368. 7. The Lord Is Goodwill and Faith within Us; We Are Goodwill and Faith within the Lord

People of the church are in the Lord and the Lord is in them. This is clear from the following passages in the Word:

Jesus said, "Live in me and I [shall live] in you. I am the vine and you are the branches. Those who live in me and I in them bear much fruit. " (John 15:4-5)

Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood live in me and I in them. (John 6:56)

On that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you are in me and I am in you. (John 14:20)

If any confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in them, and they live in God. (1 John 4:15)

We ourselves cannot be in the Lord, but the goodwill and faith that are in us from the Lord can. These two make us essentially human.

We can shed some light on this mystery to disclose it to the intellect if we explore it in the following sequence:

a. Our partnership with God is what gives us salvation and eternal life.

b. It is impossible for us to have a partnership with God the Father. What is possible is a partnership with the Lord, and through the Lord, with God the Father.

c. Our partnership with the Lord is reciprocal: the Lord is in us and we are in the Lord.

d. This reciprocal partnership comes about through goodwill and faith.

The truth of these points will become clear from the following explanation.

194. 1. What the spiritual meaning is. The spiritual meaning is not the meaning that comes to light from the Word's literal meaning when someone examines and explains the Word in order to support some dogma of the church. That meaning could be called "the literal and ecclesiastical" meaning of the Word. The spiritual meaning is not apparent in the literal meaning. It lies inside it the way our soul is in our body, or our intellect's thoughts are in our eyes, or our feelings of love are in our face.

The spiritual meaning is the primary thing that makes the Word spiritual, not only for people but also for angels. The Word communicates with the heavens through that meaning. Because the Word is inwardly spiritual, it was written entirely in correspondences. Anything that is written in correspondences has an outermost meaning that is written in a style like the one used by the prophets, by the Gospel writers, and in the Book of Revelation. Although that style appears poor, nevertheless it conceals within itself divine wisdom and all angelic wisdom.

For an explanation of correspondence, go to the work Heaven and Hell, published in London in 1758, and look at the treatment of the correspondence of everything in heaven with everything in the human being (87-102) and the correspondence of heaven with everything earthly (103-115). You will also be able to look more extensively at correspondences in the examples from the Word I am going to present below [196-199].