighbor.

These levels, though, are in a definite sequence in which the primary or higher is preferable to the secondary or lower; and since the Lord is on the highest level and is to be our central focus on any level as the goal we seek, he is to be loved above all people and all things.

This now enables us to tell how love for the Lord unites itself with love for our neighbor.

It is often said that our neighbor is ourself, meaning that we look after ourselves first. However, a theology of goodwill tells us how we should understand this.

We all need to take care to have the necessities of life, such as the food, clothing, shelter, and more that are necessary for whatever civic life we are involved in. We need to provide these not only for ourselves but also for our dependents, and not only for the present time but also for the future, since unless we acquire the necessities of life for ourselves we cannot be in any condition to extend goodwill. We are in fact in need of everything.

The following comparison may show how we are to be our own neighbors. We all need to provide our bodies with their food and clothing. This needs to come first, but the object is to have a sound mind in a sound body. Furthermore, we all need to provide food for our minds in the form of those things that focus on intelligence and wisdom, the object being that the mind will then be in condition to be of service to our fellow citizens, our human community, our country and church, and therefore the Lord. If we do this we are providing for our well-being to eternity. We can see from this that the main thing is our ultimate purpose in acting, because everything depends on that.

It is also like someone who is building a house. First we need to lay a foundation, but the purpose of the foundation is the house and the purpose of the house is living in it. If we think being a neighbor to ourselves really comes first, it is like regarding the foundation as the objective rather than the house and our life in the house, when in fact our life in the house truly is the first and final goal, and the house and its foundation are only means to this end.

from Regeneration, Pages 12-14

Love for Ourselves and Love for the World

Love for ourselves is intending benefit only to ourselves and not to others unless it is in our own interests—having no goodwill toward the church or our country or toward any group of people or any fellow citizen. It is also being good to the church, our country, and other people only for the sake of our own reputation, advancement, or praise, so that unless we see some such reward in the good we may do for them we say at heart, “What’s the use? Why should I? What’s in it for me?” and forget about it. This shows that when we live a life of self-love we are not loving the church, our country, our community, our fellow citizens, or anything worthwhile—only ourselves.

If we give no consideration to our neighbor in what we are thinking and doing and therefore no consideration to the public good, let alone the Lord, then we live a life of self-love; we think only of ourselves and our immediate circle. This means that everything we do is done for the sake of ourselves and our own; if we do anything to benefit the public and our neighbor, it is only for the sake of appearances.

In referring to “ourselves and our immediate circle,” I mean that when we love ourselves we also love those we see as our own, in particular our children and grandchildren, and in general everyone with whom we identify, whom we call “ours.” Loving them is loving ourselves. This is because we see them as virtually part of us and see ourselves in them. Also included in those we call “ours” is everyone who praises, honors, and reveres us.

If we despise our neighbors or regard people as our enemies for merely disagreeing with us or not showing us reverence or respect, our life is a life of self-love. If for similar slights we hate our neighbors and persecute them, then we are even more deeply entrenched in self-love. And if we burn with vengeance against them and crave their destruction, our self-love is stronger still; people with this attitude eventually love being cruel.

We can tell what self-love is like by contrasting it with heavenly love. Heavenly love is loving service for its own sake, loving for their own sakes the good things we do for church, country, community, and fellow citizen. When we love these things for the sake of ourselves instead, we love them only as servants who wait on us. Therefore when we live in self-love we want the church, our country, our community, and our fellow citizens to serve us rather than wanting to serve them. We place ourselves above them, and them beneath us.

Not only that, the more we live a life of heavenly love (which is loving to be useful and do good things and having heartfelt delight when we do them), the more we are led by the Lord, since this is the love in which he is and which comes from him. On the other hand, the more we live a life of self-love, the more we are led by ourselves, and the more we are led by ourselves the more we are led by our own intrinsic characteristics; and those characteristics are nothing but evil. This is in fact the evil that we inherit—loving ourselves more than God, and the world more than heaven.

Further, to the extent that we give self-love free rein (that is, with the removal of the outward restraints exerted by fear of the law and its penalties, and of loss of reputation, respect, wealth, office, and life), this love by its very nature goes so wild that it wants to rule not only over every country on earth but even over heaven and over the Divine itself. It knows no boundary or limit. Even if this desire is not visible in the world, where the reins and restraints just mentioned keep it in check, it nevertheless lies hidden within all who devote their lives to this love. When such people find that the way forward is blocked, they stay there until the way is not blocked. The result of all this is that when their life is one of self-love they have no idea that such an insane, boundless craving lies hidden within them.

Still, no one can help but see this in powerful figures and heads of state who lack these kinds of reins, restraints, and obstacles, who charge off to conquer as many territories and countries as they can and thirst for unlimited power and glory. It is even more obvious in the people who extend their dominion into heaven and claim all of the Lord’s divine power for themselves—and ceaselessly crave for more.

from New Jerusalem, Sections 65-71