Jesus said to them, I am the Bread of life; the one coming to Me will not at all hunger, and the one believing into Me will not thirst, never! But I said to you that you also have seen Me and did not believe. All that the Father gives to Me shall come to Me, and the one coming to Me I will in no way cast out. For I have come down out of Heaven, not that I should do My will, but the will of Him who sent Me. And this is the will of the Father sending Me, that of all that He has given Me, I shall not lose any of it, but shall raise it up in the last day. And this is the will of the One sending Me, that everyone seeing the Son and believing into Him should have everlasting life; and I will raise him up at the last day. Then the Jews murmured about Him, because He said, I am the Bread coming down out of Heaven. And they said, Is this not Jesus the son of Joseph, of whom we know the father and the mother? How does this One now say, I have come down out of Heaven? Then Jesus answered and said to them, Do not murmur with one another. No one is able to come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him, and I will raise him up in the last day. It has been written in the Prophets, They “shall” all “be taught of God.” So then everyone who hears and learns from the Father comes to Me; not that anyone has seen the Father, except the One being from God, He has seen the Father. (John 6:35-46)

The reason why the whole of the Sacred Scripture teaches the existence of God is that its inmost meaning is concerned with nothing but God, that is, the Divine proceeding from God. For Scripture was dictated by God, and nothing can proceed from God except what He Himself is, and this we call the Divine. This resides in the inmost meaning of Scripture. However, in its lower forms which are derived from the Divine, the Holy Scripture is adapted to the grasp of angels and men. In these forms it is likewise Divine, but in a different guise; in this case the Divine is called Celestial, Spiritual and Natural. These are merely the veils of God, since God Himself, as He exists in the inmost meaning of the Word, cannot be looked on by any created being. For when Moses begged to see the glory of Jehovah, God told him that no one can see God and live. It is the same with the inmost meaning of the Word, in which God is in His Being and Essence. Still the Divine, which is inmostly contained in it and is protected by such veils as adapt it to the grasp of angels and men, shines out like light passing through crystalline structures, but the light appears to differ according to the state of mind which a person has acquired from God or from himself. For everyone who has acquired his state of mind from God, the Sacred Scripture is like a mirror, in which he sees God, everyone in his own fashion. This mirror is composed of the truths which he learns from the Word and absorbs by living his life in accordance with them. A first conclusion from this is that the Sacred Scripture is the fulness of God. (True Christian Religion 6)

Spiritual Christianity offers a very interesting perspective on the interrelationship and connectedness of all things in the universe to the Word. The Word is the alpha and the omega, the beginning and end of all things. Nothing that exists does so without having a continuous connection to the Word as its origin and source. All people live because the Word of life gives them life. No one lives from themselves; all people are recipients of life from the Lord, and this is why it is said of the Word that He is the bread of heaven that gives life to the world, to the cosmos. But not everyone experiences the same quality of life or sense of the Lord’s presence in their life. Some people have no interest in giving time to consider the spiritual dimension of life. Others seek to have a form of spirituality that omits a personal sense of the Divine.  And there are others whose spirituality is so mixed with natural desires and aspirations that they are unable to separate these from what is truly spiritual. But whatever a person’s state of life is regarding spiritual things, the life that they have is ultimately from the Lord who is the source of all life.

When Jesus says I am the bread of life, He is saying that true spiritual sustenance for the human spirit is found in Him as the Word. For all human desires and aspirations can be fulfilled by the Word. This is why it says that the one coming to the Word, which is the true I AM, will never hunger or thirst. However, it is a difficult thing for us to grasp in our natural state of life, but it is true, and it is the central message of John’s Gospel.

So what do we mean by the Word? This is an important question because what a person believes concerning the Word has a major impact on how they experience their life. But before we begin to explore this question, we need to remember that our natural mind is not willing to believe spiritual truths and is likely to scoff at them by calling them abstract or vague or of little practical value.

We can see this resistance of the natural level of our mind illustrated from the stories of the Scriptures themselves in the responses of those who didn’t believe in Jesus or in what He had to say and offer. For the response of those called the Jews to Jesus’s words, convey the type of thoughts that rise up out of our native proprium when it is confronted with the truths being expounded here. Jesus has just said that He is the bread of life and in the very next verse He begins to point out that if we come to the Word from our natural mind, we will not believe it. So the Word tells us that it the bread of life and that it alone can fulfil our deepest most pressing desires. And then it says…

But I said to you that you also have seen Me and did not believe.

The Word says this to warn us of the natural tendency of the proprium to demand more proof and to reason that if it has this then it will act. But regardless of the amount of proof furnished by the Lord, the proprium that is based in natural thinking will never respond in a positive way to what the Word teaches. In this Chapter Jesus continues to teach how it is that He is the bread that has come down out of heaven – and He meets resistance every step of the way. And remember that prior to this, Jesus has offered a physical demonstration of this truth in the feeding of the five thousand. But it isn’t enough for those who have no real interest in applying truths to life. We can see this in our own experience. There is a side to us all that is affirming of the Word being the Lord’s presence with us and then there is another side that is full of doubt and unbelief.

