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)

52. And for the testimony of Jesus Christ. That this signifies, that the Lord's Divine Human will be acknowledged, is evident from the signification of testimony, as denoting acknowledgment in heart (concerning which see above, n. 10, 27); and from the signification of the names Jesus Christ, as denoting the Lord as to His Divine Human (concerning which see also above, n. 26). These things are said concerning the church of the Gentiles, which will receive Divine truth, and acknowledge the Lord's Divine Human. (That these things are spoken of the church of the Gentiles, see what is said above, n. 50.) The Christian Church indeed acknowledges the Lord's Divine, but not His Divine Human; when therefore they think and speak from doctrine, concerning the Lord, they separate His Human from the Divine, and regard His Human as like that of another man, when yet His Divine is in His Human, as the soul in the body. This also is the reason why such persons can have no idea of the Divine, and yet it is the idea that conjoins, because thought conjoins; and without conjunction with the Divine by thought and affection, or, what is the same, by faith and love, there can be no salvation. It is said that conjunction by thought and affection is the same thing as conjunction by faith and love, for the reason that I think what I believe, and I am affected by what I love. To believe in that which cannot be perceived is not much unlike believing in the inmost of nature, an error into which the mind is also prone to fall when it indulges in its own phantasies.

Every man, however, has implanted within him, by continual influx from heaven, a desire to see the Divine, and indeed under a human form.

[2] This is implanted with the simple, and also with the upright among the Gentiles (see in the work, Heaven and Hell 82); therefore all those of them who have lived in charity, are received by the Lord, and are gifted with heaven; others cannot be received, because there is no conjunction. (That all the angels in heaven, and also the wisest in ancient times and all those who have spiritual faith, or living faith, that is, with whom faith is living, both on this earth, and on all the earths in the universe, see their Divine in thought, because they acknowledge the Divine Human, and are therefore accepted by the Lord, may be seen in The Doctrine of the New Jerusalem 280-310; and in the work, Heaven and Hell 79-86, 316, 321; and in the small work, The Earths in the Universe 7, 40, 41, 65, 68, 91, 98, 99, 107, 121, 141, 154, 158, 159, 169.) Since this heaven-implanted perception is almost entirely repudiated by the learned of the world, and access to the Divine thereby precluded, a New Church is being established by the Lord among the Gentiles, who have not extirpated that idea, and, together with it, faith. The extirpation of this implanted principle from the Christian world, had its origin in the Babylonish nation, which separated the Lord's Human from the Divine, in order that the leaders among them might be acknowledged as the Vicar of the Lord's Human, and so might transfer His Divine power to himself, saying, that the Lord received that power from the Father, when notwithstanding He received it from Himself, because from His Own Divine. They are consequently unwilling to hear anything about the Divine Human (see Arcana Coelestia 4738). But on this subject, since it is the chief of all things in the church, more will be related in the following pages.