4727. Come now therefore and let us slay him. That this signifies the extinction of the essential of doctrine concerning the Lord’s Divine Human, is evident from the signification of “slaying,” as being to extinguish; and from the representation of Joseph, whom they wished to kill, as being the Divine truth of the Lord, and specifically the doctrine concerning His Divine Human, which has been shown above to be an essential of doctrine (n. 4723). That the church in acknowledging faith alone has extinguished this essential truth, is known; for which of them believes the Lord’s Human to be Divine? Do they not turn away at the very proposition? When yet in the ancient churches it was believed that the Lord who was to come into the world was a Divine Man, and also when seen by them He was called Jehovah, as is plain from many passages in the Word, but for the present only this from Isaiah will be adduced:

The voice of one crying the wilderness, Prepare ye the Way of Jehovah, make level in the solitude a pathway for our God (Isaiah 40:3).

That these words were spoken of the Lord, and that by John the Baptist the way was prepared and a pathway made level for Him, is very evident from the evangelists (Matthew 3:3; Mark 1:3; Luke 3:4; John 1:23); and further from the Lord’s own words, that He was one with the Father, and that the Father was in Him, and He in the Father; also that to Him was given all power in heaven and on earth, and that judgment belonged to Him. One who knows even a little about power in heaven and on earth, and about judgment, can know that they would be nothing unless He were Divine as to the Human also.

[2] Those who are in faith alone cannot know what makes man new or sanctifies him, still less what made the Lord’s Human Divine; for they know nothing of love and charity, and it is love to the Lord and charity toward the neighbor that make man new and sanctify him, while the Divine love itself made the Lord Divine. For love is the very being of man, and hence is his living; and it forms man according to an image of itself, just as the soul of man, which is his interior essence, as it were creates or fashions the body into an image, of itself; and indeed in such a way that by means of the body it acts and has sensation just as it wills and thinks. Thus the body is as the effect, and the soul as the cause in which is the end; consequently the soul is the all in the body, as the cause of the end is the all in the effect. The Human of Him whose soul was Jehovah Himself (as was the case with the Lord, for He was conceived of Jehovah) could not when glorified be other than Divine. From this it is plain how greatly those err who make the Lord’s Human, after it was glorified, to be like the human of a man, when yet it is Divine. From His Divine Human proceeds all the wisdom, all the intelligence, and also all the light, in heaven. Whatever proceeds from Him is holy; and the holy that is not from the Divine is not holy.