The side of us that believes the Word and is open to the Lord has been fed with the bread of heaven. It has experienced the power of truths from Word to transform various aspects of our life. We have seen how new beliefs can change our view of difficult situations and lift us out of negative emotional states. We may have even been witness to remarkable transformations in the states of others as a result of their willingness to walk with the Word through life’s difficulties. All these events, experiences, and transformations are irrefutable signs of the power of the Word to sustain and nurture what is spiritual in our lives. When we are in a positive affirming state of life toward spiritual things then, when we reflect a little, we see the presence of the Lord as the living bread being distributed throughout the whole of humanity, meeting the infinite needs in the vast variety of states found within and amongst all peoples. To have this higher vision, to see things in a more universal spiritual context with the Divine as the source of all life, is where we are able to appreciate the reality of the Lord feeding the multitude.

But in those times when we find ourselves in the midst of life’s struggles and our level of consciousness falls and centres in on ourselves, the power of the signs that offered us a witness to those higher states of life no longer seem as real. This is because the sense of self’s identification with these negative states of mind blinds us from being able to see the reality of spiritual consciousness. Spiritual things become distant when natural concerns enter into the centre of our focus. We lose sight of the miracles that the Lord delivers in every moment of life, and we become disconnected from the power of truths to lift us out of ourselves. The hellish proprium, in these states, gains the upper hand and demands that the Lord give us proof of His power to deliver us.

We need to know the nature of this proprium so that when we find ourselves caught in negative states of life, we have some understanding of how it operates and so can call on such spiritual teachings and principles to awaken us. For these principles can draw us back into more healthy spiritual states of life which are found in having a conscious connection with the Word as the Lord through the application of what it teaches. This connection with the Divine in the context of Spiritual Christianity is centred on the Sacred Scriptures understood in the light of the Doctrines for Spiritual Christianity, these both being the Word because they give form and expression to what is of the Lord. In the work True Christian Religion 6(2) it plainly states that, …the Sacred Scriptures are the fullness of God.

So the Sacred Scriptures are the bread which has come down out of Heaven and it is to these understood in the light of the teachings of Spiritual Christianity that constitute the goodness which the Lord gives for the life of the inner world or cosmos of man. So when the Scriptures speak of the world, the inner world of the mind is meant for this is the world into which the Lord is able to be received as the Word. He dwells in us as the Word and by means of this our mind can be recreated into something that is truly human. To think and act from the truths found in the Word is to think and act from the Lord and this is what it is to have eternal life, to live forever. Therefore, Jesus says…

I am the Living Bread that came down from Heaven. If anyone eats of this Bread, he will live forever. And indeed the bread which I will give is My flesh, which I will give for the life of the world. (verse 51)

If we think of this in terms of material flesh, we will fail to grasp what it is the Word is saying. We see this in the responses of the Jews, who being naturally minded can’t see beyond the literal meaning of the words…

Then the Jews argued with one another, saying, How can this One give us his flesh to eat? Then Jesus said to them, Truly, truly, I say to you, Except you eat the flesh of the Son of Man, and drink His blood, you do not have life in yourselves. The one partaking of My flesh and drinking of My blood has everlasting life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For My flesh is truly food, and My blood is truly drink. The one partaking of My flesh and drinking of My blood abides in Me, and I in him.  Even as the living Father sent Me, and I live through the Father; also the one partaking of Me, even that one will live through Me. This is the Bread which came down out of Heaven, not as your fathers ate the manna and died; the one partaking of this Bread will live forever. (52-58)

The flesh and blood being spoken of here is spiritual not material, and by spiritual is meant what belongs to the Divine love and wisdom. To eat the flesh of the Son of Man is to take spiritual nourishment from the Word through living from it. When we talk about fleshing out an idea, we mean seeing it go from something conceptual to something concrete and applicable to life. Similarly, the flesh of the Son of Man refers to the good activities and actions which flow from our understanding of the Word. These embody the love and wisdom that the Lord is in a form that can bring others into contact with Him. It is love and wisdom becoming incarnate, being fleshed out – it is the Word becoming flesh in our midst.

A similar meaning is found in the idea of drinking his blood; the Lord is the Word, and the blood of the Word is the truth that flows from it into our mind. As blood is to the material body, so truth is to the spiritual body, being our mind. In the body the blood cleanses and nourishes every cell so in the realm of the mind, truth has the function of cleansing and nourishing the spiritual man. Truths give us new ways of seeing and thinking which can expose the false ideas that prevent our ability to stay present to the Lord in our life. With an increasing discernment of the sense of self that the Lord offers versus our native sense of self and its love of only itself, metanoia begins to occur – a new mind and heart forms which is built upon what the Word teaches.

