At face value, the Ten Commandments can seem intense and unforgiving. But Emanuel Swedenborg’s understanding of the internal sense of the Bible—spiritual meanings that lie beneath the literal words—can give us a new perspective on these familiar rules.

In this episode of their Swedenborg and Life web series, hosts Curtis Childs and Jonathan Rose study the inner meaning of the first commandment.

(Notae: Apocalypse Revealed 950; Arcana Coelestia 8864, 8865, 8868, 8869, 8875, 8878, 8879, 8880, 8881)

49. And expectation of Jesus Christ. That this signifies where the knowledge of the Lord's Divine in His Human exists, is evident from the signification of the expectation of Jesus Christ, as being, when that time shall come when the church knows the Lord; and the church knows the Lord when it acknowledges the Divine in His Human. (That by Jesus Christ is meant the Lord as to the Divine in His Human, may be seen above, n. 26.) The church, of which these things are said, is a church which is to come after the present one, for it is said "in the expectation." The church which exists at this day knows, indeed, that the Divine is in the Lord's Human; for it knows, according to the received doctrine, that the Divine and the Human are not two but one Person; and also that they are like the soul and the body in man (see above, n. 10, 26). Still, it does not know that the Lord's Human is Divine, for it separates the one from the other. This is evident from the fact that it does not allow the use of the expression Divine Human, and also that it approaches the Father, praying that He may have compassion for the sake of the Son, although the very Divine Itself in heaven is the Divine Human (see in the work, Heaven and Hell 78-86). And because this knowledge and acknowledgment have thus perished, which nevertheless are the chief of all things in the church, as they are the chief of all things in heaven, therefore a New Church is being established by the Lord among the Gentiles, where these are not only known, but likewise acknowledged. This then is the signification of the expectation of Jesus Christ.