At face value, the Ten Commandments can seem intense and unforgiving. But Emanuel Swedenborg’s understanding of the internal sense of the Bible—spiritual meanings that lie beneath the literal words—can give us a new perspective on these familiar rules.

In this episode of their Swedenborg and Life web series, hosts Curtis Childs and Jonathan Rose study the inner meaning of the first commandment.

(Reference: Apocalypse Revealed 950; Arcana Coelestia 8864, 8865, 8868, 8869, 8875, 8878, 8879, 8880, 8881)

1276. Spirits in the world of spirits, and angels in heaven, are positioned as follows: Angels are on the Lord's right and evil spirits on His left. At the front are those of an intermediate kind, while the wicked are at the back. Overhead are those who are haughty and aspire to high things, and underfoot are the hells which correspond to those who are on high. In this way the positions of all are fixed in relation to the Lord, as to every direction and degree of height, horizontally and vertically, and in every oblique direction. Their positions remain constant, eternally the same. The heavens constitute so to speak one human being, who is therefore called the Grand Man, to which everything in the human being also corresponds. This correspondence will in the Lord's Divine mercy be dealt with later on. Consequently the positioning of everything around each angel is similar, and around each person to whom heaven is opened by the Lord. This is an effect of the Lord's presence, and could not happen if the Lord were not omnipresent in heaven.