1. Teachings for the New Jerusalem on the Lord

The Entire Sacred Scripture Is about the Lord, and the Lord Is the Word

WE read in John,

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and nothing that was made came about without him. In him there was life, and that life was the light for humankind. And the light shines in the darkness, but the darkness did not grasp it. And the Word became flesh and lived among us; and we saw his glory, glory like that of the only-begotten child of the Father. He was full of grace and truth. (John 1:1-3, 5, 14)

In the same Gospel,

Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. (John 3:19)

And elsewhere in the same Gospel,

While you have the light, believe in the light, so that you may become children of the light. I have come into the world as a light so that anyone who believes in me will not remain in darkness. (John 12:36, 46)

We can see from this that the Lord is God from eternity and that he himself is that Lord who was born into the world. It actually says that the Word was with God and that the Word was God, as well as that nothing that was made came about without him, and then that the Word became flesh and that they saw him.

There is little understanding in the church of what it means to call the Lord “the Word.” He is called the Word because the Word means divine truth or divine wisdom and the Lord is divine truth itself or divine wisdom itself. That is why he is also called the light that is said to have come into the world.

Since divine wisdom and divine love are one with each other and have been one in the Lord from eternity, it also says “in him there was life, and that life was the light for humankind.” The life is divine love, and the light is divine wisdom.

This oneness is what is meant by saying both that “in the beginning the Word was with God” and that “the Word was God.” “With God” is in God, since wisdom is in love and love is in wisdom. This is like the statement elsewhere in John, “Glorify me, Father, together with yourself, with the glory I had with you before the world existed” (John 17:5). “With yourself” is “in yourself.” This is why it adds “and the Word was God.” It says elsewhere that the Lord is in the Father and the Father is in him [John 14:10], and that the Father and he are one [John 10:30].

Since the Word is the divine wisdom of the divine love, it follows that it is Jehovah himself and therefore the Lord, the one by whom all things were made that were made, since everything was created out of divine love by means of divine wisdom.

6971. And hear not the voice of the former sign. That this signifies if they do not obey what is announced from the Word, that instead of spiritual and rational men they would become not spiritual and not rational, is evident from the signification of “hearing,” as being to obey (see n. 2542, 3869, 5017); from the signification of a “voice,” as being what is announced from the Word, of which below; and from the signification of “the former sign,” as being that instead of spiritual and rational men they would become not spiritual and not rational. That this is so, is plain from the signification of the serpent which was made from the rod of Moses cast on the earth (which is here “the former sign”), as being the sensuous and corporeal man (n. 6949); thus the non-spiritual and non-rational man. For the man who is sensuous and corporeal is not rational, thus neither is he spiritual, for he thinks falsities and wills evils. He who does this is not rational, still less is he spiritual, for the acknowledgment and faith of truth, and the life of good, are the veriest spiritual in the rational, because these things are from the Divine; whereas the acknowledgment and faith of falsity and the life of evil are the contrary. (That merely sensuous and corporeal men are such, see n. 6844, 6845, 6948, 6949.)

[2] Those become merely sensuous and corporeal who have first known the things of the spiritual world and have afterward rejected them, and have imbued themselves with principles of falsity contrary to truths, and as to life have looked solely to worldly, bodily, and earthly things, and from this have believed that life ought to be enjoyed with every pleasure, saying, “What has man more while he lives? When we die we die; and who has ever come from another life to tell us about it? We know not what it is to live when life goes out of a man.” If anyone by rational arguments sets them thinking at all about eternal life, they think that they shall not fare worse than others, and immediately relapse to the state of their former life. With such there is a closing of the passage for the light of heaven and its influx, and the light of heaven in their natural becomes like thick darkness, but the light of the world therein becomes brightness (see n. 6907), and the brightness is so much the more brilliant, as the light of heaven is more darkened; hence it is that such see no otherwise than that the evils of their life are goods, and that consequently the falsities are truths. It is from this then that a man becomes sensuous and corporeal. In a word, when a passage for the influx of the light of heaven has once been opened, and afterward is closed, the man is then driven to look downward, and not upward; and this from Divine order, lest the truths which he has once acknowledged, and which remain in his interior man, should be contaminated with falsities, and thus profaned.

[3] The case is the same with the Gentiles who recede from their religiosity; but their lot is better than the lot of those who are within the church, because they have no truths from the Word, consequently no genuine truths; but truths joined with many fallacies, which cannot be so much profaned. With regard to the signification of a “voice,” as being what is announced from the Word, be it known that a “voice” is often spoken of, and is also joined to such things as have no relation to a voice, as here it is also joined to a sign; “if they do not hear the voice of the former sign, they will believe the voice of the latter sign;” and also in other passages, in Nahum:

The voice of the whip, and the voice of the sound of a wheel (Nah. 3:2).

The floods have lifted up their voice above the voices of many magnificent waters (Psalms 93:3-4).

[4] That a “voice” signifies annunciation, and in a good sense annunciation from the Word, which voice is called the “voice of Jehovah,” is evident in David:

The voice of Jehovah is in power; the voice of Jehovah is in glory; the voice of Jehovah breaketh the cedars; the voice of Jehovah cutteth off the flames of fire; the voice of Jehovah maketh the wilderness to tremble; the voice of Jehovah maketh the hinds to calve; and strippeth the forests (Psalms 29:4-5, 7-9);

To Him that rideth upon the heaven of the heaven of old; lo He shall utter with His voice, a voice of strength (Psalms 68:33).

In these passages a “voice” denotes Divine truth, thus the Word, and annunciation from it. What a “voice” further signifies, see n. 219; and that “voice” is predicated of truth, n. 3563)