The Betrothal

A Christmas Doctrinal Class by Rev. Andrew M.T. Dibb

Now in the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin's name was Mary. (Luke 1:26-27)

So begins the wonderful story of the Lord's conception in the Gospel of Luke. The scene is familiar to each of us: Mary is at home, when suddenly she sees the angel Gabriel and hears his words of great joy:

"Rejoice, highly favoured one, the Lord is with you; blessed are you among women!" (Luke 1:28)

An angel is a messenger of the Lord. In the Word angels came to bring wisdom and comfort, hope and the good news, the “euangellion” or Gospel, to those to whom the Lord wanted His presence revealed. This Gospel is the teaching that the Lord Jesus Christ was born into this world, that He made it possible for all people to be saved and brought into His kingdom. Thus the angel Gabriel came in excitement to Mary to inform her that she was the Lord’s choice as His natural mother.

When Mary saw the angel Gabriel, she didn't know that he was the human form of an entire society of angels. Nor did she know that his greatest love is to tell people about the Lord, especially that He would be born into the world to save the human race from spiritual bondage.

The scene of the angel Gabriel announcing to Mary that she would conceive and bear a son, and call His name Jesus, is one of the most poignant in the Word. Mary was a simple person, living in Galilee far away from the centre of worship at Jerusalem. She was neither highly educated nor socially well connected, except that she descended from Israel’s greatest king, David. There is a beautiful innocence in Mary’s simplicity. The last thing she expected in life was to see an angel. The image we have of Mary is of a demure young maiden, a virgin in every sense, for, as she said to the angel, 'I do not know a man'. Her state of life was that of a young woman about to embark on her married life to Joseph, but still living at home with her parents. The marriage had not yet been celebrated.

It is central to the Christmas story that Mary was betrothed to Joseph when the angel Gabriel appeared to her. This fact is mentioned in the lesson we read in the Gospel of Luke, where it is plainly stated that she was a 'virgin betrothed'. In Matthew we are again told that Mary was 'betrothed to Joseph'. This means that she had been promised as a wife to Joseph. In our culture, we would say that they were engaged to be married.

There are several good reasons why Mary should have been in this state when she conceived the Lord:

- In the Jewish Church of that time betrothal was considered marriage, although the marriage had not yet been consummated. This meant that the people around her considered Mary a woman, and it also meant that her mind was focusing on the upcoming marriage and future life as a wife and a mother.

- She was expected, during this period of betrothal, to remain in a state of order. She was not free to come into romantic contact with any other man, and she certainly was not permitted to have sexual intercourse with any man, including her husband to be.

The angel appeared to her in this state precisely for that reason - the child who was to be conceived needed to be conceived in a state of virginity, and there could be no question down the ages that Jesus was the son of an ordinary man. This is why Mary protested that she could not conceive because she 'had not known a man'.

There is a very good reason for this: the doctrines tell us that the human soul is transmitted as the living principle of the masculine seed. That soul, or internal human is passed from father to child, is an image of the father's own soul - although the life in it is from the Divine Itself. When a child is conceived, that human soul can receive life from the Lord, and, using the life in it, begins to draw from the mother the various substances needed to form the human body. When the child is born, he or she becomes an individual, drawing life from the Lord, and potential spiritual things from both mother and father, and the body from the mother. Thus there is a complete mixing of parents in the birth of a child.

When the angel Gabriel came to Mary, he announced the birth of the Lord. It was to be a miracle of all miracles, for according to prophecy a virgin would conceive and bear a son. He was conceived of the Holy Spirit. His soul was Divine, given to Him by the Father, or, put another way, the soul within Jesus was not limited and finite as our souls are, but infinite and eternal, and capable of overcoming the powers of hell and saving the human race.

