What is Meant by Loving the Lord and Loving the Neighbor

Selection from Divine Love ~ Emanuel Swedenborg
EVERY GOOD USE IS IN FORM A MAN

So far as man is in the love of use, so far is he in the Lord, so far he loves the Lord and loves the neighbor, and so far he is a man.

From the love of uses we are taught what is meant by loving the Lord and loving the neighbor, also what is meant by being in the Lord and being a man.

To love the Lord means to do uses from Him and for His sake.

To love the neighbor means to do uses to the church, to one's country, to human society, and to the fellow-citizen.

To be in the Lord means to be a use.

To be a man means to perform uses to the neighbor from the Lord for the Lord's sake.

To love the Lord means to do uses from Him and for His sake, for the reason that all the good uses that man does are from the Lord.

Good uses are goods, and it is well known that these are from the Lord.

Loving these is doing them, for what a man loves he does. No one can love the Lord in any other way; for uses, which are goods, are from the Lord, and consequently are Divine, yea they are the Lord Himself with man. These are the things that the Lord can love.

The Lord cannot be conjoined by love to any man, and consequently cannot enable man to love Him, except through His own Divine things — for man from himself cannot love the Lord — the Lord Himself must draw him and conjoin him to Himself.  Therefore, loving the Lord as a Person, and not loving uses, is loving the Lord from oneself, which is not loving. He that performs uses or goods from the Lord performs them also for the Lord's sake. These things may be illustrated by the celestial love in which the angels of the third heaven are. These angels are in love to the Lord more than the angels in the other heavens are, and they have no idea that loving the Lord is anything else than doing goods which are uses, and they say that uses are the Lord with them. By uses they understand the uses and good works of ministry, administration, and employment, as well with priests and magistrates as with merchants and workmen. The good works that are not connected with their occupation they do not call uses; they call them alms, benefactions, and gratuities.

Loving the neighbor means performing uses to the church, one's country, society, and the fellow-citizen, because these are the neighbor in the broad and in the limited sense; neither can these be loved otherwise than by the uses that belong to each one's office.

A priest loves the church, the country, society, the citizen, and thus the neighbor, if he teaches and leads his hearers from zeal for their salvation.

Magistrates and officers love the church, the country, society, the citizen, and thus the neighbor, if they discharge their respective functions from zeal for the common good.

Judges, if from zeal for justice

Merchants, if from zeal for sincerity

Workmen, if from rectitude

Servants, if from faithfulness

and so forth.

When with all these there is faithfulness, rectitude, sincerity, justice, and zeal, there is the love of use from the Lord; and from Him they have love to the neighbor in the broad and in the limited sense; for who that in heart is faithful, upright, sincere and just, does not love the church, the country, and his fellow-citizen?

From what has now been said it is plain that loving the Lord is performing uses from Him, and loving the neighbor is performing uses to him, and the object on account of whom uses are performed is the neighbor, use, and the Lord; and that love thus returns to Him from whom it is. For every love as source through love for its object returns to love as source, which return constitutes its reciprocal. And love continually goes forth and returns through deeds, which are uses, since to love is to do. For love, unless it becomes deed, ceases to be love, since deed is the effect of love's end, and is that in which it exists.

So far as man is in the love of use, so far is he in the Lord because so far is he in the Church, and so far in heaven. The Church and heaven from the Lord are as one man. The forms of which (called higher or lower organic forms, also interior and exterior) are made up of all who love uses by doing them; and the uses themselves are what compose that Man, because it is a Spiritual Man, that does not consist of persons, but of the uses with them. Yet all those are there who receive from the Lord the love of uses — these are they who do them for the neighbor's sake, for use's sake, and for the Lord's sake — and since this Man is the Divine that proceeds from the Lord, and the Divine proceeding is the Lord in the Church and in heaven, it follows that they all are in the Lord.

These are a Man, because every use that in any way promotes the general good or serves the public, is a man, beautiful and perfect according to the quality of the use, and at the same time the quality of its affection. The reason of this is, that in each single part of the human body there is, from its use, an idea of the whole — for the part looks to the whole as its source, and the whole sees the part in itself, as its agent. It is from this idea of the whole in each part that each use therein is a man, in small as well as in greater parts. There are organic forms in the part as well as in the whole.  In fact, the parts of parts, which are interior, are men more than the composite parts, because all perfection increases toward the interiors. For all organic forms in man are composed of interior forms, and these of forms still more interior, even to inmosts, by means of which communication is given with every affection and thought of man's mind. For man's mind, in all its particulars, extends into all things of his body; its range is into all things of the body — for it is the very form of life. Unless the mind had such a field, there would be neither mind nor man. From this it is that the choice and decision of man's will are determined instantly, and produce and determine actions, just as if thought and will were themselves in the things of the body, and not above them.

That every least thing in man, from its use, is a man, does not fall into the natural idea as it does into the spiritual — in the spiritual idea man is not a person, but a use; for the spiritual idea is apart from an idea of person, as it is apart from an idea of matter, space, and time. Therefore when one sees another in heaven, he sees him indeed as a man, but he thinks of him as a use. An angel also appears in face according to the use in which he is, and affection for the use makes the life of the face. From all this it can be seen that every good use is in form a man.

