Selection from Arcana Coelestia ~ Emanuel Swedenborg
— Doctrinal Things of Charity —
Verily, verily, I say to thee, Except a man be begotten anew, he cannot see the kingdom of God (John 3:3).Man is not born of his parents into spiritual life, but into natural life. Spiritual life is to love God above all things, and to love the neighbor as oneself, and this according to the commandments of faith which the Lord has taught in the Word. But natural life is to love self and the world above the neighbor, yea above God Himself.
Every man is born of his parents into the evils of the love of self and of the world. Every evil which by habit has contracted a kind of nature, is derived into the offspring, thus successively from parents, from grandparents, and from great-grandparents, in a long series backward. From this the derivation of evil has at last become so great, that all of man's own life is nothing else than evil. This continuous derived nature is not broken and changed, except by the Lord through a life of faith and charity.
Man continually inclines and lapses into what he derives hereditarily. By so doing he confirms this evil in himself, and also adds to it more evils from himself.
These evils are utterly contrary to spiritual life. They destroy it. Therefore unless in respect to his spiritual life a man is conceived anew, born anew, and reared anew, that is, created anew by the Lord, he is damned, for he wills nothing else, and consequently thinks nothing else, than what is of hell.
When a man is of this character, the order of life in him is inverted. That which ought to rule serves, and that which ought to serve rules. For his salvation to be possible this order in the man must be wholly inverted. This is effected by the Lord through regeneration.
(Arcana Coelestia 8548-8553)
(series to be continued)