Commentary

 

249 - Newness of Life

By Jonathan S. Rose

Title: Newness of Life

Topic: Salvation

Summary: What the Bible calls newness of life is not just a matter of changing our behaviors but of gaining a new heart and a new spirit.

Use the reference links below to follow along in the Bible as you watch.

References:
Romans 6:1, 4
Isaiah 65:17; 66:22
Jeremiah 31:31
Leviticus 3:1, 14, 17, Leviticus 3:23, Leviticus 3:26, Leviticus 3:33, Leviticus 3:40-41
Ezekiel 11:16; 18:30; 36:25
John 3:3
Romans 12:1-2
2 Corinthians 4:16; 5:17, 10
Galatians 6:12
Ephesians 4:17, 24
Colossians 3:5, 9-11
Titus 3:1-5
Revelation 21:1-5
Isaiah 62:1-2

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Spirit and Life Bible Study broadcast from 12/30/2015. The complete series is available at: www.spiritandlifebiblestudy.com

The Bible

 

Isaiah 66:22

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22 For as the new heavens and the new earth, which I will make, shall remain before me, saith the LORD, so shall your seed and your name remain.

From Swedenborg's Works

 

Arcana Coelestia #7248

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7248. I have been told that the inhabitants of that planet who, when they die and become spirits, appear on this side of it derive the greatest pleasure out of acts of plunder, and most especially out of eating from the plunder. The delight they experience when they think about eating from the plunder was conveyed to me, and I perceived that it was very great. The fact that people with that kind of bestial nature have also inhabited our own planet is evident from the history of various nations, and also from the inhabitants of the land of Canaan, 1 Samuel 30:16, as well as from the Jewish and Israelite nation in David's time, in that they made raids every year on nations, pillaged them, and rejoiced in the pillage. So far as these inhabitants of the planet Venus are concerned, they do indeed find pleasure in acts of plunder; yet they are not cruel. They throw people whom they despoil into water, using that as the method to put them to death; but they keep alive those they can. They afterwards bury those whom they have put to death in that way, which shows that there is some humanity in them, unlike the Jews, whose delight it was to cast aside those they killed and expose them to be devoured by wild animals of the forest or by birds, and sometimes to put them to death in a savage and cruel manner, 2 Samuel 12:31. How much delight the Jews took in such practices I was also allowed to recognize in the sphere conveyed to me from those who, in great numbers, quickly came near and then fled.

  
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Thanks to the Swedenborg Society for the permission to use this translation.