Here's an excerpt from Swedenborg's work, Arcana Coelestia 1999: "But the Lord's Internal was Jehovah Himself, since He was conceived from Jehovah, who cannot be divided or become the relative of another, like a son who has been conceived from a human father. For unlike the human, the Divine is not capable of being divided but is and remains one and the same. To this Internal the Lord united the Human Essence. Moreover because the Lord's Internal was Jehovah it was not, like man's internal, a recipient form of life, but life itself. Through that union His Human Essence as well became life itself. Hence the Lord's frequent declaration that He is Life, as in John,

As the Father has Life in Himself, so He has granted the Son to have Life in Himself. John 5:26."

Yet even a soul such as that, if it is to live and walk amongst the people of this earth, must be clothed in a body. The Lord always operates within the boundaries of the order of creation - and order dictates that a soul must be clothed with a material body.

At first the father’s soul is clothed with human elements, for it begins as a reproduction of the father’s own soul, then,

"during its descent, … the soul is enveloped by elements of a type that have to do with the father's natural love. This is the source from which hereditary evil springs." (Conjugial Love 245)

And so the Lord needed an orderly environment in which to be born. Mary was chosen as His mother because, according to the Lord's all-seeing wisdom, He saw that she would be willing to carry this child, and she would be able to nurture Him in such a way that He would grow up prepared for the great work ahead of Him.

Yet Mary had to be in a state of order herself. In ancient Israel, to bear a child meant that she had to be married, and yet to preserve the honesty of the conception and ensure that the soul was Divine, not human, she had to be in the state before actual physical union with Joseph had taken place - otherwise the Lord could have been Joseph's son. So she had to be betrothed, and no motive should be found as a basis for accusations against the Virgin Birth.

It was partly for this reason that when Joseph heard that she was carrying a child he decided to put her away. Effectively this meant he planned to divorce her. According to the law of Moses, a betrothed woman carrying a child had broken the rules. Ideally speaking, the man responsible should be put to death. Joseph had no idea who the man was, but assumed that there was one. He was, however, a kind man, and so decided not 'to make her a public example', but to put her away privately.

It was at this juncture that the angel Gabriel came to Joseph in a dream, and soothed his fears. 'The child she is carrying,' the angel said, 'is conceived by the Holy Spirit.' Now Joseph understood, and the state of betrothal could continue, and order could be maintained so that the Lord could be born into this world with the full appearance of two loving parents, bound together in marriage after an orderly betrothal.

We now need to expand our vision of the Lord's life in this world. The conception of the Lord was but the first step in his development. He had to be born and grow up. His mind and body had to develop as does our own. The home of Mary and Joseph was needed to provide a stable and orderly environment for Him where He could live and grow, undergoing not only physical and mental development, but also the very processes by which His Divine soul could become present within His natural mind.

In picking these two people to be his 'parents' in the natural world, the Lord was able to provide for the future as well. The Word does not tell us anything about the marriage relationship between Joseph and Mary. We know that Joseph was obedient to the angel when he was told to take Mary and the infant Lord down to Egypt to escape Herod's cruelty. We know that each year they travelled to Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover. We know that had other children, whom likewise they loved and nurtured. But that is about all we know.

The book, Conjugial Love, by Emanuel Swedenborg, however, gives us some insights into the kind of orderly relationship they had. They begin in the concept of Betrothal, for betrothal is introductory to marriage. The kinds of preparation people make for their marriages determine a great deal the course their marriage will follow. The fact that Mary in her betrothed state had 'not known a man' indicates that she took the responsibilities of that state serious. Similarly, the fact that Joseph immediately knew that he was not the father of the child Mary carried indicates a similar seriousness about the state of betrothal. They were both innocent of any wrongdoing, and were obviously committed to building a life together based on the firm foundation of proper preparation.

Their betrothal prepared them for their future life together as man and wife, and, thus as the Lord's parents on earth. Betrothal is a preparation for marriage. It is a time when the minds and spirits of the two partners begin to grow together.

The teachings of the New Church tell us that true marriage, or conjugial love as it is often called, is a meeting and union of two minds. A true marriage is one in which the couple recognises the essential differences between masculinity and femininity, and rejoices in those differences without any attempt to dominate the other. In order for a couple to come into a true appreciation of each other, they need to put aside physical love to foster and nurture spiritual love. This is why Mary and Joseph lived apart during this stage of their relationship, and why they refrained from sexual activity, for in that way they made it possible for their minds to soar, and be united at the highest levels of idealism.

