In general, men are driven by intellect and women by affections, and because of this men in the Bible generally represent knowledge and truth and women generally represent love and the desire for good. This generally carries over into marriage, where the man's growing knowledge and understanding and the woman's desire to be good and useful are a powerful combination. In many cases in the Bible, then, "husband" refers to things of truth and understanding, much as "man" does. Magnificent things can happen in a true marriage, though, when both partners are looking to the Lord. If a husband opens his heart to his wife, it's as though she can implant her loves inside him, transforming his intellectual urges into a love of growing wise. She in turn can grow in her love of that blooming wisdom, and use it for joy in their married life and in their caring for children and others in their life. Many couples, even in heaven, stay in that state -- called "Spiritual" -- growing deeper and deeper to eternity. There is the potential, though, for the couple to be transformed: through the nurturing love of his wife the husband can pass from a love of growing wise to an actual love of wisdom itself, and the wife can be transformed from the love of her husband's wisdom into the wisdom of that love -- the actual expression of the love of the Lord they have built together. In that state -- called "Celestial" -- the husband represents love and the desire for good, and the wife represents truth and knowledge.

5070. The eternal life which is imparted to the righteous is life flowing from good. Good has life within it because it comes from the Lord, who is life itself. Included within the life which comes from the Lord there is wisdom and intelligence; for wisdom consists in receiving good from the Lord and then making it the object of one's will, while intelligence consists in receiving truth from the Lord and then believing it. And those who receive such wisdom and intelligence have life. Also, because happiness is linked to that kind of life, eternal happiness too is meant by that life. The opposite is the case with those governed by evil. They do, it is true, seem - especially to themselves - to possess life; but it is the kind of life which in the Word is called death, and is in actual fact spiritual death; for they do not have any wise apprehension of what is good or any intelligent understanding of what is true. This may be seen by anyone who considers the matter carefully, for since it is good and the truth rooted in such good that hold life within them, no life can exist in evil or in the falsity springing from it, because these are by nature the reverse of good and truth and destructive of life. Consequently the people under consideration here have no other life than the kind which the insane have.