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We're looking at this question of why it is that we seem to struggle with the same thing for our entire life. This drew me to look at the nations that were not defeated when the Israelites were taking over the Promised Land. Are these nations a metaphor for us? Are we doomed to be miserable because we cannot conquer our spiritual enemies?

(Odkazy: Arcana Coelestia 9335; Exodus 23:28-30; Joshua 14:12-15, 17:11-18; Judges 1:19-21; True Christian Religion 614)

614. What has been said can serve to establish that the forgiveness of sins is not their rooting out or wiping away, but their removal and so separation. All the evil remains that a person has by his deeds made his own. Since the forgiveness of sins is their removal and separation, it follows that a person is held back from evil and kept in good by the Lord. This is the gift he receives by regeneration.

I once heard someone in the lowest heaven say that he was free from sins because they had been wiped away, 'by the blood of Christ' he added. But since he was inside heaven, and made this mistake through ignorance, he was plunged into his own sins, and as they recurred to him, he acknowledged them. This led him to accept a new belief, that everyone, man as well as angel, is held back from evils and kept in good by the Lord.

[2] This makes it plain what the forgiveness of sins is, not an instantaneous event, but the consequence of regeneration, advancing in step with it. The removal of sins, what is called their being forgiven, can be compared with the casting out of filth from the Children of Israel's camp in the desert, which lay all around them; for their camp represented heaven, the desert hell. It can also be compared with the removal of the nations in the land of Canaan by the Children of Israel, and the removal of the Jebusites from Jerusalem; they were not cast out, but separated. It can also be compared with the fate of Dagon, the god of the Philistines; when the Ark was brought in, it first of all lay face down on the ground, and afterwards lay on the threshold with its head and the palms of its hands cut off; so it was not cast out, but removed.

[3] It can be compared with the demons the Lord sent into the swine, which afterwards drowned themselves in the sea; here and elsewhere in the Word the sea stands for hell. It can also be compared with the dragon's crowd, which when separated from heaven first invaded the earth, and afterwards was cast down into hell. Another comparison can be made with a wood full of wild beasts of many kinds; if it is cut down, the beasts take refuge in the surrounding thickets, and then when the ground has been levelled, the area contained within it is cultivated to make agricultural land.