So to eat the flesh and drink the blood of the Son of Man is to live from the Word in conscious acknowledgement that this is our God and very life. How can it be anything else? How else can eating and drinking the flesh and blood of Jesus to be understood other than spiritually? The Word itself makes this clear when the Jesus says…

It is the Spirit that gives life. The flesh does not profit, nothing! The Words which I speak to you are spirit and are life. (63)

The Word is spirit and life. By spirit is to be understood truth, and by life is to be understood the good that comes from that truth, for goodness or love is the life that truth leads to. And this too is another way of saying that the Word of the Lord is His blood and flesh. The spiritual mind sees the truth of this but because the natural mind can’t see what is spiritual, what it hears and understands literally is incomprehensible. So spiritually understood the terms blood and spirit are used in the Word when referring to its truths or what belongs to faith, whereas flesh and life are terms that are used when referring to the love or goodness found in the life of genuine charity.

For the practice of Spiritual Christianity then, what we are asked to eat and drink of is nothing other than the truths of faith and the goodness of charity that the Word instructs us in, for these are the fullness of God.

They “shall” all “be taught of God.” So then everyone who hears and learns from the Father comes to Me; not that anyone has seen the Father, except the One being from God, He has seen the Father.

This single idea has the power to change our life because once accepted, it cannot but change how we relate to the Word forever. To be in the Word and to have the Word in us as He is in the Father and the Father is in Him is to have It active and living in our minds as we apply our understanding of its truths to examine our inner states of feeling and thinking. And so it has all that we need to bring us into a conscious presence of the Lord as our bread of life.

I am the Bread of life; the one coming to Me will not at all hunger, and the one believing into Me will not thirst, never!

And the serpent was cunning above every animal of the field which Jehovah God had made. And he said to the woman, Is it true that God has said, You shall not eat from any tree of the garden? And the woman said to the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden, but of the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden, God has said, You shall not eat of it, nor shall you touch it, lest you die. And the serpent said to the woman, Dying you shall not die, for God knows that in the day you eat of it, even your eyes shall be opened, and you shall be as God, knowing good and evil. And the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and the tree was desirable to make one wise. And she took of its fruit and ate; and she also gave to her husband with her, and he ate. And the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed leaves of the fig tree, and made girdles for themselves… And He said to the man, Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten of the tree about which I commanded you, saying, You shall not eat from it, the ground shall be cursed because of you; you shall eat of it in sorrow all the days of your life. And it shall bring forth thorns and thistles for you, and you shall eat the plant of the field. By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread until your return to the ground. For you have been taken out of it; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return. (Genesis 3:1-7 &17-19)

Do not labor for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to everlasting life, which the Son of Man will give to you; for God the Father sealed this One. Then they said to Him, What may we do that we may work the works of God? Jesus answered and said to them, This is the work of God, that you believe into Him whom that One sent. Then they said to Him, Then what miraculous sign do You do that we may see and may believe You? What do You work? Our fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, as it is written “He gave them bread out of Heaven to eat.” Then Jesus said to them, Truly, truly, I say to you, Moses has not given you the bread out of Heaven, but My Father gives you the true bread out of Heaven. For the bread of God is He coming down out of Heaven and giving life to the world. Then they said to Him, Lord, always give us this bread. Jesus said to them, I am the Bread of life; the one coming to Me will not at all hunger, and the one believing into Me will not thirst, never! (John 6:27-35)

That ‘eating bread with sweat on the brow’ means strong dislike of what is celestial becomes clear from the meaning of ‘bread’. Bread is used to mean everything spiritual and celestial, which is the food of angels, and if they were deprived of it they would cease to live, as a person deprived of bread or food ceases to do. That which is celestial and spiritual in heaven also corresponds to bread on earth, and is also represented by bread, as is clear from many places [in the Word]. That the Lord is Bread, because He is the source of everything celestial and spiritual, He Himself teaches in John, This is the Bread which came down from heaven; anyone who eats this Bread will live forever John 6:58. This also is why bread and wine are the symbols used in the Holy Supper. This same celestial [or spiritual) was also represented by the manna. That what is celestial and spiritual is the food of angels is clear also from the Lord’s own words, Man will not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. Matt. 4:4, that is, from the life of the Lord, who is the source of everything celestial and spiritual. (Arcana Coelestia 276)

Where do we put our efforts? What are we labouring for? This is the Word’s question to us in this next part of the story. These words encourage us to take stock and consider the quality of the food we are labouring for. Is it food that perishes or food that lasts? What are we using to nourish our life? Natural food or spiritual food? Food is acquired through labour but there are different qualities of food to feed or nourish the different levels of our being. We learn from the Word here that there is food which perishes and that there is food that endures to everlasting life. And the food that endures is that which the Son of Man is able to give as He is the One which the Father has set his seal upon.

So the food being spoken about here is not material food for the body but that which nourishes the human mind. It is referring to what we feed upon mentally, what we draw upon to fulfil the needs which we feel in our life. What are we focussed on in our thoughts and imagination? Do we labour to keep alive a perspective of life that keeps the self at the centre? If this is the state of our life then the food that nourishes us is that which perishes and not only does this food decay, but it has this same effect on all who feed on it. The Greek word translated as perish here means to destroy, to render useless, or to kill. It describes something that can destroy our being, our potential for higher things.

