122. We need to be fully aware, however, that when we are about to repent we need to turn to the Lord alone. If we turn only to God the Father we cannot be cleansed, nor if we turn to the Father for the sake of the Son or to the Son as merely human. There is only one God, and the Lord is that God because his divine and his human natures are one person, as I have explained in Teachings for the New Jerusalem on the Lord. To enable us to turn to the Lord alone when we are about to repent, the Lord instituted the Holy Supper, assuring forgiveness of sins to those who repent. The sacrament offers that assurance because during that Supper or Communion, each participant is kept focused on the Lord alone.

583. Verses 20, 21. And the rest of the men who were not killed in these plagues, and repented not of the works of their hands, that they should not adore demons, and idols of gold, and silver, and brass, and stone, and wood; which can neither see, hear, nor walk. And they repented not of their murders, nor of their sorceries, nor of their fornications, nor of their thefts.- "And the rest of the men who were not killed in these plagues," signifies those who have not perished from the disorderly desires (cupiditates) above mentioned; "and repented not of the works of their hands," signifies, who have not actually turned themselves away from such things as are from the proprium; "that they should not adore demons," signifies, that they should not worship their own disorderly desires; "and idols of gold and silver, and brass, and stone, and wood," signifies false doctrinals that are from [man's] own intelligence, and favour the loves of the body and of the world, and the principles arising therefrom; "which can neither see, hear, nor walk," signifies, in which and from which there is nothing of the understanding of truth and perception of good, and thus nothing of spiritual life. "And they repented not of their murders," signifies, who have not actually turned themselves away from extinguishing those things that pertain to the understanding of truth, to the will of good, and to spiritual life thence; "nor of their sorceries, nor of their fornications," signifies from perverting good, and falsifying truth; "nor of their thefts," signifies from taking away the cognitions of truth and good, and consequently the means of procuring for themselves spiritual life.