(Divine Love XIII)

Men, Only Recipients of Life

Selection from Divine Love ~ Emanuel Swedenborg
THE LORD ALONE IS LOVE ITSELF, BECAUSE HE IS LIFE ITSELF
MEN AND ANGELS ARE RECIPIENTS ONLY

The Lord, because He is God of the universe, is uncreated and infinite; whereas men and angels are created and finite. That which is uncreated and infinite is the very Divine in Itself. It is not possible for man to be formed of this, for he would then be the Divine in Itself; but he can be formed of things created and finite, in which the Divine can be and to which He can communicate His life, and this, by means of heat and light from Himself as a Sun, thus from His Divine Love; it is comparatively like germinations on the earth, which cannot be formed of the essence itself of the world's sun, but of the created things of which the soil consists, in which, by means of its heat and light, the sun can be, and to which it can communicate its life. From this it is evident that men and angels, in themselves, are not life, but only recipients of life.

From the above it follows also that the conception of a human being by a father is not a conceiving of life, but only a conceiving of the first and purest form able to receive life. To this form, as a first thread or beginning, substances and matters adjoin themselves one after another in the womb, adapted into forms for receiving life in its order and in its degree, down to an ultimate form suited to the modes of the world's nature.

(Divine Love II)

The Immortality of Man

Selection from Last Judgment ~ Emanuel Swedenborg

That every man after the life in the world lives to eternity, is evident from this:  man is then spiritual, and no longer natural; the spiritual man, separated from the natural, remains such as he is to eternity - for man's state cannot be changed after death.

Moreover, the spiritual of every man is in conjunction with the Divine, since it can think of the Divine, and also love the Divine, and be affected with all things which are from the Divine, such as those which the church teaches, and therefore it can be conjoined to the Divine by thought and will, which are the two faculties of the spiritual man, and constitute his life. That which can thus be conjoined to the Divine, can never die, for the Divine is with it, and conjoins it to Himself.

Man is also created to the form of heaven as to his mind, and the form of heaven is from the Divine itself, as may be seen in the work on Heaven and Hell, where it has been shown: -

That the Divine of the Lord makes and forms Heaven (n. 7-12, and n. 78-86).

That Man is created to be a Heaven in the least form (n. 57).

That Heaven in the whole complex, has reference to one Man (n. 59-66).

That hence an Angel is in a perfect human Form (n. 73-77); an angel is a man as to his spiritual.

On this subject moreover, I have often spoken with the angels, who wondered exceedingly, that of those who are called intelligent in the Christian world, and who also are believed by others to be intelligent, there are very many who utterly reject the belief in their own immortality, believing that the soul of man is dissipated at death, just as the soul of a beast is, not perceiving the distinction between the life of a man and the life of a beast — that man has the power of thinking above himself, of God, of heaven, of love, of faith, of good, spiritual and moral, of truths, and the like, and that thus he may be elevated to the Divine itself, and he conjoined by all those things to Him. But that beasts cannot be elevated above their own natural, to think of such things, and consequently that their spiritual cannot be separated from their natural after death, so as to live by itself, as man's spiritual can: whence also it is, that the life of a beast ceases on the dissipation of its natural life.

The reason why many of the so-called intelligent in the Christian world, have no belief in the immortality of their own lives, the angels declared to be this, that in heart they deny the Divine, and acknowledge nature instead of the Divine. They who think from such principles, are not able to think of any eternity by conjunction with the Divine, nor consequently, of the state of man as dissimilar to that of beasts, for in rejecting the Divine from thought, they also reject eternity. They declared moreover, that with every man there is an inmost or supreme degree of life, or an inmost or supreme something into which the Divine of the Lord proximately inflows, and from which He disposes all the remaining interiors belonging to the spiritual and natural man, which are successive in both according to the degrees of order. This inmost or supreme they called the Lord's entrance into man, and His veriest dwelling place with him; and they said, that by this inmost or supreme, man is man, and is distinguished from brute animals which do not have it; and that hence it is, that men, as regards the interiors which are of the mind and disposition, unlike animals, can be elevated by the Lord to Himself, can have faith in Him, be affected by love to Him, and can receive intelligence and wisdom, and speak from reason.

When I asked them concerning those who deny the Divine, and the Divine truths, by which the conjunction of the life of man with the Divine itself is effected, and who yet live to eternity, they replied, that these also have the faculty of thinking and of willing, and therefore of believing and loving the things which are from the Divine, as well as those who acknowledge the Divine, and that by this faculty, they too live to eternity. They added, that this faculty is from that inmost or supreme which is in every man, of which mention was made above. Even those who are in hell have that faculty, and that they derive from it the power of reasoning and speaking against Divine truths, has been shown in many places. Hence it is, that every man lives to eternity, whatever be his quality. Because every man after death lives to eternity, no angel or spirit ever thinks of death; indeed they do not at all know what it is to die; wherefore, when "death" is mentioned in the Word, the angels understand by it either damnation, which is death in the spiritual sense, or the continuation of life and the resurrection. These things have been said in confirmation that all the men who have ever been born, and have died, from the beginning of creation, are alive, some in heaven, and some in hell.

(from Last Judgment 25)