Could there be reasons for the humble, vulnerable beginnings of Jesus’s life?

In this video from his Swedenborg and Life web series, host Curtis Childs and featured guests explore how the Divine design may have been at play from the very beginning of Christ's life.

(Verweise: Apocalypse Explained 706 [12]; Luke 2:8-12; The Word 7; True Christian Religion 89, 90, 96, 766)

96. Our contemporaries who hold high offices in the church describe the Lord's justice in a completely different way. In fact, they say that what renders the faith capable of saving is that the Lord's justice is written into us. The truth is this: because of its nature and origin, and because in and of itself it is purely divine, the Lord's justice could not become part of anyone or produce any salvation any more than the divine life could, which is divine love and divine wisdom. The Lord does come into every one of us bringing his love and wisdom; but unless we are following the divine design in our lives, that life, although it may indeed be in us, makes no contribution whatever to our salvation. It gives us only the ability to understand what is true and do what is good.

Following the divine design in the way we live is following God's commandments. When we live and function in this way, then we acquire justice for ourselves; but we do not gain the justice of the Lord's redemption, we gain the Lord himself as justice. This is what the following passages mean: "Unless your justice is more abundant than that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of the heavens" (Matthew 5:20). "Blessed are those who suffer persecution for the sake of justice, for theirs is the kingdom of the heavens" (Matthew 5:10). "At the close of the age angels will go out and separate the evil from among the just" (Matthew 13:49), and elsewhere. Because the divine design is justice, "the just" in the Word means those who have followed the divine design in their lives.

The justice itself that the Lord became through acts of redemption cannot be ascribed to us, written into us, fitted into or united with us any more than light can belong to the eye, sound can belong to the ear, will can belong to the muscles that act, thought can belong to the lips that speak, air can belong to the lungs that breathe, or heat can belong to the blood, and so on. These elements all flow in and work with our body parts but do not become part of them, as everyone intuitively knows.

We acquire justice the more we practice it. We practice justice the more our interaction with our neighbor is motivated by a love for justice and truth.

Justice dwells in the goodness itself or the useful functions themselves that we do. The Lord says that every tree is recognized by its fruit. Surely we get to know other people well through paying attention not only to what they do but also to what outcome they want - what they are intending and why. All angels pay attention to these things, as do all wise people in our world.

Everything that grows and flourishes in the ground is identified by its flowers and seeds and by what it is good for. All types of metal are differentiated by their usefulness, all types of stone by their properties. Every piece of land is assessed on the basis of its features, as is every type of food, and even every animal on land and every bird in the sky. Why not us?

The factors that give our actions their quality will be disclosed in the chapter on faith [see especially 373-377].

172. Concerning what is profane and profanation (discussed above in §169 of the teachings). Profanation is a mingling within us of both goodness and evil and of both truth and falsity: 6348. The only people who can profane what is good and true, or the sacred things taught by the church and the Word, are people who first acknowledged and believed them-especially if they have lived by them-but later relapsed from their faith, ceased to believe these things, and lived for themselves and the world: 593, 1008, 1010, 1059, 3398, 3399, 3898, 4289, 4601, 8394, 10287. People who have true beliefs as children but lose those beliefs as adults commit a mild form of profanation; people, however, who as adults become inwardly convinced of the truth of what they were taught but later turn and deny it commit a severe form of profanation: 6959, 6963, 6971. We also commit profanation if we have true beliefs but live an evil life, or if we live a pious life but disbelieve what is true: 8882. If after heartfelt repentance we relapse into our former evils, we commit profanation, and our latter state is then worse than our former one: 8394. People in the Christian world who pollute the holy contents of the Word through unclean thoughts and speech are committing profanation: 4050, 5390. There are various general categories of profanation: 10287.

[2] We cannot profane holy teachings if we have not acknowledged them, and still less if we have not even known about them: 1008, 1010, 1059, 9188, 10284. People within the church are able to profane holy teachings, but those outside the church are not: 2051. Non-Christians cannot commit profanation, because they are outside the church and do not have the Word: 1327, 1328, 2051, 9021. Jews cannot profane the deeper holy teachings of the Word and the church, because they do not acknowledge them: 6963. That is why deeper truths have not been disclosed to Jews, since if they had been disclosed and acknowledged, they would have been profaned: ¹ 3398, 3489, 6963.

Profanation is what is meant by the Lord's words cited in §169 above:

When an unclean spirit goes out of someone, it wanders through dry places seeking rest, but finds none. Then it says, "I will go back to my house, the house I left. " When the spirit comes and finds the house empty, swept, and decorated for it, then it goes and recruits seven other spirits worse than itself, and they come in and live there, and the latter times of that person are worse than the first. (Matthew 12:43, 44, 45)

The departure of the unclean spirit from the individual means repentance on the part of those who are consumed with evil; its wandering through dry places and not finding rest means that this is what leading a good life feels like for such people; the house that the spirit finds empty and decorated for itself and therefore reenters means that within themselves and their will such people have no goodness; the seven spirits it recruits and with whom it returns mean the evil that becomes joined to their good actions; and their last state being worse than their first means profanation. This is the inner meaning of the words, for the Lord spoke by means of correspondences.

The meaning of the Lord's words to the man he healed at the pool of Bethesda is much the same: "See, you have been made well. Do not sin anymore, or else something worse than before may come upon you" (John 5:14). There is this statement as well: "He has blinded their eyes and hardened their hearts, so that they would not see with their eyes and understand with their hearts and turn, and I would heal them" (John 12:40). Their turning and being healed would involve the profanation that happens when truth and goodness are acknowledged and then rejected. This, as just noted, would have happened if Jews had turned and been healed.

[3] The fate of profaners in the other life is the worst of all, since the good and true things that they have acknowledged stay with them, as does what is evil and false, and because these cling to each other their life is torn apart: 571, 582, 6348. That is why the Lord takes the greatest possible care to prevent our committing profanation: 2426, 10287. That is why we are kept far from acknowledgment and faith unless we can remain devoted to them to the end of our lives: 3398, 3402. That is why it is sometimes better for us to be kept in ignorance and in outward worship: 301, 302, 303, 1327, 1328. If we have acknowledged and accepted any goodness and truth in the meanwhile, the Lord hides it away in our deeper reaches: 6595.

[4] To prevent profanation, deeper truths are not revealed until the church is at its end: 3398, 3399. That is why the Lord came into the world and opened deeper truths at a time when the church was utterly in ruins: 3398. See what has been cited on this subject in the booklet Last Judgment Babylon Destroyed 73-74.

[5] In the Word, "Babylon" means the profanation of goodness and "Chaldea" means the profanation of truth: 1182, 1283, 1295, 1304, 1306, 1307, 1308, 1321, 1322, 1326. The general categories of profanation correspond to "the degrees of forbidden relations," ² or detestable types of adultery, listed in the Word: 6348. In the Israelite and Jewish church ³ profanation was represented by "eating blood" [Genesis 9:4], which is why that was so strictly forbidden: 1003.

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