A variation of this word occurs in the book of Revelation and can be found in chapter 9:11.

And they have a king over them, the angel of the abyss. In Hebrew his name was Abaddon, and in Greek he has the name Apollyon.

Here we find that the name of the angel of the bottomless pit is Apollyon, a name which means destroyer. The doctrines for Spiritual Christianity say this about the meaning of Apolloyon…

…the name Apollyon, signifies the quality of that influx…destructive of all truth and good. This is evident [as names] mean the quality of a state and of a thing; [it is also evident] from the meaning of Abaddon in the Hebrew, which is destruction; Apollyon has a similar meaning in the Greek; consequently the destruction of truth and good is meant, because these are [what are being dealt with here]. The sensual [mind] of man, which is the [lowest level] of his intellectual life, is destructive of all spiritual truth and good, which is the truth and good of the church, because the sensual [level of mind] stands nearest to the world and clings most closely to the body; and from both [of] these it has affections and…thoughts, which…are diametrically [opposed] to spiritual affections and…thoughts, which are from heaven. For man [when in the] sensual [mind] loves himself and the world above all things, and so far as these loves are dominant, [then to this degree] evils and falsities from them are dominant, for evils and falsities swarm forth and flow out from these loves as from their origins. In such loves are all who have become merely sensual through evils of life and the false [ideas] that come from [such] evils.

Anyone can [see that this is true if they care to give it some thought]; for if that which stands nearest to the world and clings most closely to the body is dominant it follows that the world itself and the body itself, with all their pleasures and lusts, which are called pleasures “of the eye and of the flesh,” will be dominant, and that people in order that they may come into spiritual affections and thoughts…must be entirely withdrawn and elevated from these sensual things. This withdrawing and elevation is [brought about] by the Lord alone, so far as people allow themselves, of the Lord, to be led to the Lord, and thus to heaven, by the laws of order which are the truths and goods of the church. When this takes place, [people are in a spiritual state] and they are withdrawn from the [lowest aspect of the] sensual [mind] and are kept elevated above it [because the] sensual [mind] in people is altogether corrupted, for in it is what is one’s own (proprium) into which everyone is born, which in itself is nothing but evil. From this it can be seen why this sensual level [of mind] is called destruction, that is, “Abaddon” and “Apollyon.” (Apocalypse Explained 563)

To live from the sensual level of life is to listen to the serpent and feed from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

And the woman said to the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden, but of the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden, God has said, You shall not eat of it, nor shall you touch it, lest you die. And the serpent said to the woman, Dying you shall not die, for God knows that in the day you eat of it, even your eyes shall be opened, and you shall be as God, knowing good and evil.

To partake of this tree is to work from how things appear to us from our senses rather than from what the Word teaches, and this is destructive of spiritual life. This is because we move away from the Word as the determiner of what is good or evil and look to ourselves instead as the judge of the quality of things. The sensual mind is in the loves of self and the world and for the sense of self that is built upon this, all that it feels delightful is without the truths of the Word to guide it and so what it calls ‘good’ isn’t necessarily so.

This is why we need truths, for it is only by means of them that our sense of self can be lifted out of the allure of the sensual level of life and see it for what it is. When we look to the Word for our life and nourishment we look to the tree of life.

And out of the ground the Lord God made every tree grow that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life was also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

In fact, the Hebrew word for life is plural and literally reads the tree of lives. This is because we have two distinct life flows within us – one belonging to the understanding and the other belonging to the will. The Word is the true source of life for both for from it we can receive a new understanding from its truths, and these are able to feed us with true ways of thinking whilst the goodness that the Word contains is able to nourish good affections generating a new will.

The goods and truths that sustain spiritual life are given by the Son of Man and we are told that He has the Father’s seal.

Do not labor for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to everlasting life, which the Son of Man will give to you; for God the Father sealed this One.

So to elevate our thinking above the senses and to think in terms of the spiritual relations between goods and truths, the Father can be seen as representative of the Divine Good and the Son of Man is the Divine Truth as it is received into finite human minds. In other words, the title Son of Man refers to our understanding of the Word or Divine truth when we are sincerely working to live from it. This truth is called the Son of Man, and is the Word because it is from the Father and so gives form and expression to the Lord. We draw truths from it and these form a limited finite concept of the Lord within our minds. Yet, while our idea of the Lord might be limited, the Word is not being the fulness of God (TCR 6). That finite understanding is the means by which the Lord is able to meet us in an accommodated form and that form is called the Son of Man.

The Father having to set his seal on the Son of Man teaches us that if we want to enter into the life of good, where love, mercy and compassion rule, then the only way to this is by responding positively to our understanding of the Word. This is the labour we are called to do if we want to live spiritual life.

Then they said to Him, What may we do that we may work the works of God? Jesus answered and said to them, This is the work of God, that you believe into Him whom that One sent.

