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.

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

59. This deals with what this doctrinal statement has to say about the trinity and unity of God. There then follow points about the Lord’s taking on of a human nature in the world, which is called incarnation. These too are true in every way, provided we clearly differentiate between the human nature from the mother that the Lord was conscious of when he was in states of being brought low or being emptied out and suffered trials and the cross, and the human nature from the Father that he was conscious of when he was in states of being glorified or united [to the divine nature]. That is, in the world the Lord took on a human nature that was conceived by Jehovah, who is the Lord from eternity, and was born from the Virgin Mary. This means he had a divine nature and a human nature-the divine from his own divine nature from eternity, and the human from his mother Mary in time. He put off this latter nature, though, and put on the divine human nature. It is this human nature that is called “the divine human nature” and in the Word is meant by “the Son of God.” So when the points that come next in the statement about the incarnation are understood to refer to the maternal human nature that he was conscious of in his states of being brought low, and the statements that follow those [are understood to be] about the divine human nature that he was conscious of in his states of being glorified, then everything fits together.

The following things that come next in the statement are accurate in regard to the maternal human nature he was conscious of in his states of being brought low.

Jesus Christ is God and a human being, God from the substance of the Father, and human from the substance of his mother, born in the world; perfect God and perfect human being, consisting of a rational soul and a human body; equal to the Father with respect to his divinity, and less than the Father with respect to his humanity.

And this,

That human nature was not converted into a divine nature or mixed with it but was put off, and a divine human nature was put on in its place.

The things that follow those in the statement are accurate in regard to the human-divine nature that he was conscious of in his states of being glorified and in which he is now and will be to eternity.

Although our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is God and a human being, yet he is not two, but one Christ. He is one altogether, because he is one person. Therefore as the soul and the body make one human being, so God and a human being is one Christ.