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)

60. The assertions in this doctrinal statement that God and a human being in the Lord are not two but one person, and are one altogether the way the soul and the body are one, show through clearly in many of the things that the Lord himself said; for example, that the Father and he are one [John 10:30], that all that is the Father’s is his, and all that is his is the Father’s [John 17:10], that he is in the Father and the Father is in him [John 14:10], that all things have been given into his hand [John 13:3], that he has all power [Matthew 28:18], that he is the God of heaven and earth [Matthew 28:18], that those who believe in him have eternal life [John 6:47], and so on; also that both the divine nature and the human nature were raised into heaven and that in both respects he sits at the right hand of God [Mark 16:19] (that is, that he is almighty), and more passages from the Word concerning his divine human nature that have been cited above in ample number, all of which testify that God is one both in person and in essence, in whom there is a trinity, and that that God is the Lord.