Man Possesses Power to Obey

From True Christian Religion ~ Emanuel Swedenborg

(1) God is order itself.

(2) He created man from order, in order, and into order.

(3) He created man's rational mind in accordance with the order of the whole spiritual world, and his body in accordance with the order of the whole natural world; and this is why man was called by the ancients a little heaven and a little cosmos.

(4) Therefore it is a law of order that man from his little heaven or his little spiritual world should govern his little cosmos or little natural world, just as God from His great heaven or spiritual world governs the great cosmos or natural world in each thing and all things of it.

(5) It is a resulting law of order that it is needful for man to lead himself into faith by means of truths from the Word, and into charity by means of good works, and so reform and regenerate himself.

(6) It is a law of order that man by his own exertion and power should purify himself from sins, and not stand still, believing in his own impotency, and expecting God to wash his sins away in a moment.

(7) It is also a law of order that man should love God with his whole soul and with his whole heart, and his neighbor as himself, and should not wait and expect that God will in an instant put these loves into his mind and heart, as bread from a baker may be put into his mouth.

It is ... a law of order that man by his own exertion and power ought to acquire faith by means of truths from the Word, and yet believe that not a grain of truth is from himself, but from God only; moreover, that man by his own exertion and power ought to justify himself, and yet believe that not a single point of justification is from himself, but from God only. Is not man commanded to believe in God, and to love God with all his strength, and his neighbor as himself? Consider and say how this could have been commanded by God if man possessed no power to obey and do it.

(True Christian Religion 71)

Even If You are in Heresies...

From Divine Providence ~ Emanuel Swedenborg

The merely natural man confirms himself against the Divine providence by the fact that there have been and still are so many heresies in the Christian world.... For he may think to himself, If the Divine providence were universal in its least particulars, and had the salvation of all as its end, it would have caused one true religion to exist throughout the world, and that one not divided, still less torn into heresies. But make use of your reason, and think more deeply, if you can, whether a man can be saved unless he is previously reformed. For he is born into the love of self and love of the world; and as these loves do not carry in them anything of love to God or of love towards the neighbor except for the sake of self, he has been born also into evils of every kind. What is there of love or mercy in these loves? Does he [from these loves] think anything of defrauding another, defaming him, hating him even to the death, committing adultery with his wife, being cruel to him when moved by revenge, while cherishing in his mind a wish to be highest of all, and to possess the goods of all others, and while regarding others as insignificant and worthless compared with himself? If such a man is to be saved must he not first be led away from these evils, and thus reformed? This can be done only in accordance with many laws which are laws of the Divine providence.... These laws are for the most part unknown; nevertheless, they are laws of the Divine wisdom and at the same time of the Divine love, and the Lord cannot act contrary to them, because to do so would be to destroy man, not to save him.

Let the laws that have been set forth be reviewed and compared, and you will see. And since, then, it is in accordance with these laws that there is no immediate influx from heaven, but only mediate influx through the Word, doctrines, and preaching; also, for the Word to be Divine it must needs be written wholly by correspondences; it follows that discussions and heresies are inevitable, and that permissions of these are also in accord with the laws of the Divine providence. Furthermore, when the church itself has taken as its essentials such things as belong to the understanding alone, that is, to doctrine, and not such as belong to the will, that is, to the life, and the things that belong to the life are not made the essentials of the church, man from his understanding is then in mere darkness, and wanders about like a blind man, everywhere running against something and falling into pits. For the will must see in the understanding, and not the understanding in the will; or what is the same, the life and its love must lead the understanding to think, speak, and act, and not the reverse. If the reverse were true, the understanding, from an evil and even a diabolical love, might seize upon whatever presents itself through the senses, and enjoin the will to do it. From all this the source of dissensions and heresies can be seen.

And yet it has been provided that every one, in whatever heresies he may be in respect to the understanding, can be reformed and saved, if only he shuns evils as sins, and does not confirm heretical falsities in himself; for by shunning evils as sins the will is reformed, and through the will the understanding, which then first emerges from darkness into light. There are three essentials of the church, an acknowledgment of the Divine of the Lord, an acknowledgment of the holiness of the Word, and the life that is called charity. According to the life which is charity is every one's faith; from the Word comes the knowledge of what the life must be, and from the Lord are reformation and salvation. If the church had held these three as essentials it would not have been divided, but only varied, by intellectual dissensions, as light varies the color in beautiful objects, and as various circlets give beauty in the crown of a king.

(Divine Providence 259)

Man Altogether As His Love

Selection from Arcana Coelestia ~ Emanuel Swedenborg

What the perception and acknowledgment of the Divine from love are - Every man's quality is known from his love; for love is the being of the life of everyone, from it springing the veriest life itself; such therefore as the love is with a man, such is the man. If there is the love of self and of the world, consequently the love of revenge, of hatred, of cruelty, of adultery, and the like, the man is a devil as to his spirit, or as to the interior man which lives after death, however he may appear in the outward form. But if there is with a man the love of God and the love of the neighbor, and consequently the love of good and truth, also of what is just and honorable, then however he may appear in the outward form, he is an angel as to his spirit which lives after death. But He with whom there is Divine love, which was with the Lord alone, is God; thus His Human was made Divine when He received in the Human the love of His Father, which was the being of His life. From all this it can be seen what is meant by the perception and acknowledgment of the Divine from love.

That man is altogether as is his love, is a constant truth, as is plain from the angels in the other life, who when seen appear as forms of love, the love itself not only shining forth, but also exhaling from them, so that you would say that they are wholly nothing but loves. The reason is, that all the interiors of an angel, as also of a man, are nothing but forms recipient of life, and because they are forms recipient of life, they are forms recipient of loves, for loves make the life of man. When therefore the inflowing love and the recipient form are in agreement, it follows that the angel or man is such as his love is; and this not only in his organic beginnings, which are in the brain, but also in the whole body, for the body is nothing but an organ derived from its beginnings.

From all this it can be seen that man is made altogether new when he is being regenerated, for then each and all things with him are so disposed as to receive heavenly loves. Nevertheless with man the prior forms are not destroyed, but only removed; but with the Lord the prior forms, which were from the maternal, were completely destroyed and extirpated, and Divine forms were received in their place. For the Divine love does not agree with any but a Divine form; all other forms it absolutely casts out; hence it is that the Lord when glorified was no longer the son of Mary.

(Arcana Coelestia 6872:2-4)