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John 1

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1 From the first he was the Word, and the Word was in relation with God and was God.

2 This Word was from the first in relation with God.

3 All things came into existence through him, and without him nothing was.

4 What came into existence in him was life, and the life was the light of men.

5 And the light goes on shining in the dark; it is not overcome by the dark.

6 There was a man sent from God, whose name was John.

7 He came for witness, to give witness about the light, so that all men might have faith through him.

8 He himself was not the light: he was sent to give witness about the light.

9 The true light, which gives light to every man, was then coming into the world.

10 He was in the world, the world which came into being through him, but the world had no knowledge of him.

11 He came to the things which were his and his people did not take him to their hearts.

12 To all those who did so take him, however, he gave the right of becoming children of God--that is, to those who had faith in his name:

13 Whose birth was from God and not from blood, or from an impulse of the flesh and man's desire.

14 And so the Word became flesh and took a place among us for a time; and we saw his glory--such glory as is given to an only son by his father--saw it to be true and full of grace.

15 John gave witness about him, crying, This is he of whom I said, He who is coming after me is put over me because he was in existence before me.

16 From his full measure we have all been given grace on grace.

17 For the law was given through Moses; grace and the true way of life are ours through Jesus Christ.

18 No man has seen God at any time; the only Son, who is on the breast of the Father, he has made clear what God is.

19 And this is the witness of John when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to him with the question, Who are you?

20 He said quite openly and straightforwardly, I am not the Christ.

21 And they said to him, What then? Are you Elijah? And he said, I am not. Are you the prophet? And his answer was, I am not.

22 So they said to him, Who are you then? We have to give some answer to those who sent us. What have you to say about yourself?

23 He said, I am the voice of one crying in the waste land, Make straight the way of the Lord, as said Isaiah the prophet.

24 Those who had been sent came from the Pharisees.

25 And they put this question to him, saying, Why then are you giving baptism if you are not the Christ, or Elijah, or the prophet?

26 John's answer was: I give baptism with water; but there is one among you of whom you have no knowledge;

27 It is he who is coming after me; I am not good enough to undo his shoes.

28 These things took place at Bethany on the other side of the Jordan, where John was giving baptism.

29 The day after, John sees Jesus coming to him and says, See, here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!

30 This is he of whom I said, One is coming after me who is put over me because he was in existence before me.

31 I myself had no knowledge of him, but I came giving baptism with water so that he might be seen openly by Israel.

32 And John gave this witness, saying, I saw the Spirit coming down from heaven like a dove and resting on him.

33 I had no knowledge who he was, but he who sent me to give baptism with water said to me, The one on whom you see the Spirit coming down and resting, it is he who gives baptism with the Holy Spirit.

34 This I saw myself and my witness is that he is the Son of God.

35 The day after, John was there again with two of his disciples;

36 And looking at Jesus while he was walking he said, See, there is the Lamb of God!

37 Hearing what he said, the two disciples went after Jesus.

38 And Jesus, turning round, saw them coming after him and said to them, What are you looking for? They said to him, Rabbi (which is to say, Master), where are you living?

39 He said to them, Come and see. They went with him then and saw where he was living; and they were with him all that day: it was then about the tenth hour of the day.

40 Andrew, Simon Peter's brother, was one of the two men who, hearing what John said, went after Jesus.

41 Early in the morning he came across his brother and said to him, We have made discovery! It is the Messiah! (which is to say, the Christ).

42 And he took him to Jesus. Looking at him fixedly Jesus said, You are Simon, the son of John; your name will be Cephas (which is to say, Peter).

43 The day after this, Jesus had a desire to go into Galilee. He came across Philip and said to him, Come and be my disciple.

44 Now Philip's town was Beth-saida, where Andrew and Peter came from.

45 Philip came across Nathanael and said to him, We have made a discovery! It is he of whom Moses, in the law, and the prophets were writing, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.

46 Nazareth! said Nathanael, Is it possible for any good to come out of Nazareth? Philip said to him, come and see.

47 Jesus saw Nathanael coming to him and said of him, See, here is a true son of Israel in whom there is nothing false.

48 Nathanael said to him, Where did you get knowledge of me? In answer Jesus said, Before Philip was talking with you, while you were still under the fig-tree, I saw you.

