29. Verses 11-12 And God said, Let the earth cause tender plants to spring up, seed-bearing plants, fruit trees bearing fruit, each according to its kind, in which is its seed, upon the earth; and it was so. And the earth brought forth tender herbs, seed-bearing plants, each according to its kind, and trees bearing fruit, in which is their seed, each according to its kind; and God saw that it was good.

Once the earth or the individual has been made ready in such a way that he can receive from the Lord heavenly seeds and produce some measure of good and truth, the Lord first of all causes something tender to spring up, which is: called 'a tender plant', then something more useful which reproduces itself and is called 'a seed-bearing plant', and finally something good which bears fruit and is called 'a tree bearing fruit' in which is its seed, 'each one according to its kind'. The person who is being regenerated is at first such as imagines that any good he does comes from himself, and that any truth he utters comes from himself; but the fact of the matter is that all good and all truth come from the Lord. Consequently anyone who imagines that these originate in himself does not as yet have the life that belongs to true faith, though he is able to receive it later on. Indeed he is not yet able to believe that they come from the Lord because his state is one of preparation for receiving the life inherent in faith. That state is represented in these verses by plant life, the subsequent state, when the life inherent in faith is present, by living creatures.

[2] The Lord Himself saw fit to tell us that He is 'the sower', that 'the seed' is His Word, and that 'the earth' is man, Matthew 13:19-24, 37-39; Mark 4:14-21; Luke 8:11-16. He describes the matter again in a similar way,

The kingdom of God is like a man casting seed into the ground, and sleeping and rising night and day, and the seed sprouts and springs up, he knows not how; for the earth bears fruit of itself, first the blade, then the ear, then the full corn in the ear. Mark 4:26-28.

In the universal sense, 'the kingdom of God' is used to mean the whole of heaven, in the less universal sense the Lord's true Church, and in particular every individual who has true faith, that is, who has been regenerated by means of the life that inheres in faith. For that reason the individual is also called 'heaven', for heaven is within him, and 'the kingdom of God', since that too is within him. This the Lord Himself teaches through Luke,

Jesus was asked by the Pharisees, When is the kingdom of God coming? He answered them and said, The kingdom of God is not coming with observation, nor will people say, Behold, here it is! or, Behold, there! for behold, the kingdom of God is within you. Luke 17:20-21.

This is the third stage of a person's regeneration, a state when he is repentant. It is like passing from shadow into the light, or from evening to morning, and this is why it is said in Verse 13, And there was evening, and there was morning, a third day.

4807. CHAPTER 38

In the preliminary section of the previous chapter, in 4661-4664, an explanation was begun of what, in Matthew 25:31-end, the Lord said about judgement on the good and the evil, who are there called the sheep and the goats. What the internal sense of those words is has not yet been explained, but comes up for explanation now in the preliminary sections of this and a couple of chapters ¹ following it. From these explanations it will be clear that by a last judgement in this parable He did not mean a last phase of the world, when - for the first time - the dead will rise again and will be gathered before the Lord and will be judged, but that He meant the last phase of a person passing over from the world to the next life, this point being his time of judgement. This is the judgement He meant. But none of this is seen from the sense of the letter, only from the internal sense. The reason the Lord spoke in the way He did is that He spoke using representatives and meaningful signs, as He has done everywhere else in the Old Testament Word and in the New. For to speak using representatives and meaningful signs is to speak simultaneously to the world and to heaven, that is, both to men and to angels. This kind of speech, being universal, is Divine and therefore proper to the Word. Consequently, those who are in the world and are interested only in worldly matters grasp nothing else from the words spoken by the Lord regarding a last judgement than the idea that everyone's resurrection will take place at one and the same point in time, when the Lord will sit on a throne of glory and address those gathered together there in the words used in the parable. But those who are interested in heavenly matters know that each person rises again at the point in time when he dies, and that the Lord's words in the parable carry the teaching that everyone will be judged according to what his life is, thus that everyone brings his judgement with him because he brings his life with him.

Imibhalo yaphansi: