254. "For You created all things, and by Your will they exist and were created." This symbolically means that everything in heaven and the church has been created and formed out of the Lord's Divine love by His Divine wisdom, or out of Divine good by Divine truth, which is also the Word, and that so likewise are people reformed and reborn.

This is the spiritual meaning of this statement, because creating symbolically means to reform and regenerate by Divine truth, and the Lord's will symbolizes Divine good.

Whether one says Divine good and truth or Divine love and wisdom, the meaning is the same, as all good is connected with love, and all truth with wisdom.

In Angelic Wisdom Regarding Divine Love and Wisdom we showed many times that everything in heaven and the church spring from Divine love and wisdom, in fact that the world was created out of them; and we showed too that love and good are connected with the will, and wisdom and truth with the intellect. Thus it is apparent that the Lord's will means His Divine good or love.

[2] That to create in the Word means to reform and regenerate is apparent from the following passages:

Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. (Psalms 51:10)

You open Your hand, they are satisfied with good... You send forth Your Spirit, they are created. (Psalms 104:28, 30)

...a people yet to be created will praise Jah. (Psalms 102:18)

...behold, I am creating a new heaven and a new earth... ...rejoice forever in what I am creating; ...behold, I shall create Jerusalem an exultation... (Isaiah 65:17-18)

...Jehovah, who created the heavens..., who spread forth the earth..., who gives breath to the people on it, and spirit to those who walk on it. (Isaiah 42:5, cf. 45:12, 45:18)

...thus says Jehovah, your Creator, O Jacob, and your Former, O Israel: ...I have redeemed you; I have called you by your name... Everyone who is called by My name, for My glory I have created him. (Isaiah 43:1, 7)

On the day that you were created they were prepared... You were perfect in your ways from the day you were created, till perversity was found in you. (Ezekiel 28:13, 15)

The latter is said of the King of Tyre, who symbolizes people who possess intelligence through Divine truth.

...that they may see and know, and consider and understand..., that the hand of Jehovah has done this, and the Holy One of Israel has created it. (Isaiah 41:19-20)

----------

2. II. The Word is inwardly alive.

When the Word is read by a person who treats it as holy, then in the second heaven its natural sense becomes spiritual, and in the third celestial, as the natural is successively shed. This happens because there is a correspondence between the natural, spiritual and celestial, and the Word is written by means of nothing but correspondences. The Word's natural sense is as it is in the literal sense, all of which becomes spiritual, and then celestial, in the heavens. And when it becomes spiritual, then it there lives from the light of truth in it, and when it becomes celestial it lives from the flame of good in it. For the spiritual ideas of the angels of the second heaven derive from the light there, which is in essence Divine truth; but the celestial ideas of the angels of the third heaven derive from the flame of good, which is in essence Divine good. For in the second heaven the light is brilliant white, and this enables the angels there to think; and in the third heaven the light is flame-like, and this enables the angels there to think.

The thoughts of angels are utterly different from those of people on earth. Their thinking takes place by means of light, either brilliant white or flame-like; these are beyond the range of a natural description. These facts make it clear that the Word is inwardly alive, and so is not dead but living for a person who has holy thoughts about the Word when he reads it. Moreover, everything in the Word is made alive by the Lord, for it becomes life with the Lord, as the Lord says in John:

The words I speak to you are spirit and life. John 6:63.

The life which flows from the Lord through the Word is the light of truth working on the intellect, and the love of good working on the will. This love and that light linked together make the life of heaven for a person, what is called everlasting life. The Lord too teaches:

The Word was God. In Him was life and His life was the light of men. John 1:4.