To be sent spiritually means to come forth from and in its internal application the One sent from God refers to what comes forth from the Divine accommodated to finite minds. Again, it is speaking of the truths which we have access to in the Word. To believe the truth it offers is to receive it into our life which is to act from it, and this is what it is to work the works of God.

The natural man is not willing to accept this because its delight and pleasure is found in the sensual level of life and any suggestion that this must be given up is seen to mean a giving up of one’s life. And in a sense, this is true for Jesus as the Word as the Lord Himself said that if we are to find our life, we must lose our life. The difficulty when thinking from the sensual level of life is that any other form of delight other than that which belongs to the sensual mind is impossible to conceive of. How, the sensual mind asks, can there be pleasure in living a spiritual life if that life involves putting off the very things that bring me delight? The sensual mind finds nothing delightful in the prospect of practicing self examination and repentance.

We have the Word, and its instruction in matters to do with salvation is clear. Yet the sensual man seeks proof on the level of the senses – it wants a sign as a condition of belief. It seems remarkable that with all the signs performed by the Lord when in the world, so few believed. There is much irony in the question put to Jesus here even in the literal sense. He has just fed the five thousand of which those present here were a witness to and yet they continue to ask for a sign of proof. It shows that signs cannot convince those who don’t want to be convinced. Signs, no matter how dramatic they might be, do not bring a conviction that leads us to begin in the works of God. Signs merely feed the sensual level of our mind and as long as it is being fed with signs it will be satisfied for it is not interested in being convinced about the needs of the spiritual life as it has no desire for it. So signs in themselves won’t convince us of the necessity of self examination and repentance. In fact, they deflect the mind away from this vital spiritual work.

Spiritual Christianity teaches that only truths rationally seen can bring about a conviction that leads to a genuine spiritual life and practise. This is a seeing from within oneself that a thing is true and is what the doctrines for Spiritual Christianity call seeing truth in its own light. To see the truth of something for oneself is to be convinced that it is so, and it is this kind of seeing that makes it possible for us to respond to have our lower sensual and bodily mind brought into order. Signs on the level of the senses can’t achieve this because they enter by an external way so that they only impact the mind on a superficial level. This is because the flow of spiritual influx moves from what is higher into what is lower, it can’t move from what is lower into what is higher.

So signs can give us an external conviction and belief, but they can’t bring about an internal transformation. This is because signs on the level of the senses bypass our higher rational faculties and if these are not used in spiritual matters then any beliefs which we hold will not be something that truly comes from an inner conviction. For a true belief is only established when it is ascented to in freedom from having seen through its application in our own life how it is true. As we looked at earlier, this understanding is the Son of Man, the Son of the Human of the Lord, this Human being the Word. So the Lord can only be received when we freely choose to exercise our rational faculty to apply what the Word teaches to our inner life, the life of our thoughts and feelings.

This is the labour that brings the reality of that food that endures to everlasting life. The sensual level of life in us would rather rest in traditions and historical accounts of the miraculous. It is happy to have the stories of the Word but not willing to see their application to our life now. This is captured in the statement of those who said…

Our fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, as it is written “He gave them bread out of Heaven to eat.” Then Jesus said to them, Truly, truly, I say to you, Moses has not given you the bread out of Heaven, but My Father gives you the true bread out of Heaven.

Moses is mentioned because he represents a lower historical level of understanding of the Word. So Moses is the Word naturally understood which can’t really meet the true needs of the human spirit. These deeper needs can only be met by a spiritual understanding of the Word for this produces that higher quality of good that endures forever. The sensual level’s reasoning puts forward the miracle of the Israelites receiving mana in the wilderness, claiming that it is bread out of heaven. But this bread, Jesus says, is not the true bread; it is a lower order bread or food for the natural level of life only. It is instead the Father who gives the true bread out of heaven and this bread is for the spiritual man.

This spiritual understanding encompasses all that is truly loving and good and when the Word is received into our life through a willingness to work with its truths to support a life of self examination and repentance the inner contents of the Word are opened up and what is received is the the true bread out of heaven that nourishes the spirit and does not perish. The Word understood in the light of the principles for Spiritual Christianity is He who is coming down out of heaven and giving life to the world. The Word opened as to its spiritual sense is the Lord, and it says to all who have ears to hear…

I AM the Bread of life; the one coming to Me will never hunger and the one believing in Me will never thirst.

Then the men, seeing what miraculous sign Jesus did, said, This is truly the Prophet, the One coming into the world. Therefore knowing that they were about to come and seize Him, that they might make Him king, Jesus withdrew again to the mountain Himself alone. And when it became evening, His disciples went down on the sea. And entering into the boat, they were going across the sea to Capernaum. And darkness had already occurred, and Jesus had not come to them. And the sea was aroused by a great wind blowing. Then having rowed about twenty five or thirty stadia, they saw Jesus walking on the sea, and becoming near the boat, they were afraid. But He said to them, I AM! Do not fear. Then they desired to take Him into the boat. And the boat was instantly at the land to which they were going. On the morrow, the crowd standing on the other side of the sea had seen that no other little boat was there except one, that one into which His disciples entered, and that Jesus did not go with His disciples into the small boat, but that the disciples went away alone. But other small boats came from Tiberias near the place where they ate the loaves, the Lord having given thanks. Therefore, when the crowd saw that Jesus was not there nor His disciples, they themselves also entered into the boats and came to Capernaum seeking Jesus. And finding Him across the sea, they said to Him, Rabbi, when did you come here? Jesus answered them and said, Truly, truly, I say to you, You seek Me not because you saw miraculous signs, but because you ate of the loaves and were satisfied. Do not labor for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to everlasting life, which the Son of Man will give to you; for God the Father sealed this One. (John 6:14-27)

The fact that goods and truths are man’s real food may be clear to anyone, for the person who is deprived of them has no life within himself, and is a dead man. The food on which the soul of the person feeds who is dead in this sense consists of the delights arising from evils, and of the pleasures gained from falsities. These are the food of death. These delights and pleasures also derive from bodily, worldly, and natural things, which have no life at all within them. Furthermore such a person does not know what spiritual and celestial food is. Every time ‘food’ or ‘bread’ is mentioned in the Word he assumes that food for the body is meant. In the words of the Lord’s Prayer, ‘Give us our daily bread’, for example, he thinks purely of nourishment for the body. There are some whose ideas do extend further and who assert that this petition includes all other physical requirements, such as clothing, money, and so on. Indeed they will argue fiercely that no other kind of food is meant, even though they clearly see that the petitions coming before and after it entail purely celestial and spiritual things, and refer to the Lord’s kingdom, and possibly know as well that the Lord’s Word is celestial and spiritual. (Arcana Coelestia 680)

That which distinguishes the celestial from the spiritual is love to the Lord, and that which distinguishes spiritual from celestial is love towards the neighbour. (Arcana Coelestia 2069)

In the natural kingdom are men whilst they live in the world. In the spiritual kingdom are spiritual angels; in the celestial kingdom are celestial angels; for there are these three universals, the natural, the spiritual, and the celestial. (Last Judgment 314{304})

Darkness in the Word corresponds to a state where there is a lack of enlightenment. So when we read of it being evening and darkness, we know that the events that are being described are indicating states of life when the loves of self and the world are active. These states are also what are referred to as states of temptation. The reason that these states occur is because our sense of self is attached to beliefs and affections that belong to the loves of self and the world, and temptations are the only way that higher loves and truths can be implanted in their place.

In the story these temptations are represented by the storm which the disciples find themselves in.

His disciples went down on the sea. And entering into the boat, they were going across the sea to Capernaum. And darkness had already occurred, and Jesus had not come to them. And the sea was aroused by a great wind blowing.

The disciples represent the spiritual principles that we learn through our interaction with the Word. If these principles are to be woven into the fabric of our being so that they become our very life and so form the basis for a new sense of self, then the attachments in the natural man that have been the source of our identity up until this point have to be weakened and broken.

And this is what work with spiritual principles does for whenever we look to act from them it stirs up and challenges our natural habitual ways of being. We will always experience resistance in these times. This is why we are told that we must take up our cross if we wish to follow the Lord (Matthew 16:24-25). We have to die to our native sense of self, that is, we have to die to our habits of allowing natural desires which put self first from ruling in our minds and guiding our behaviour.

In the midst of the storm, when they had come to the end of themselves, the disciples let Jesus into their boat. This speaks of a shift in state where spiritual principles have been brought into life through the work of repentance. For as we have just seen, engaging with the Word brings about states of temptations and through these, we come to see our very real need for the Lord in our life. And we see the concept of repentance reflected in the fact the disciples are said to be heading to Capernaum which as we have seen previously means field of repentance.

The work of repentance involves hearing truths and making an effort to live from them. This living from them is done as if of ourselves but it is the Lord who grants us the ability to act. But because of the strong appearance that we are the ones who are doing the work, we easily fall into attributing the power to do so to ourselves.  

The natural man seeks to take credit for this work. This is why we find the disciples on the initial part of the journey on their own and in darkness. For the proprium cannot but claim to itself what is the Lord’s. This is its nature. All our struggles in trying to live a spiritual life flow from our attachment to the proprium’s desire to claim to itself what is good and true. The story of the disciples in the storm is a story of our coming to see that the power of the spiritual principles that we have acquired cannot be separated from the Lord who is their source. When this realisation dawns within our minds – then what is lower can begin to be worked with. And we see this represented in the part of story that we are reading today where after the storm, the scene moves back to those on the shore.

On the morrow, the crowd standing on the other side of the sea had seen that no other little boat was there except one, that one into which His disciples entered, and that Jesus did not go with His disciples into the small boat, but that the disciples went away alone.

