In general, men are driven by intellect and women by affections, and because of this men in the Bible generally represent knowledge and truth and women generally represent love and the desire for good. This generally carries over into marriage, where the man's growing knowledge and understanding and the woman's desire to be good and useful are a powerful combination. In many cases in the Bible, then, "husband" refers to things of truth and understanding, much as "man" does. Magnificent things can happen in a true marriage, though, when both partners are looking to the Lord. If a husband opens his heart to his wife, it's as though she can implant her loves inside him, transforming his intellectual urges into a love of growing wise. She in turn can grow in her love of that blooming wisdom, and use it for joy in their married life and in their caring for children and others in their life. Many couples, even in heaven, stay in that state -- called "Spiritual" -- growing deeper and deeper to eternity. There is the potential, though, for the couple to be transformed: through the nurturing love of his wife the husband can pass from a love of growing wise to an actual love of wisdom itself, and the wife can be transformed from the love of her husband's wisdom into the wisdom of that love -- the actual expression of the love of the Lord they have built together. In that state -- called "Celestial" -- the husband represents love and the desire for good, and the wife represents truth and knowledge.

9452. The Lord in Divine Mercy regenerates a person, and that regeneration goes on from his early childhood right through to the final period of life in the world, and after that for evermore. By this means in Divine Mercy He draws the person away from evils and falsities and brings him to the truths of faith and forms of the good of love, and then maintains him in them. And after this in Divine Mercy He raises him towards Himself, up to heaven, and fills him with bliss. These are the things that are meant by the forgiveness of sins owing to mercy. People who think that sins are forgiven in any other way are completely mistaken. For to see a great number of people in hell and not to save them if this could be achieved in any other way would be the absence of mercy, when yet the Lord is Mercy itself, desiring the death of no one, but rather that he may live.