When the Bible speaks of "Jehovah," it is representing love itself, the inmost love that is the essence of the Lord. That divine love is one, whole and complete in itself, and Jehovah also is one, a name applied only to the Lord. The divine love expresses itself in the form of wisdom. Love, then, is the essence of God -- His inmost. Wisdom -- the loving understanding of how to put love into action -- is slightly more external, giving love a way to express itself. Wisdom, however, is expressed in a great variety of thoughts and ideas, what the Writings collectively call divine truth. There are also many imaginary gods, and sometimes angels and people can be called gods (the Lord said Moses would be as a god to Aaron). So when the Bible calls the Lord "God," it is in most cases referring to divine truth. In other cases, "God" has reference to what is called the divine human. The case there is this: As human beings, we cannot engage the Lord directly as divine love. It is too powerful and too pure. Instead, we have to approach Him by understanding Him through divine truth. Divine truth, then, is the Lord in human form, a form we can approach and understand. Thus "God" is also used in reference to this human aspect, because it is an expression of truth.

2816. That 'Abraham put forth his hand' means temptation even to the final degree of power is clear from the train of thought, for the subject is the Lord's severest and inmost temptations. The verses preceding this have dealt with the preparation of the Divine human for admission into and endurance of those temptations, the present verse with the actual occurrence of them, which is expressed in the sense of the letter by the words 'Abraham put forth his hand'. By 'hand' is meant power, see 878, here the final degree of power, for nothing was absent apart from the actual experience. The teaching of the internal sense is that the Lord's Divine led the human into the severest temptations, for 'Abraham' is used to mean the Lord as regards the Divine; and this was done by the Divine even to the final degree of power. The truth of the matter is that the Lord allowed temptations into Himself in order that He might cast out from Himself everything that was merely human, doing so until nothing except what was Divine was left.

[2] The fact that the Lord allowed temptations into Himself, even the last which was that of the Cross, becomes clear from the Lord's own words, in Matthew,

Jesus began to show the disciples that He must suffer many things and be killed. At that point Peter took Him and began to rebuke Him, saying, Spare Yourself, Lord; let this not happen to You. But He turned and said to Peter, Go away behind Me, Satan! You are a stumbling-block to Me, for you do not savour the things of God but those of men. Matthew 16:21-23.

And more explicitly in John,

No one takes My life ¹ from Me, but I lay it down of Myself; I have power to lay it down and I have power to receive it again. John 10:18.

And in Luke,

Ought not Christ to have suffered these things and to enter into His glory? Luke 24:26.

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