So as we look more closely at what is happening in the narrative, we can see that there are different groupings of people mentioned and that each of them illustrates a level of relationship that we might have to the Lord. At the highest level we have Jesus and closest to Him are the disciples, and then there is the crowd. These three sets of people represent three levels, three states of thought and affection regarding the Word within our minds. Jesus represents the Word and in terms of our spiritual life, is what is highest or deepest. He represents the love of living from the Word which sits at the very centre of the minds of those who are being regenerated by the Lord. This deep love is what is meant by the term love to the Lord and because the Lord is goodness itself, love to the Lord is the same as loving what is good.

The other love that the Word points us to and is said to be like this love, is love towards the neighbour. The use of the term neighbour in the Word refers to how things stand spiritually in relation to the Lord. It speaks of what lies closest to the Lord because all spiritual relationships are determined from the Lord as the centre of all things. If by the Lord we understand love or goodness, then we can see that what lies closest to good, must be truth.

So, spiritually understood, the term neighbour refers to truth because truth is what stands closest to good. We can see from this then that to love the neighbour is to love truth and so love of the neighbour manifests in us as a love of working with concepts and ideas to discover their applications in useful services. Specifically, this love is the source or the energy that drives our intellectual functions with a view to developing our understanding of spiritual matters. In the Gospel, love of the neighbour and the things to do with this level of love in us are represented by Jesus’s disciples. This love for truths is the source of our motivations to learn and grow intellectually which can be seen in that the Greek word translated as disciple literally means learner.

So we have these two loves: love to the Lord and love of the neighbour. As a means of drawing a distinction between them, the teachings for Spiritual Christianity use the term celestial to describe all that has to do with loving the Lord or good, while the term spiritual is used to describe all those things that have to do with loving truth which is good’s neighbour. While this distinction is useful for building a deeper understanding of celestial and spiritual matters and how they are organised and related to each other, for all practical purposes they are One and can’t really be separated. We can see this in the fact that to love the Lord is to obey the commandments and precepts of the Word. Jesus Himself said,

If you love me keep my commandments. (John 14:15)

For it is love to the Lord or love of a celestial quality that draws us to the Word and provides us with the recognition or perception that it is the Lord. But it is love of a spiritual quality that empowers us to take the truths that we find there and begin to apply them consciously in our life.

We all desire to love the Lord more fully and completely, I don’t think any of us would be here if that wasn’t the case. But we can’t do that without loving the neighbour, or loving truths which simply means to do them. For it is truths that teach us what we must do, and it is by means of obedience to what truths teach that we come to know the Lord and see our dependence on Him as the Word for our life.

The crowd is the lowest of the three levels and as such represents our natural desires and thoughts. It is the part of us that is concerned with the things of natural life and the body. The crowd level in us is where the ego or proprium is active as the loves of self and the world. Prior to a conscious awakening to the spiritual dimension of our life, we are unable to separate our sense of self from the desires and thoughts that belong to this level. So before an awakening to spiritual life, everything about us is trapped in evils and falsities because until a new sense of self is born from the goods and truths of the Word, all there is to build our sense of life from are the loves and thoughts which arise from the appearances of the senses.  This sensual and bodily level of mind is the source of our inner darkness as to the deeper meaning within the Word and it is so thick that it immediately crowds out anything spiritual that comes into consciousness. This tendency is described as the crowd wanting to seize Jesus, to make Him king so that He withdrew into the mountain.

Knowing that they were about to come and seize Him, that they might make Him king, Jesus withdrew again to the mountain Himself alone.

The crowd mentality that is characteristic of our natural mind responds to truths just like this crowd does to the presence of Jesus. This level of life always looks to force things to suit itself, including the things of the spirit. So when we read of the crowd seeking to seize Him to make Him king, we are reminded that we can’t trust our natural responses. Our natural responses will always go against what truths teach and this is what is meant spiritually by seizing Jesus. It is also why He is said to withdraw.

Responses which are motivated by what is lower in us to what is higher will always seek to violate the proper order for human life, for the proper order is when what is lower serves the higher. The natural man should serve the spiritual. If this order is violated, then falsities are believed rather than truths, and evils are done rather than goods. And so there is no greater act of violation or violence to the image and likeness of God in a human being than having what is higher being forced to serve what is lower. Of wanting to seize the Word to make it a king in the service of the proprium, in the service of the love of self.

The truths of the Word give us the power to work with the Lord to have our mind recreated into the image and likeness of God. When this arrangement is in place then the higher can flow into the lower and organise those thoughts and affections which are capable of supporting spiritual and celestial purposes, that is, the purposes related to loving the Lord and practising the truths of the Word. And for those thoughts and affections that cannot serve these purposes, they are either cast off or brought into submission to what is higher.

But when the proper order is not in place then the concerns that belong to the lower degree of our mind dominate our inner life, and we find our sense of self trapped and unable to move out of the things of the lower mind. We can easily observe this in ourselves, for when we are caught up in worldly and selfish concerns our motivation and interest in celestial or spiritual matters drops away. On the other hand, when we are focussed on celestial and spiritual matters the things to do with self and the world are brought into their proper order and perspective. For when celestial and spiritual things rule in our lives many of the concerns and worries that we previously carried melt away and no long have the same impact on us. We are able to get some distance from them.

