At face value, the Ten Commandments can seem intense and unforgiving. But Emanuel Swedenborg’s understanding of the internal sense of the Bible—spiritual meanings that lie beneath the literal words—can give us a new perspective on these familiar rules.

In this episode of their Swedenborg and Life web series, hosts Curtis Childs and Jonathan Rose study the inner meaning of the first commandment.

(参考: Apocalypse Revealed 950; Arcana Coelestia 8864, 8865, 8868, 8869, 8875, 8878, 8879, 8880, 8881)

58. In the second tablet, which is for us, it does not say that we must do some specific good thing but that we must not do some specific evil thing - for example, "You are not to kill, you are not to commit adultery, you are not to steal, you are not to bear false witness, you are not to covet." This is because we cannot do anything good on our own, but when we do not do evil things, the good things we do come not from ourselves but from the Lord.

We shall see in what follows [101-107] that we can turn our backs on evil - seemingly on our own, but actually with the Lord's power - if we ask for this humbly.