2854. 'Because you have hearkened to My voice' means through the union of the Lord's Human Essence with His Divine Essence. This becomes clear from all that has gone before and to which these words form a conclusion. 'Hearkening to the voice' means that He underwent the final degree of temptation and in so doing united the Human Essence to the Divine Essence. The fact that the Lord united the Human to the Divine, and the Divine to the Human, by means of constantly occurring temptations and victories, see 1737, 1813, and that by means of that union He saved the human race, 1676 (end), 1990, 2016, 2025. The entire state of salvation in which the human race is kept is due to that union. It is commonly supposed that the Father sent the Son to endure the harshest sufferings, even to death on the Cross, and thus that by seeing the passion and merit of His Son would be merciful to the human race. But anyone may recognize that Jehovah is not merciful to the human race on account of what He may see the Son to have done, for Jehovah is mercy itself, but that the arcanum regarding the Lord's Coming into the world is that within Himself He united the Divine to the Human, and the Human to the Divine, which union could not have been effected except through the very bitter experiences brought about by temptations. And from this anyone may also recognize that by means of that union it was possible for salvation to come to the human race among whom no celestial or spiritual good, not even natural good, remained any longer. It is this union which saves those who possess the faith that is rooted in charity. It is the Lord Himself who shows mercy.

2016. To say that the Lord is the source of all good, and from this of all truth, is to express an unchanging truth. Angels see this truth with perception, so clearly that they perceive that insofar as anything is derived from the Lord it is good and true, and insofar as anything is derived from themselves it is evil and false. They also confess this truth before souls newly arrived there, and before spirits who are in doubt about it; indeed, they go so far as to declare that they are withheld by the Lord from evil and falsity which arise from their proprium and are kept by Him in good and truth. The actual withholding from their evil and falsity and the actual entrance of the Lord with good and truth is also perceptible to them; see 1614. But as to man's imagining that he does what is good from himself and thinks what is true from himself, this is an appearance due to his state being a state in which no perception is present and in which very great obscurity exists where influx is concerned. What he thinks therefore is based on that appearance, indeed on a delusion, from which he never allows himself to be removed so long as he believes nothing but the senses and reasons from these whether the thing is so. But although the appearance is such, man ought nevertheless to do what is good and to think what is true as from himself, for in no other way can he be reformed and regenerated. For the reason why, see 1937, 1947.

[2] The subject in this verse is the Lord's Human Essence that was to be united to the Divine Essence, also that all good and truth would accordingly come to man from the Divine Essence by way of His Human Essence. This is a Divine arcanum which few believe because they cannot grasp it mentally. Indeed they imagine that Divine Good can reach out to man independently of the Lord's Human united to the Divine. But the reason it cannot do so has already been shown briefly in 1676, 1990 - that through the evil desires in which he had immersed himself and through the falsities with which he had blinded himself man had moved himself so far away from the Supreme Divine that no influx of the Divine into the rational part of his mind was possible, except by way of the Human which the Lord united in Himself to the Divine. It was through His Human that communication was established, for in that way the Supreme Divine was able to come to man, as the Lord explicitly states in many places, that is to say, where He says that He is the way and that there is no other access to the Father except through Him. This then is what is being stated here - that He, that is to say, the Human united to the Divine, is the source of all good and of all truth.