33. Everyone is capable of knowing very well that no life is possible without love of some kind, nor any type of joy whatsoever except the joy that flows out from the love. Furthermore the nature of the love determines the nature of the life and of the joy. If you took away your loves, and what amounts to the same, your desires (since these stem from love), thought would instantly perish and you would be as one dead. This I have been shown convincingly. Self-love and the love of the world present a semblance of life and of joy, but because they are absolutely contrary to true love, which is loving the Lord above all things and the neighbour as oneself, it is clear that neither of them is love but hatred. For the more anyone loves himself and the world, the more he hates his neighbour and so the Lord. Consequently true love is love to the Lord, true life is the life inherent in love from Him, and true joy is the joy of that life. The existence of more than one true love is not possible. Nor consequently is the existence of more than one true life possible which is the source of all true joy and happiness, such as angels in the heavens enjoy.

840. That 'and God remembered' means the end of temptation and the start of renewal is clear from what comes before and after this. 'God remembered' in particular means His being merciful. His remembering is mercy, and this is attributed to Him especially when temptation is past because at that time new light is shining. As long as temptation lasts, a person assumes that the Lord is not present, for he is being harassed by evil genii, so harassed in fact that sometimes he has so great a feeling of hopelessness as scarcely to believe in the existence of any God at all. Yet at such times the Lord is more present than that person can possibly believe. But once temptation subsides he receives comfort, and for the first time believes that the Lord is present. Consequently, because He appears to do so, 'God's remembering' mentioned here means the end of temptation and the start of renewal. God, and not Jehovah, is said to have remembered because the person's state is still that which comes before regeneration. But once he has been regenerated the name Jehovah is used, as in verses 20-21, at the end of this chapter. The reason 'God' is used here is that faith has not yet been joined to charity. A person is for the first time said to be regenerate when he acts from charity. It is in charity that Jehovah is present, and not so much in faith before this has been joined to charity. In the next life charity constitutes a person's very being (esse) and life. Jehovah is Being (Esse) and Life itself, and this is why before a person has this being and life, not Jehovah but God is said to reside with him.