49 Nathanael said to him, Rabbi, you are the Son of God, you are King of Israel!

50 In answer Jesus said to him, You have faith because I said to you, I saw you under the fig-tree. You will see greater things than these.

51 And he said to him, Truly I say to you all, You will see heaven opening and God's angels going up and coming down on the Son of man.

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Arcana Coelestia #9144

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9144. 'And catches hold of thorns' means which spreads into falsities. This is clear from the meaning of 'catching hold of', when said of anger that arises from an affection for evil, as spreading into and thus setting alight; and from the meaning of 'thorns' as falsities, dealt with below. But something must be stated first about what is implied in all this. The loves present with a person are the fires of his life, 9055. Evil loves - self-love and love of the world - are consuming fires; they consume the forms of good and the truths which true life comprises. Those fires compose the life of a person's will, and the light from those fires composes the life of his understanding. As long as the evil fires are kept shut up in the will, the understanding dwells in light and consequently discerns what is good and true. But when those fires spill out their light into the understanding the light previously there is dispelled and the person's discernment of what is good and true is dimmed. The situation grows worse, as self-love and love of the world, which those fires are, take hold more and more, so that eventually they smother and snuff out all truth, and good along with it.

[2] When those loves are attacked fire breaks out of the will into the understanding and produces a flame there. This flame is what is called anger. This is why a person is said to flare up, blaze up, and be inflamed, when he is angry. This flame assails the truths and forms of good present in the understanding and not only hides them but also consumes them. Furthermore, and this is an arcanum, when that evil fire bursts out of the will into the understanding part of the mind, this part is closed above and opened below, that is, closed where it looks towards heaven and opened where it looks towards hell.

[3] So it is that whenever an evil person blazes up in anger evils and falsities that produce the flame are entering in. It is like a fibre in the body. If it is pricked with the point of a needle it instantly pulls itself in and closes up, and in so doing prevents the wound from going any deeper and harming life where it exists essentially. Also, when presented in a visual shape falsity appears as something pointed. An evil person's state when he is angry is also similar to smoke which on a touch of fire bursts into flame; for falsity arising from evil and present in the understanding is like smoke, and anger is like smoke that has been set alight. They also correspond to one another. So it is that in the Word 'smoke' means falsity and 'its flame' means anger, as in David,

Smoke went up out of His nose, and fire out of His mouth; glowing coals flamed forth from Him. Psalms 18:8.

And in Isaiah,

Wickedness burns like a fire, it devours brier and thorn, and kindles the entangled boughs of the wood; and they rise in a column of smoke, 1 through the wrath of Jehovah Zebaoth. Isaiah 9:18-19.

'Smoke' here is falsity which, when set alight, gives rise to anger. For the meaning of 'smoke' as falsity, see 1861.

[4] From all this one may now see what is meant in the internal sense by 'When fire breaks out and catches hold of thorns, and a stack of grain is consumed, or standing grain ... ', namely, If an affection for evil bursts out into anger and spreads into falsities belonging to evil cravings, and consumes the truths and forms of the good of faith ... Anyone who stops to think can see that there is some reason for this law that lies hidden on a more internal level and is not apparent. For nowhere else is a law laid down regarding fire catching hold of thorns and then consuming a stack of grain or standing grain; such an occurrence is extremely rare. But it is an everyday occurrence for the fire of wickedness and of anger to seize on and set alight the falsities of cravings and thereby to consume the Church's truths and forms of good.

[5] The fact that 'thorns' are the falsities of cravings is clear from the following places: In Isaiah,

Over the land of My people the thorn, and the prickle, is coming up. Isaiah 32:13.

'The land' is the Church, 'the thorn or the prickle' falsities and the evils stemming from them. In the same prophet,

[As to] your spirit, a fire will devour you. Thus will the people be burnt into lime; [they will be like] thorns cut down which are burned in the fire. Isaiah 33:11-12.

'Thorns which are burned in the fire' stands for falsities which catch fire and consume truths and forms of good.

[6] In Ezekiel,

No more will there be for the house of Israel a pricking brier and a painful thorn. Ezekiel 28:24.

'A pricking brier' stands for falsity belonging to the cravings of self-love, 'thorn' for falsity belonging to the cravings of love of the world. In Hosea,

Their 2 mother has committed whoredom. Therefore I am hedging up your way with thorns, and she will not find her paths. Hosea 2:5-6.

