These three things are linked in a continuous process. The way they are used in the Lord’s Word are, in a way, like a legal contract. The covenant sets out the terms of the contract,, which the parties agree to. Reciprocation takes place as the two parties act in following the contract, and conjunction is the mutual satisfaction of the parties when the contract is fulfilled.

Our most important contract is the one between us and the Lord, because it brings us to heaven and it fulfills His end and purpose for us. The reciprocal action that we can take is played out in the struggle between our own will and our own understanding of the Lord’s law. That’s where we fight our battle with the temptations that come from hell. If we persist, we will find conjunction.

The same process - covenant, reciprocation, and conjunction - can be seen in our relationships with all other people, strangers, friends, family members, and especially spouses. It can be a very powerful process, as it was and is the process that took place between the Divine love and Divine wisdom when the Lord created the Universe.

Covenant

We will look at the term “Covenant” first, because it is the beginning of the process. The covenant is the outline of what the Lord requires of us; as he said to Abraham, “walk before me and be thou perfect”. Here, to walk means to live your life (Genesis 17:1). Later the Lord renewed His Covenant with Isaac and with Jacob, and later still with the whole of the children of Israel at Mt. Sinai. As is said in Isaiah, “… put away the evil of your doings from before My eyes; cease to do evil, learn to do well…” (Isaiah 1:7-8). The basic evils are more explicitly stated in the Ten Commandments given at Mt. Sinai on the two stone tables. And just as these tables were kept in the Ark of the Covenant, in the tabernacle which was in the center of the ordered camp of the children of Israel, so should these laws be in the center of an orderly human mind.

The Word of the Lord, or the Sacred Scriptures, are the only place where we are taught about the Lord and the only place where we can learn about His laws. The more we read them, the more light can be let into our minds so that we can realize that the whole of the Word is the Covenant. The same covenant that was with Abraham is active with us right now.

(Referenties: Apocalypse Explained 701; Arcana Coelestia 666 [1-2], 1023, 1038 [1-2], Arcana Coelestia 2084, 4197 [9], Arcana Coelestia 6804 [5-6], Arcana Coelestia 8767)

Reciprocation

The word reciprocation means a give and take, back and forth - the sharing of a conversation or elements of a common task. As used in the doctrines for the New Church it can mean the working together of an individual’s wish to do something and the learning of how to do it, or the interaction of a couple working to build a marriage, and raise a family, or of a person striving, with the Lord’s help, to regenerate.

In this context, reciprocation is the actual day to day working out of the Covenant. For example, children and parents have a long slow time as children go from total dependence on the parents to the stage when they can make decisions on their own, and much of this time requires the parents to allow children more and more choice while still being in charge. Children learn in school the give and take of getting along with contemporaries. Husbands and wives must adjust from being individuals, to being half of a couple, and how to be dependent on each other in that couplehood.

At some point with every person, when they reach adulthood, the decision comes to accept or reject any covenant they will have with God. The basic covenant spelled out to Abraham is still in power and can be adopted by anyone. Then they will start to seek out ways to apply it, to see truth, see and admit to evils in themselves and try to shun them. The work of the Lord has been going on in the children, helping them to be happy in getting along with parents and friends, but now it moves to a deeper plane. The work of the adult natural person in shunning an evil, and the Lord’s work of helping, both as part of the covenant, are the reciprocation that can lead to the Lord’s implanting of good loves in place of the shunned evil ones. This work goes on and on a little bit at a time, addressing one evil after another.

(Referenties: Arcana Coelestia 5365 [2], 5928, 5931, Arcana Coelestia 8691, Arcana Coelestia 9200, 9604; Divine Love and Wisdom 35, 57; Divine Providence 92; True Christian Religion 371)

Conjunction

Conjunction means a joining with. We join with the Lord in the project of making ourselves into an angel. He wants this so that we can be eternally happy and useful, and He created us so that we are able to do it. We can refuse if we want to - we’re free to do that - but we should realize that if we do we will be, in the long run, unhappy.

