78. To continue, the Lord is present with us and united to us through the Word because the Lord is the Word and is virtually talking with us in it. There is also the fact that the Lord is divine truth itself, and that is what the Word is.

We can see from this that the extent to which we understand the Word determines the extent to which the Lord is present with us and at the same time united to us. This is because our understanding of the Word determines the truth we possess, as well as the faith that arises from that truth. Similarly, our understanding of the Word determines the love we have, as well as the way in which we live, which arises from that love. The Lord is present with us when we read the Word; but he is united to us only when we understand what is true from the Word and only in proportion to that understanding; and to the extent that the Lord is united to us the church is within us.

And the church is indeed something within us. The church that is outside us is the church of the many who have the church within them. This is the meaning of what the Lord said to the Pharisees when they asked him when the kingdom of God was coming-“The kingdom of God is within you” (Luke 17:21). Here the kingdom of God means the Lord, and the church from him.

359. Of the tribe of Zebulun twelve thousand were sealed. (7:8) This symbolizes the conjugal love of goodness and truth in those people who will be part of the New Heaven and of the Lord's New Church.

In the highest sense Zebulun symbolizes the union of the Divine itself and the Divine humanity in the Lord; in the spiritual sense, the marriage of goodness and truth in those people who are in heaven and in the church; and in the natural sense, married love itself. Thus Zebulun here symbolizes the conjugal love of goodness and truth. His name also comes from a word meaning cohabitation ([30:19-20]), and cohabitation is a word used of married partners, whose minds are joined into one; for that conjunction is a spiritual cohabitation.

The conjugal love of goodness and truth that Zebulun symbolizes here is the conjugal love of the Lord and the church. For the Lord is love's goodness itself, and He grants that the church be the truth springing from that love; and a cohabitation results when the person of the church receives in truths goodness from the Lord. The person then has formed in him a marriage of goodness and truth, which is the essential church, and he becomes a heaven.

It is because of this that God's kingdom - which is to say, heaven and the church - is so often likened in the Word to a marriage.