'Ways' and 'paths' stand for truths, and 'thorns' for falsities instead of them.

[7] In the same prophet,

The high places of Aven, the sin of Israel, will be destroyed. Thistle and thorn will grow up on their altars. Hosea 10:8.

'Thistle and thorn' stands for evil and falsity laying waste the forms of good and the truths of worship. In David,

They have surrounded me like bees, they quench as it were a fire of thorns. 3 Psalms 118:12.

'A fire of thorns' stands for a craving for evil. In Matthew,

By their fruits you will know them. Do people gather grapes from thorns, or figs from thistles? Matthew 7:16.

'Gathering grapes from thorns' stands for obtaining forms of the good of faith and of charity from the falsities of cravings, 'grapes' being those forms of good, see 1071, 5117, 6378.

[8] In Mark,

Some seed fell among thorns; but the thorns grew up and choked it, so that it did not bear fruit. Those who are sown among the thorns are the ones who hear the word; but the cares of this world, and the deceitfulness of riches, and the cravings entering in that are centred on other things, choke the word, so that it becomes unfruitful. Mark 4:7, 18-19.

Here an explanation is given of what is meant by 'being sown among thorns', and so of what is meant by 'thorns'. The same things are meant by 'sowing among thorns' and 'reaping thorns' in Jeremiah,

Thus said Jehovah to the man of Judah and Jerusalem, Break up your fallow ground, and do not sow among thorns. Jeremiah 4:3.

They have sown wheat and reaped thorns. Jeremiah 12:12-13.

[9] The falsities of cravings, meant by 'thorns', are falsities that support worldly concerns and worldly desires; for these falsities more than others catch fire and flare up because they are the product of bodily cravings that a person feels. For this reason they also close the internal man, leaving the person wholly devoid of wisdom so far as salvation of the soul and eternal life are concerned.

[10] The crown woven from thorns which was placed on the Lord's head when He was crucified, and when He was hailed as King of the Jews and He said, 'Behold the Man!', 4 John 19:2-3, 5, represented God's truth as it was at that time in the Jewish Church, namely truth smothered by the falsities of cravings. 'The King of the Jews', as they hailed Him then, meant God's truth. 'King' in the Word means the truth from God, see 1672, 2015, 2069, 3009, 3670, 4575, 4581, 4966, 5044, 6148; and 'the Anointed', who is the Messiah in Hebrew and the Christ in Greek, has a similar meaning, 3004, 3008, 3009, 3732(end). In the highest sense 'Judah' is used to mean the Lord in respect of Divine Good, in the internal sense the Lord in respect of the Word, and so in respect of teachings drawn from the Word, 3881. And when, after such a crown had been placed on His head, the Lord said, 'Behold the Man!', He meant, 'Behold Divine Truth as it is in the Church at the present day!' For 'Man' is Divine Truth going forth from the Lord in heaven. So it is that heaven is the Grand Man, owing both to influx and to correspondence, as has been shown at the ends of a number of chapters, see 1276, 1871, 2996, 2998, 3624-3649, 3741-3750, 7396, 8547, 8988. So it is also that the Lord's celestial Church was called Man, 478, 479, this Church being the one that the Jews represented, 6363, 6364, 8770. All this shows what was meant by 'the crown of thorns', and by being hailed 'King of the Jews', also what was meant by 'Behold the Man' as well as by the inscription over the cross, 'Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews', John 19:19-20. It meant the way in which Divine Truth or the Word was regarded and was treated by the Jews, among whom the Church existed. All the things that the Jews did to the Lord when He was about to be crucified were signs of the states of those belonging to the Church so far as God's truth or the Word was concerned, see 9093(end). That the Lord was the Word is clear in John,

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory. John 1:1, 14.

'The Word' is Divine Truth.

Fotnoter:

1. literally, they raise themselves with a raising of smoke

2. The Latin means Your but the Hebrew means Their, which Swedenborg Has in another place where he quotes this verse.

3. i.e. a fire consuming thorns

4. The words Behold the Man (Ecce Homo) are generally thought to have been spoken by Pilate. The Greek at John 19:5 states simply And he said, Behold the Man.

  
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Thanks to the Swedenborg Society for the permission to use this translation.