Category — Sun of Heaven
Sermon on John 1:1-5, 9-14 T. Pictairn
“In the beginning was the Word, and God was the Word. The same was in the beginning with God. The same was in the beginning with God.
All things were made by Him; and without Him was not anything made that was made. In Him was life; and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not….That was the true light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made by Him, and the world knew Him not. He came into His own, and His own received Him not.
But as many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on His name: Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.” (John 1:1-5; 9-14)
To understand the First Coming of the Lord to man it is necessary to have some understanding of the “Heaven of human internals,” concerning which we read: “Man’s internal is that from which he is a man, and by which he is distinguished from brute animals. By means of this internal he lives after death, and to eternity, a man, and by means of which he can be uplifted by the Lord among the angels. This internal is the very first form from which a man becomes and is man, and by means of it the Lord is united to man. The very Heaven that is nearest the Lord is composed of these human internals; but this is above even the inmost angelic Heaven, and these internals belong to the Lord Himself. By this means the whole human race is most present under the Lord’s eyes, for there is no distance in Heaven… These internals of men have no life in themselves, but are forms recipient of the Lord’s life. Insofar, therefore as a man is in evil, as well actual as hereditary so far he has been separated from this internal which is the Lord’s and with the Lord, and thereby so far he has been separated from the Lord; for although this internal has been adjoined to man, and is inseparable from Him, nevertheless so far as he recedes from the Lord, so far has he been, as it were separated from it. But the separation is not an absolute sundering from it, for then the men could no longer live after death; but it is a dissent and disagreement on the part of those faculties of his which arc below, that is, his rational and his external… But the Lord’s internal was Jehovah Himself.” (A.C. 1999)
Read the full sermon on John 1:1-5, 9-14 by T. Pitcairn
The subject of this sermon is, to a degree, continued in the Series of Sermons on the True Christian Religion №2
Faith of the New Heaven and the New Church
“The Faith of the New Heaven and the New Church in Universal form, is this: That the Lord from the eternal, who is Jehovah, came into the world in order that He might subjugate the hells, and glorify His Human: and that apart from this no one of mortals could have been saved; and that they are saved who believe in Him.” (T.C.R. 2.)
We are taught that the Word consists of the celestial sense, the spiritual sense, and the natural sense which is the sense of the letter.
The celestial sense treats of the Lord and His Glorification, the spirituual sense, of the regeneration of man and of the Lord’s Kingdom, the natural sense, of the reformation of the natural man.In the Third Testament in its literal sense, all these subjects are treated of. This appears like a paradox. We read: “There are in Heaven and in this world a successive order and a simultaneous order. In successive order one thing follows another from highest to lowest; but In simultaneous order one thing is next another from inmost to outmost. Successive order is like a column with successive parts from top to bottom; but simultaneous order is like a connected structure with successive circumferences from center to surface. It shall now be told how in the ultimate successive order becomes simultaneous order. It is in this way: The highest things of successive order become the inmost things of simultaneous order, and the lowest things of successive order become the outmost ones of simultaneous order. Comparatively speaking it is as if a column of successive parts were to sink down and become a connected body in a plane… Apply this to the Word. The celestial, the spiritual, and the natural proceed from the Lord in successive order, and in the ultimate are in simultaneous order; thus now the celestial and spiritual sense of the Word are simultaneous in its natural sense.” (Sacred Scripture 38)
The Faith of the New Heaven and the New Church, concerning the Lord, as first taken up, is the celestial sense in the natural or literal sense of the Word.
It is only as by regeneration man’s mind is opened to the spiritual or celestial degree, that one is in the spiritual or celestial sense proper.
When we first read the Faith of the New Heaven and the New Church concerning the Lord we see it as something outside of ourselves, something which took place two thousand years ago, by which we are in danger of thinking that we are saved by what the Lord did when in the world apart from the Lord’s particular redemption of us….