874. This scene depicts the first stage of regeneration following trial for the people of this church, a stage common to everyone who is being reborn: we imagine that we are doing good deeds and thinking true thoughts under our own power. Because we still cannot see clearly at all, the Lord lets us think this way.

Still, none of the good we do and none of the truth we contemplate while holding this opinion (a mistaken one) is the kind of goodness or truth that makes a part of faith. Nothing that we produce from ourselves can be good, because it is from ourselves — an impure and very unclean source. From an impure and unclean source nothing good can spring, because we are always thinking about how deserving and righteous we are. Some people, as the Lord teaches in Luke 18:9-14, go further and despise others in comparison with themselves. Others do other things just as bad. Self-centered desires add themselves to the mixture, making the exterior look good, although the interior is filthy.

As a consequence, the good that we do at this stage is not the good that belongs to faith. It is the same with the truth that we think. Even if the idea we adopt is absolutely true and is in itself a valid religious concept, nonetheless as long as we adopt it for selfish reasons, it has no religious good within it. Any truth, in order to be theologically true, has to have the good of faith from the Lord within it. That is when it first becomes good and true.

2203. 'Saying, After I have grown old, shall I have this pleasure?' means that the affection possessed by that truth had no inclination to change its state. This is clear from the meaning of 'growing old' as casting off the human and so as changing its state, dealt with above in 2198, and from the meaning of 'shall I have this pleasure?' as not desiring it, thus that this affection was not so inclined. The implication of these matters becomes clear from what has been stated above in 2196 about Sarah standing at the tent door, and this being behind him, namely that the human rational as regards truth is such that it is not able to understand what the Divine is, for the reason that that truth is immersed in appearances, and consequently that which it cannot understand it does not believe, and that which it does not believe does not affect it. The appearances in which the rational is immersed are such that they do affect it, for the appearances themselves bring delight and therefore if deprived of appearances the rational imagines that no delight is left, whereas heavenly affection is not immersed in appearances but in good and truth themselves. But as rational truth is of this nature, it is also excusable and permissible for it to be immersed in appearances and to take delight in them. Such truth immersed in appearances is represented here by 'Sarah' when the Lord joined Himself to the Divine. This explains why it is said that she stood at the tent door and that she laughed and said, 'After I have grown old shall I have this pleasure?' by which is meant that the affection possessed by rational truth had no inclination to change its state.