769. Who keep the commandments of God.- That this signifies with those who live the life of faith, which is charity, is evident from the signification of keeping the commandments of God, as denoting to live according to the commandments of the Word; and as that life is a life of faith, and a life of faith is charity, therefore to keep the commandments of God signifies to live a life of faith, which is charity. A life of faith denotes charity towards the neighbour, because faith means the faith of the Word, thus the faith of truth in the Word and from the Word, while charity signifies the love for good and truth, spiritual, moral, and civil; and as that which a man loves he also wills, and what he wills this he does, therefore to keep the commandments of God signifies to live the life of faith, which is charity.

[2] From these things it is evident, that all those who separate faith from charity are entirely ignorant of the nature of both faith and charity; for their idea of faith is that it consists of all those matters contained in the memory which they accept because they have heard them from learned men. A faith of this kind, however, is merely traditional faith, for they do not see that a thing is so except from another, and what one sees only from another may be confirmed both from the sense of the letter of the Word misunderstood, and by reasonings from appearances and scientifics (scientifica), although it may be a falsity in direct opposition to the truth. When such a faith is confirmed it becomes a persuasive faith; but neither this nor traditional faith is a spiritual faith, nor consequently is it a saving faith, for such faith has as yet no life from the Lord. But that a man may receive this life he must live according to the Lord's commandments in the Word, for to live according to the commandments is the same thing as to live from the Lord, because the Lord is the Word and in the Word. Such a life is a life of faith, which is charity, and then its affection becomes charity, and thought from that affection becomes faith. For all man's thought derives its life from affection, for no one can think without affection; when therefore a man's affection becomes spiritual his thought also becomes spiritual; consequently, as is a man's charity, so is his faith. It is therefore evident that charity and faith act as one like affection and thought, or what is the same thing, like will and understanding; for affection belongs to the will, and thought to the understanding, consequently they make one in act, like good and truth. It is therefore plain that to live according to the Lord's commandments from the Word, or to keep the commandments of God, means to live a life of faith, which is charity.

123. Since the Lord does appear in heaven as a sun because of the divine love that is in him and from him, all the people there constantly turn toward him. The inhabitants of the heavenly kingdom turn toward him as the sun, while the inhabitants of the spiritual kingdom turn toward him as the moon. In contrast, the inhabitants of hell turn toward the darkness and dimness that are on the opposite side, and therefore turn away from the Lord. This is because all the people who are in the hells are caught up in love for themselves and the world and are therefore opposed to the Lord. The ones who turn toward the darkness that stands for our world's sun are at the back of the hells and are called "demons," while the ones who turn toward the dimness that stands for our moon are in the front of hell and are called "spirits." This is why people in the hells are described as being in darkness and people in the heavens as being in light. "Darkness" means falsity arising from evil, and "light" means truth arising from good.

The reason people turn in this way is that in the other life we all look toward what rules in our deeper natures - toward our own loves, then; and these deeper natures form the faces of angels and spirits. Further, in a spiritual world the cardinal points are not fixed the way they are in a natural world. Instead, they are determined by the way people face.

We ourselves, in spirit, are also turning in the same fashion - away from the Lord if we are caught up in self-love and love of the world, and toward him if we are in a love for him and for our neighbor. We are unaware of this, though, because we are in a natural world where the cardinal points are determined by the sun's rising and setting. Since it is hard for people to grasp this, examples will be given below where we deal with the cardinal points and with space and time in heaven.