829. He treads the winepress of the fury and wrath of Almighty God. This symbolically means that the Lord alone has endured all the church's evils and all the violence done to the Word, thus to Him.

The wine of the fury and wrath of God symbolizes the church's goods and truths that it has from the Word, profaned and adulterated, thus the church's evils and falsities (nos. 316, 632, 635, 758). To tread the press of that wine symbolizes to endure those evils and falsities, to fight against them and condemn them, and thus to free angels in heaven and people on earth from being assailed by them. For the Lord came into the world in order to conquer the hells, which had by then risen up to the point that they were beginning to assail the angels, and He conquered them by combats against them, thus through temptations or trials. For spiritual temptations or trials are nothing else than combats against the hells. And because every person associated with spirits in respect to his affections and consequent thoughts - an evil person with spirits from hell, and a good one with angels from heaven - therefore when the Lord conquered the hells, He freed from assault not only angels in heaven, but also people on earth.

[2] This is consequently what is symbolized by these declarations in Isaiah:

...He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows... He was pierced through for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities... and by His wound we were healed... Jehovah has caused to fall on Him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed..., He was cut off from the land of the living; for the transgression of My people, a plague upon them... He has... made His soul guilty... (Isaiah 53:4-10)

The subject here is the Lord and His temptations or trials by the hells, and lastly by the Jews who crucified Him.

The Lord's combats are also described in Isaiah 63:1-10, where we also find the following declarations:

...Your garments like those of one who treads in the winepress. I have trodden the winepress alone... (Isaiah 63:2-3)

This symbolically means that the Lord endured the church's evils and falsities, and all the violence done to the Word, thus to Himself, alone.

We say "the violence done to the Word, thus to Himself," because the Lord embodies the Word, and violence was done to the Word and to the Lord Himself by the Roman Catholic religion and by the faith-alone religion among the Protestant Reformed. The Lord endured the evils and falsities of both when He executed the Last Judgment, by which He conquered the hells again. If He had not conquered them again, no flesh could have been saved, as He Himself says in Matthew 24:21-22. ¹

Footnotes: