Could there be reasons for the humble, vulnerable beginnings of Jesus’s life?

In this video from his Swedenborg and Life web series, host Curtis Childs and featured guests explore how the Divine design may have been at play from the very beginning of Christ's life.

(References: Apocalypse Explained 706 [12]; Luke 2:8-12; The Word 7; True Christian Religion 89, 90, 96, 766)

8. VIII. The Lord's marriage with the church, which is the marriage of good and truth in the Word.

It is well known that in the Word the Lord is called bridegroom and husband, and the church bride and wife. The reason these terms are applied to the Lord or the church is because of the linking of good and truth in every individual in heaven and in the church, who has the church within him. For the Lord exerts His influence on an angel or a member of the church from the good of love and charity. The angel or member of the church who is governed by the good of love and charity receives the Lord in the truths of teaching and faith he possesses from the Word. Thus a linking takes place, which is called the heavenly marriage. This marriage is present in the details of the Word, and since it has this in its details the Word may be called the heavenly marriage.

The existence of such a marriage in the details of the Word was demonstrated at length in my Arcana Caelestia and also in the Teaching of the New Jerusalem, ¹ where the Word is discussed. The existence of such a marriage can only be seen by ² those who are concerned for its inner or spiritual sense. For there are everywhere, and quite obviously in the prophetic books, two expressions for one thing, one of which refers to good, and so to the Lord, the other to truth and so to the church. Anyone who knows the correspondences can see this clearly; for there are expressions and words which correspond to good, and there are others ³ which correspond to truths. This then is how the Lord is linked with heaven and with the church by means of the Word.

[2] Since there is a marriage in the Word, it contains a spiritual and a celestial sense. The spiritual sense is for those in the Lord's spiritual kingdom, who make up all the lower heavens; the celestial sense is for those in the Lord's celestial kingdom, who make up all the higher heavens. The angels of the spiritual kingdom possess the truths of the Word, but those of the celestial kingdom its good. When therefore a person reads the Word piously, the spiritual angels perceive by correspondences the truths in it, the celestial angels the kinds of good in it. But, what is a secret, the celestial angels do not perceive the good in it directly from the person, but indirectly through the spiritual angels. The reason is that hardly anyone in the Christian world today possesses the good of celestial love, but some possess only truths. The good of love cannot therefore pass directly from a person to the celestial angels who compose the third heaven, but it passes indirectly through the spiritual angels who compose the second heaven.

Thus the Lord's marriage with the church is also realised in the heavens by means of the Word. For the Word in its spiritual sense deals with the church, but in its celestial sense with the Lord. So the spiritual angels relate everything to the church, but the celestial angels to the Lord. That is why the Lord likens heaven to a marriage and so calls it; and it is the Word which brings about this marriage. But this is a secret which can only dimly be perceived by a person on earth, but it is clearly perceived by an angel in heaven.

[3] The reason why celestial angels can relate to the Lord everything which the spiritual angels relate to the church is that the Lord is everything to the church.

Footnotes:

4807. CHAPTER 38

In the preliminary section of the previous chapter, in 4661-4664, an explanation was begun of what, in Matthew 25:31-end, the Lord said about judgement on the good and the evil, who are there called the sheep and the goats. What the internal sense of those words is has not yet been explained, but comes up for explanation now in the preliminary sections of this and a couple of chapters ¹ following it. From these explanations it will be clear that by a last judgement in this parable He did not mean a last phase of the world, when - for the first time - the dead will rise again and will be gathered before the Lord and will be judged, but that He meant the last phase of a person passing over from the world to the next life, this point being his time of judgement. This is the judgement He meant. But none of this is seen from the sense of the letter, only from the internal sense. The reason the Lord spoke in the way He did is that He spoke using representatives and meaningful signs, as He has done everywhere else in the Old Testament Word and in the New. For to speak using representatives and meaningful signs is to speak simultaneously to the world and to heaven, that is, both to men and to angels. This kind of speech, being universal, is Divine and therefore proper to the Word. Consequently, those who are in the world and are interested only in worldly matters grasp nothing else from the words spoken by the Lord regarding a last judgement than the idea that everyone's resurrection will take place at one and the same point in time, when the Lord will sit on a throne of glory and address those gathered together there in the words used in the parable. But those who are interested in heavenly matters know that each person rises again at the point in time when he dies, and that the Lord's words in the parable carry the teaching that everyone will be judged according to what his life is, thus that everyone brings his judgement with him because he brings his life with him.

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