The book Conjugial Love tells us that in this state the mind of each partner is opened by his or her spiritual love. They are able to reach higher levels of love and commitment to each other as they foster the growth of mutual understanding unencumbered by physical things. The passage describing this development, then, goes on to describe how when a couple marry their love descends from the mind to the body. It is worth reflecting on the statement that

"It needs to be known that the quality of conjugial love as it comes down is determined by the height to which it climbs. If it reaches the heights it comes down chaste, but if it does not, it comes down as unchaste." (Conjugial Love 302).

With Mary and Joseph we can but only assume that their love reached its heights during their betrothal, and that their marriage was one of purity and chastity. Chastity in this sense means a marriage love between two people that has been cleansed of all impurities. In such a state the husband and wife enjoy the full pleasures of marriage, beginning on the spiritual level with a full meeting of minds, and descends into the body, where their love is consummated.

A marriage of this kind provides the most wonderful environment, for the love between the husband and wife provides a state of tranquillity and peace in which children can be reared. This is the kind of environment the Lord chose to be born into. He knew that during his life in this world He would have to face the most terrible of temptations. He knew that He would have to battle against hell continuously, and face the disbelief of the people around Him. His first thirty-three years were a preparation for this work lying before Him. And so He chose to be born to a couple who were in a state of order, who because of that order, were willing to receive Him into their lives, to nurture Him as if He was their own.

There is a message in this for us. Each one of us wants the Lord to be born into our own lives, and He is willing to come to us. "Behold,' He says, 'I stand at the door and knock'. Yet He can only enter into us to the degree that we bring our lives into order. Mary and Joseph clung to their betrothal - they committed themselves and stood fast. That is what the Lord wants us to do: to commit ourselves to Him, to live according to His Word in every detail of our lives, especially in our relationships with others, in our preparation for marriage, and in our marriages themselves. As we do, then He enters into us, establishes His presence there, and lifts us up to heaven.

AMEN

Lessons:

Deuteronomy 22:25-29

Isaiah 7:14-16

Luke 1:26-38

Conjugial Love 302

8495. 'A holy sabbath to Jehovah shall tomorrow be' means the joining together of goodness and truth into eternity. This is clear from the meaning of 'sabbath' as the joining together of goodness and truth, dealt with below; and from the meaning of 'tomorrow' as into eternity, dealt with in 3998. Anyone who does not know what the sabbath represented, and what it was consequently a sign of, also cannot know why it was held to be the holiest institution of all. It was held to be the holiest because in the highest sense it represented the union of the Divine and the Divine Human within the Lord, and in the relative sense the joining together of the Lord's Divine Human and the human race. This is why the sabbath was the holiest. And since it represented those realities it also represented heaven in respect of the joining together of goodness and truth, that is, the joining together called the heavenly marriage. And since the joining together of goodness and truth is accomplished by the Lord alone and nothing at all of it by man, and since it is accomplished in a state of peace, people were most strictly forbidden to do any work on that day. The prohibition was so strict that the soul who did do any was to be cut off. This is stated in Moses as follows,

You shall keep the sabbath, for it is holy to you. He who profanes it must certainly die; for everyone who does work on that day, this soul shall be cut off from the midst of his people. Exodus 31:14.

This was why the one who merely gathered sticks on that day was stoned, Numbers 15:32-36. It is also why the command regarding the sabbath is the third of the Ten Commandments, coming immediately after the two regarding holy worship of Jehovah, Exodus 20:8; Deuteronomy 5:12. And it is why the sabbath is called 'an eternal covenant', Exodus 31:16; for 'a covenant' means a joining together, 665, 666, 1023, 1038, 1864, 1996, 2003, 2021, 6804.

