Rebirth, Spiritual Development, and the Lord’s Glorification | NCE Spotlight

Featured quotations from Emanuel Swedenborg's Secrets of Heaven:


3200 


These two verses depict the condition of goodness on the rational
plane when it is waiting for the truth that is to unite with it
as a bride with her husband. The next two depict the condition of
truth when it comes close and perceives the goodness with which
it is to unite.


It is important to know, however, that these stages did not
arrive just once but constantly throughout the Lord’s life in the
world, up until he was glorified. The same is true in people who
are regenerating, because they are not reborn once but constantly
throughout their life and even in the other life. After all, we
can never become perfect.


3308


Goodness and truth resemble babies, in that they are conceived,
grow in the womb, are born, grow up, and increase in age until
they reach full maturity. Conception, gestation, and birth belong
to their rise; growing up and aging till they reach full maturity
belong to their progress. The stage of progress, in which
goodness and truth unite, follows birth, and its start is what
growing up symbolizes here. This stage begins right after birth
and continues all the way to the end of life, and in people
devoted to goodness, it continues beyond bodily life to eternity.
In other words, angels are always developing.


3296:2


. . . A person’s rebirth mirrors the Lord’s glorification . . . ;
in other words, regeneration offers an image of the process by
which the Lord glorified his human side, or made it divine. Just
as the Lord changed his human condition into an entirely divine
one, he completely changes our condition when he regenerates us,
since he makes our old self new.