The Need to Do

By love is meant love to the Lord, and loving the Lord does not mean to love the Lord as a person. Man is not conjoined with heaven by this love alone, but by the love of the Divine Good and Divine Truth, which are the Lord in heaven and in the church; and the love of these does not consist in knowing and understanding them, nor in thinking about them and speaking of them, but in willing and doing them, because they are commanded by the Lord, and therefore, because they are of use. Nothing is complete until it is done, and what is done is the end, and the end is that for the sake of which the love is cherished; therefore from the love to will and do something, there exists the love of knowing, and understanding and thinking about it. Tell me, why you desire to know and understand anything, unless for the sake of the end that you love? The end that is loved is the deed. If you say for the sake of faith, then understand that faith alone, or faith merely in thought, without that actual faith which is action, is a nonentity. You are very much deceived if you imagine that you believe in God, while you do not perform the things which are of God; for the Lord teaches in John, “He that hath my precepts and doeth them he it is that loveth me, and I will make my abode with him; but he that loveth me not, keepeth not my words” (xiv. 21, 23, 24). In a word, to love and to do are one; therefore, in the Word, where mention is made of loving, doing is meant, and where mention is made of doing, loving is also meant; for that which I love, I do. (AE 1099.3)

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There are Angels among Us

Now because in the Lord’s church on earth there are those who are of the third, of the second, and of the first heaven, and who therefore, after death, become angels of those heavens (AE 1074)

This is a hopeful passage. It shows that it is still possible for someone to regenerate and become a celestial angel.

Two Truths make the Church

that the Lord has power over heaven and over earth, and that the Word alone is holy and Divine. For these two truths make the Lord’s church itself on earth; the church being a church from the worship of the Lord and the reading of the Word. For the Lord reforms men and the Word teaches how they are to live, that they may be reformed by the Lord. If, therefore, these two truths are not acknowledged and received, the church itself must perish; for upon these two truths the church is founded. (AE 1069)

It has been stated above that there are two things that make the church, the acknowledgment and faith that the Lord has the power of saving, and that the Word is Divine; and that where those two are not acknowledged and believed there the church is not. The reason is, that the Lord reforms man, and imparts to him faith and love; and the Word teaches the way by which a man must go to the Lord, that he may receive faith and love from Him. Unless these two truths, therefore, are acknowledged in the church it is not a church. (AE 1070.2)

The Word of God

On the way to the grocery store today, this thought occurred to me.

The Lord’s Word is not a book. It is the Lord interacting with out will and understanding through the text as we cooperate with Him.