404. We take on a completely different condition if love for the world or for wealth constitutes the head, meaning that this is our dominant love. Then love for heaven leaves the head and goes into exile in the body. People who are in this state prefer the world to heaven. They do indeed worship God, but they do so from a love that is merely earthly, a love that leads them to take credit for all their acts of worship. They also do good things for their neighbor, but they do them to get something back in return.

In the case of people like this, heavenly things are like the clothes in which they strut about, garments that we see as shining but angels see as drab. When love for the world inhabits our inner self and love for heaven inhabits our outer self, then love for the world dims all things related to the church and hides them as if they were behind a piece of cloth.

Love for the world or for wealth comes in many forms, however. It gets worse the closer it approaches to miserliness. At the point of miserliness the love for heaven becomes dark. This love also gets worse the closer it approaches to arrogance and a sense of superiority over others based on love for oneself. It is not as detrimental when it tends toward wasteful indulgence. It is even less damaging if its goal is to have the finest things the world has to offer, like a mansion, fine furniture, fashionable clothing, servants, horses and carriages in grand style, and things like that. With any love, its quality depends on the goal that it focuses on and intends to reach.

Love for the world and for wealth is like a dark crystal that suffocates light and breaks it only into colors that are dull and faded. It is like fog or cloudiness that blocks the rays of the sun. It is also like wine in its first stages - the liquid tastes sweet, but it upsets your stomach.

From heavens point of view, people like this look hunchbacked, walking with their head bent down looking at the ground. When they lift their head toward the sky, they strain their muscles and quickly go back to looking downward. The ancient people who were part of the church called people of this kind "Mammons. " The Greeks called them "Plutos. "

640. The Merit and Justice of Christ Cannot Be Assigned to Anyone Else

To recognize that the merit and justice of Jesus Christ cannot be assigned to anyone else, it is necessary to know what his merit and his justice are. The merit of our Lord and Savior is redemption. For the nature of redemption, see the material in the relevant chapter above, 114-133. There you will see that redemption was a matter of gaining control of the hells and restructuring the heavens, and afterward establishing a church. Therefore redemption was something only the Divine could bring about. That material also shows that through his acts of redemption the Lord took on the power to regenerate and save people who believe in him and who do what he commands. Without this redemption no flesh could have been saved [Matthew 24:22].

Since redemption was something only the Divine could bring about and was the work of the Lord alone, and since that redemption is his merit, it follows that that merit is no more applicable or attributable or assignable to anyone else than the functions of creating and preserving the universe. Redemption was in fact a kind of re-creation of the angelic heaven and also of the church.

[2] The church of today, however, attributes that merit of the Lord the Redeemer to people who acquire faith by grace, as is clear from its teachings. This idea is central. The leaders of that church and also their followers, both in the Roman Catholic church and in the Protestant churches, say that through the assignment of Christ's merit, people who acquire faith are not only considered to be just and holy but actually are just and holy. Their sins are not sins before God, because those sins have been forgiven and they themselves have been justified, meaning reconciled, made new, regenerated, sanctified, and assigned to heaven.

From the Council of Trent, the Augsburg Confession, and the commentaries on them that have been widely accepted, it is abundantly clear that the entire Christian church today teaches this doctrine.

[3] The claim that all these benefits are transferred into that faith leads directly to the notion that possessing that faith is the same as having the Lord's own merit and justice. Therefore one who possesses that faith is Christ in an alternate form. After all, they say Christ himself is justice, and that faith is justice, and the assigning of merit, by which they mean its attribution or application, causes us not merely to be considered just and holy but actually to be just and holy. To this assigning, attributing, and applying of merit, just add an actual transfer of it and you too will be a pope, a vicar of Christ!