1. True Christianity

Containing a Comprehensive Theology of the New Heaven and the New Church

The Faith of the New Heaven and the New Church

THE faith of the new heaven and the new church is stated here in both universal and specific forms to serve as the face of the work that follows, the doorway that allows entry into the temple, and the summary that in one way or another contains all the details to follow. I say "the faith of the new heaven and the new church" because heaven, where there are angels, and the church, in which there are people, act together like the inner and the outer levels in a human being. People in the church who love what is good because they believe what is true and who believe what is true because they love what is good are angels of heaven with regard to the inner levels of their minds. After death they come into heaven, and enjoy happiness there according to the relationship between their love and their faith. It is important to know that the new heaven that the Lord is establishing today has this faith as its face, doorway, and summary.

317. The Seventh Commandment

You Are Not to Steal

In the earthly meaning, this commandment literally covers not stealing, robbing, or privateering during a time of peace. It generally means not using stealth or pretense of any kind to take away someone else's possessions. It also covers all swindling, and illegal ways to profit, earn interest, and collect funds; also fraud in paying taxes and fees and in repaying loans.

Workers transgress against this commandment when they do their work dishonestly and deceptively; retailers, when they mislead customers with their merchandise, weighing, measuring, and calculations; officers, when they dip into their soldiers' pay; judges, when they tilt their judgments toward friends or relatives, or for bribes or other inducements, and thus bias their judgments or investigations and deprive others of goods that belong to those others by law.

727. As we all know, in our world dinner invitations and banquets are used as a way to form partnerships and make connections. The one sending out invitations has the intention and hope of moving toward some goal that relates to consensus or friendship. This is even more the case with dinner invitations that are intended to serve a spiritual goal. The feasts that were held in the early churches were feasts of goodwill. There were similar events in the early Christian church, in which people would support and strengthen each other in maintaining their worship of the Lord with a good heart. The children of Israel would eat meals of the sacrificed animals next to the tabernacle; these events, too, meant unanimity in the worship of Jehovah. Therefore they would refer to the flesh that they were eating as holy (Jeremiah 11:15; Haggai 2:12). The same language is used many times in other passages, because that food came from a sacrifice. Why would this not be true of the bread and wine and the Passover flesh at the supper of the Lord, who offered himself as a sacrifice for the sins of the whole world?

[2] The connection that we form with the Lord through the Holy Supper can be illustrated by the connection felt by families of a common ancestor. The first generation consists of siblings; later generations include a variety of relations, all of whom are connected in some way to the original ancestor. What binds them all together is not so much the shared flesh and blood but a similar soul and similar interests that they inherit through that flesh and blood. The fact that they are all related is generally visible in their faces and also their mannerisms. Therefore they are called "one flesh," as in Genesis 29:14; 37:27; 2 Samuel 5:1; ; and elsewhere.

[3] Our relationship with the Lord is similar; he is the Father of all the faithful and the blessed. Our partnership with him is brought about through love and faith. Because we have these two characteristics in common, we are called "one flesh. " This is why the Lord says, "Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood live in me and I in them" [John 6:56].

Surely everyone can see that it is not the bread and wine that have this effect, but rather the good we do from love, which is meant by the bread, and the truth we believe, which is meant by the wine. These qualities belong exclusively to the Lord; they emanate from and are distributed by him alone. Every partnership is formed by love, and love is not love without trust.

People who believe that the bread really is flesh and the wine really is blood, however, and who cannot lift their thinking any higher than that, should keep thinking that way, but include the thought that the holiest thing in the ceremony - the factor that brings us into a partnership with the Lord - is a certain something that we are allowed to take in and incorporate into ourselves as if it belonged to us, although it actually still belongs to the Lord.