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.

10372. 'This is a sign between Me and the children of Israel into an age' means that this is the means by which those who belong to the Church are distinguished from those who do not belong to the Church. This is clear from the meaning of 'a sign' as the means by which they are recognized, dealt with above in 10357, and so also by which they are distinguished; and from the representation of 'the children of Israel' as the Church, dealt with in the places referred to in 9340, so that 'a sign between Jehovah and the children of Israel' means that it is the means by which those who belong to the Church are distinguished from those who do not, that is to say, they are distinguished by their acknowledgement of the union of the Divine within the Lord's Human, dealt with above in 10370. The truth that the Church does not exist where the Lord is not acknowledged is also the teaching of the Church itself; and the further truth that within His Human there is the Divine itself is the Lord's own teaching in John,

I and the Father ¹ are one. ... you may believe that the Father is in Me, and I am in the Father. John 10:30, 38.

In the same gospel,

Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in Me? John 14:6-11.

In the same gospel,

Jesus said, The hour has come. Father, glorify Your Son, that Your Son also may glorify You. All Mine are Yours, and all Yours are Mine. John 17:1, 10.

In the same gospel,

Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in Him. And God will glorify Him in Himself. John 13:31-32.

And in the same gospel,

If you know Me you know My Father also; and from now on you know Him and have seen Him. He who has seen Me has seen the Father. John 14:6-11.

Note a piè di pagina: