Father in the Word means what is most interior, and in those things that are following the Lord's order, it means what is good. In the highest sense Father means the Lord Himself, the creator. In the generation of natural children it is the father who provides the soul or the most interior receptacle of life, and an internal heredity, and the mother who provides all of the substance that the soul uses to form its body, plus an external heredity. In this process the soul comes from the Lord through the father, and not from the father, since all life is from the Lord. The wise person calls the Lord his father and the church his mother because his interior loves come from the Lord, but are given form and actuality through the truths taught by the church. Those things thus brought forth are a person's spiritual "children". In the New Testament, when speaking of Jesus and the Father, what is meant is the outward manifestation with the divine itself as the soul inside. Because Jesus was born from a natural mother, He had a natural body and a natural Jewish heredity. Throughout his life as He was tempted by the hells, He slowly put off all he had from His mother and replaced it with what He had from Himself inside, the Father. In doing this he made himself one with the Father that was His inmost so He could truly say, "I and my Father are one".

1815. 'He said to him, I am Jehovah' means the Lord's Internal Man which is Jehovah, from whom perception came. This is clear from what has been stated in various places already, to the effect that the Lord's Internal, that is, whatever the Lord received from the Father, was in Him Jehovah - for He was conceived from Jehovah. That which a person receives from the, father is one thing, while that from the mother is another. From the father a person receives everything that is internal, the soul itself or life being from the father; but from the mother he receives everything that is external. In short, the interior man or spirit itself comes from the father, but the exterior man or body itself from the mother. This anyone may grasp merely from the consideration that the soul itself is inseminated by the father, and starts to clothe itself in the ovum with a tiny body. All else that is subsequently added to it, both in the ovum and in the womb, comes from the mother, for it receives nothing contributing to its growth from anywhere else.

[2] From this it becomes clear that internally the Lord was Jehovah. Since however the external which the Lord received from the mother was to be united to the Divine, or Jehovah - and this, as has been stated, was accomplished by means of temptations and victories - it inevitably appeared to Him that when He spoke to Jehovah, it was as if to another. But in fact He spoke to Himself, that is to say, insofar as He had become joined to Jehovah. The perception which the Lord possessed - being most perfect, far superior to that of every other who has ever been born - sprang from His Internal Man, that is, from Jehovah Himself; and this is meant here in the internal sense by 'Jehovah said to him'.