123. 7. It is the unceasing effort of the Lord's divine providence to unite us to himself and himself to us in order to give us the joys of eternal life; and this can happen only to the extent that our evils and their compulsions are banished. I explained in 27-45 that it is the constant effort of the Lord's divine providence to unite us to himself and himself to us, and that this union is what we call reformation and regeneration. I explained also that this is the source of our salvation. Can anyone fail to see that union with the Lord is eternal life and salvation? Everyone can see this who believes that we were originally created in the image and likeness of God (see Genesis 1:26-27) and who knows what the image and likeness of God are.

[2] If we are truly rational and use our rationality when we think and use our freedom when we try to think, can any of us believe that there are three gods equal in essence and that the divine Being or divine Essence can be divided? As for a threefold nature in one God, that is something we can conceive and understand, just as we understand the soul and the body of an angel or a person and the life that they bring forth. Further, since this threefold nature in a single Being exists only in the Lord, it follows that any union must be a union with him.

Use your rationality and think freely, and you will see this truth in its own light. First, though, admit that the Lord, heaven, and eternal life are real.

[3] Now, since God is one and since by creation we have been made in his image and likeness, and since we have come into a love for all our evils through our hellish love, its compulsions, and their pleasures, thereby destroying the image and likeness of God within us, it follows that it is the constant effort of the Lord's divine providence to unite us with himself and himself with us and thereby to make us his images. It also follows that the Lord is doing this so that he may give us the bliss of eternal life, since this is the nature of divine love.

[4] The reason he cannot make this gift, cannot make us images of himself, unless we banish sins from our outer self in apparent autonomy is that the Lord is not just divine love but divine wisdom as well; and divine love does nothing unless it stems from divine wisdom and is in accord with it. It is in accord with divine wisdom that we cannot be united to the Lord and thus reformed, regenerated, and saved unless we are allowed to act freely and rationally. This is what makes us human. Anything that is in accord with the Lord's divine wisdom is also in accord with his divine providence.

9776. 'And as for all the vessels of the dwelling-place, in all [its] service' means the truths and the forms of good on the level of factual knowledge which the external man possesses. This is clear from the meaning of 'the vessels' as factual knowledge, dealt with in 3068, 3079, 9394, 9544; from the meaning of 'the dwelling-place' as heaven, dealt with in 9594, 9596, 9632; and from the meaning of 'service' as the external or natural level in a person, dealt with in 3019, 3020, 5305, 7998. The external or natural level in a person is a servant because it ought to serve the internal or spiritual level in a person. For the human being has been created to conform to an image of heaven and to an image of the world, the internal or spiritual man to an image of heaven and the external or natural man to an image of the world, 9279. Just as the world ought to serve heaven, so the external or natural level in a person ought to serve his internal or spiritual. The external has also been created to be a servant; for it has no life of its own and so cannot do anything by itself. It is dependent on the internal or spiritual, that is, through this on the Lord. From this it is also evident that the external or natural level in a person is not anything unless it is a servant to the internal or spiritual, and that so far as it does serve the internal it is something. To be a servant is to be obedient, and the external is obedient when it does not take ideas stored in the understanding and use them as reasons to justify the evils of self-love and love of the world, but complies with reason and the teachings of the Church which dictate that what is good and true should be done not for selfish and worldly reasons but for goodness and truth's own sake. When all this is so, the Lord - acting through the person's heaven, that is, through the person's internal man - is the doer of those things. For all goodness and truth spring from the Lord, so much so that what is good and true in anyone is the Lord Himself. From all this it becomes clear why it is that the external man must be a servant to the internal.