[2] From all this one may now see what is meant in the internal sense by the things said about the sabbath in the following places, as in Isaiah,

Blessed is the person keeping the sabbath so that he does not profane it. Thus said Jehovah to the eunuchs who keep My sabbaths and choose that in which I delight, and hold fast to My covenant, I will give those in My house and within My walls a place and a name better than sons and daughters; I will give them an eternal name which will not be cut off. Whoever keeps the sabbath so that he does not profane it, and those who hold fast to My covenant, I will bring them onto My holy mountain, and make them joyful in My house of prayer. Isaiah 56:2-7.

From these words it is evident that those who are joined to the Lord are meant by those who keep the sabbath holy. That they will be in heaven is meant by the promise that those in Jehovah's house will be given a place and a name better than sons and daughters, an eternal name which will not be cut off, and that they will be brought onto the holy mountain.

[3] In the same prophet,

If you turn away your foot from the sabbath, so that you do not do your own will on My holy day, but call the sabbath, Delights holy to Jehovah, honourable, and honour it, so that you do not do your own ways, nor find your own desire or speak [your own] words, then you will take delight in Jehovah, and I will convey you into the high places of the earth, and I will feed you with the heritage of Jacob. Isaiah 58:13-14.

What was represented by the requirement that they should not do any work on the sabbath day is clearly evident here, namely that they must not do anything that begins in themselves, only what begins in the Lord. For the angelic state in heaven is such that they do not will or do, they do not even think or utter, anything that begins in themselves or what is properly their own. This is what their being joined to the Lord consists in. Not doing anything that begins in themselves is meant when it says that they should not do their own will, nor do their own ways, nor find their own desire, nor speak [their own] words. This state existing with the angels is the heavenly state itself; and when they are in it they experience peace and rest. Also the Lord has rest, for when they have been joined to Him their labour ceases; they now abide in the Lord. These things are meant by the words 'so shall you call the sabbath, Delights holy to Jehovah' and that they will take delight in Jehovah. The Lord's rest is meant where it says that after creating on six days 'He rested on the seventh day', Genesis 2:2.

[4] The same things are meant by the following words in Jeremiah,

If you most certainly hear Me, so that you do not bring a burden through the gates of this city on the sabbath day, and you keep the sabbath day holy, so that you do not do any work in it, then there will enter through the gates of this city kings and princes seated on the throne of David, riding in chariots and on horses, they and their princes, the men (vir) of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem. And this city will be inhabited forever. Jeremiah 17:24-25

'Work on the sabbath' means everything that springs from the self. The state of people who are not led by self but by the Lord is what 'there will enter through the gates of the city kings and princes seated on the throne of David, riding in chariots and on horses' describes. 'Kings' means the truths of faith, 'princes' leading aspects of them, 'seated on the throne of David' the fact that they come from the Lord, and 'chariots and horses' religious teachings and intellectual concepts belonging to faith. It should be recognized that everything coming from a person's self is bad, and everything coming from the Lord is good. The fact that everything, in the case of those who are led by the Lord, flows in, down to the smallest particle of life in both their understanding and their will, thus down to every single part of the faith and charity they possess, see what has been shown abundantly from experience in 2886-2888, 6053-6058, 6189-6215, 6307-6327, 6466-6495, 6598-6626, 6982, 6985, 6996, 7004, 7055, 7056, 7058, 7147, 7270.

[5] As regards the sabbath and its being a representative of the joining together of the Lord and the human race, this is clear in Ezekiel,

I gave them My sabbaths, in order that they might be a sign between Me and them, to know that I am Jehovah who sanctifies them. Ezekiel 20:12.

See too Exodus 31:13. Therefore also it was forbidden to kindle fire on the sabbath day, Exodus 35:3, because 'fire' meant all that composed life, and 'kindling fire' that which composed life beginning from self. From all that has been stated it is evident that the Lord is Lord of the sabbath, in accordance with His words in Matthew 12:1-9. It is evident too why a large number of healings by the Lord were performed on sabbath days, Matthew 12:10-14; Mark 3:1-6; Luke 6:6-12; 13:10-17; 14:1-6; John 5:9-18; 7:22-23; 9:14, 16; for the sicknesses from which the Lord healed people involved spiritual sicknesses which exist as a result of evil, 7337, 8364.