By ourselves we can’t change our loves from evil ones to good ones. Only the Lord can do that. But we can control our actions and the thoughts that we dwell on. This is why the Ten Commandments are mostly given as negatives and not positives. If we avoid evil actions, it creates room for the Lord to work in. Eventually He can move the evils off to the sides, and wall them off, and fill the center with better loves, slowly causing us to be reborn. But it is always up to us, because we are making the choice. And it doesn’t happen in an instant; the challenges from hell go on all through our natural lives.

Ultimately, in the spiritual world we will be joined to the Lord living freely in His Heaven, doing what we love to do without barriers, because our loves are aligned with the Lord’s order. Those who have chosen not to follow his covenant are continually frustrated because they are in their own order which has never aligned with His, and they can never do all that they want.

Other terms that might be of interest are Proprium, Regeneration, and Reformation.

(Referenties: Apocalypse Revealed 937; Arcana Coelestia 2021, 2063 [2-3], Arcana Coelestia 4525, Arcana Coelestia 8495 [3-5], 8506, 8507, 8516 [2-3], Arcana Coelestia 8725, Arcana Coelestia 10143 [3], 10729; Divine Providence 28 [2-3]; Heaven and Hell 367)

8516. 'Therefore on the sixth day He gives you the bread of two days' means that for this reason right at the end of the former state He imparts so great an amount of truth through good that the joining together takes place after that. This is clear from the meaning of 'the sixth day' as the end of a former state, dealt with in 8421; from the meaning of the manna, to which 'the bread' refers here, as the good of truth, dealt with in 8462, 8464; and from the meaning of the sabbath, for which day also the manna on the sixth day was given, so that it was two days' bread, as the joining together of goodness and truth, dealt with in 8495. It has been shown above that since 'the sabbath' means the joining together of goodness and truth, the fact that no man[na] was to be found on the seventh day means that when that joining together has taken place a person's actions spring from good and no longer from truth, indeed that they must not any longer spring from truth, 8510.

[2] But as this appears rather baffling, let a few further words of explanation be added. Everyone ought to be led to Christian good, which is called charity, through the truth of faith; for the truth of faith must teach not only what charity is but also what it needs to be like. And unless a person learns this first from the teachings of his Church - for he cannot by any means know it instinctively - he cannot be prepared and so made fit to receive that good. For example, he needs to know from religious teachings that charity in no way involves doing good for selfish reasons, that is, for the sake of reward, nor thus meriting salvation through the works of charity. He also needs to know that all the good of charity originates in the Lord, and none whatever in self, besides very many other teachings telling him what charity is and needs to be like. From all this it becomes clear that a person cannot be led to Christian good except through the truths of faith. In addition a person needs to know that truths do not of themselves enter good but that good adopts truths and attaches them to itself; for the truths of faith in a person's memory lie so to speak in a field that is spread out before his inward vision. Good from the Lord flows into that vision, and from the truths present there it selects and joins to itself those that are compatible. The truths, which lie below, cannot flow into the good, which is above, since it is altogether contrary to order, as well as impossible, for what is lower to flow into what is higher, 5259.

[3] From all this one may now see how Christian good is born with a person when he is being regenerated, and therefore also what a person will be like when he has been regenerated, namely one whose actions spring from good, but not from truth. That is, he is one who is led by the Lord through good and no longer through truth, for now he is governed by charity, that is, by an affection for doing that good. All who are in heaven are led in such a manner, for it is in keeping with Divine order. Thus everything they think or do flows so to speak spontaneously and freely. It would be altogether different if truth were to shape their thought and action, for then they would cogitate over whether or not they should do a certain thing, and so would hesitate over details, and in so doing would obscure the light they have. Eventually they would act in accord with what they themselves loved, thus in accord with influences that pander to their own loves, which is to be led by self, not by the Lord. From all this it is again evident what it is to be forbidden to acquire good through truth any longer, meant by the people gathering manna on six days, and finding none on the seventh day, dealt with in 8505, 8506, 8510.