 And so it is that we now find the crowd of natural affections and thoughts on the other side of the sea.

On the morrow, the crowd standing on the other side of the sea had seen that no other little boat was there except one, that one into which His disciples entered, and that Jesus did not go with His disciples into the small boat, but that the disciples went away alone.

As we can see, this term other side is used in reference to where Jesus is and states of temptation as represented by the disciples in the storm, have the effect of separating things out so that we can see two sides. We come to see the difference between things of a spiritual quality and those of a natural quality. We are brought to see what is on one side and what stands on the other, and in these states, we are able to receive new insights concerning the quality of the various thoughts and affections that make up our inner world.

We learn that within us there is a crowd of thoughts and affections which belong to the natural level of life and even though these are drawn to Jesus, the Word, the motivation that drives them is self interest and so they are always suspect and can’t be trusted. The Word as the Lord makes this clear when Jesus says to them,

You seek Me not because you saw miraculous signs, but because you ate of the loaves and were satisfied.

Signs are pointers to truths that must be obeyed if we are to be saved from self seeking but the natural man is not interested in such truths. The main theme behind the sign is that the Lord is the bread of life, the sustainer and nurturer of all. Our proprium does not accept this, and this is the story of the crowd whose quality comes into light after the state temptation, for it is only interested in having its curiosity aroused and satisfied which is why the Word as Jesus admonishes…

Do not labour for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to everlasting life, which the Son of Man will give to you; for God the Father sealed this One.

Or as it is put in a looser translation of the Bible called The Message…

Don’t waste your energy striving for perishable food…Work for the food that sticks with you, food that nourishes your lasting life, food the Son of Man provides. He and what he does are guaranteed by God the Father to last.

They who go down to the sea in ships, who work in the great waters; these see the works of Jehovah, and His wonders in the deep. For He speaks, and He raises stormy wind, and makes its waves high; they go up to the heavens; they go down to the depths; their soul is melted because they are in evil; they reel and stagger like a drunken man, and all their wisdom is swallowed up; and they cry to Jehovah in their distress, and He saves them out of their straits. He settles the storm to a whisper, so that its waves are still; and they are glad, because they are quiet; and He led them to their desired haven. (Psalm 170:23-30)

Then the men, seeing what miraculous sign Jesus did, said, This is truly the Prophet, the One coming into the world. Therefore knowing that they were about to come and seize Him, that they might make Him king, Jesus withdrew again to the mountain Himself alone. And when it became evening, His disciples went down on the sea. And entering into the boat, they were going across the sea to Capernaum. And darkness had already occurred, and Jesus had not come to them. And the sea was aroused by a great wind blowing. Then having rowed about twenty five or thirty stadia, they saw Jesus walking on the sea, and becoming near the boat, they were afraid. But He said to them, I AM! Do not fear. Then they desired to take Him into the boat. And the boat was instantly at the land to which they were going. (John 6:14-21)

…the particulars signify Divine spiritual things, which nevertheless do not appear in the letter; as the sea, the Lord’s walking upon it, …. the ship, His entering into it, …. and other things besides. But there is no need singly to explain here the spiritual things signified; let it be said only that the “sea” signifies the ultimate of heaven and the church, since there are seas in the outmost borders of the heavens; the Lord’s walking upon the sea signifies the Lord’s presence and His influx even into these, and consequent life from the Divine to those who are in the ultimates of heaven; their life from the Divine was represented by the Lord’s walking upon the sea; (Apocalypse Explained 514{21})

A powerful truth is that the Lord is fully present with us at all times despite how things may appear. In the imagery of the Lord feeding the five thousand we have illustrated that He is the source of all life, and that this includes the life of our thoughts and affections. However, we know from our own self reflection that not all that passes through our minds can be attributed to the Lord – much of it is very self centred and anything but heavenly. Yet this doesn’t detract from the truth that the source of the life of our thoughts and affections is the Lord, their quality however is another thing. We can think of the stream of our mental life as being like a river whose source is high in some mountain range. At its source the water is pure but as it descends it takes on the quality of the environment it passes through. For example, if it passes into an industrial area where wastes are discarded into its waters it becomes increasingly polluted with toxins. The fact that the river is now polluted doesn’t detract from the fact that at its source it is pure.

The life that flows into the deepest part of the human mind, its soul, is pure but as that life of love and wisdom makes its journey into the lower or more external reaches of the mind, it gives life to beliefs and affections that are polluted. They are polluted by evils and falsities that arise from believing the impressions which we receive through our natural senses. One such belief is that we are the source of our life, that what we experience as our thoughts and affections originate from within our own minds. But we know from the Divine Revelation that is provided in the doctrines for Spiritual Christianity, that this is not the case at all. That the truth is that all life flows in and that it originates in the Lord who is life Itself. We are merely recipients of His life, which in finite human minds takes on the quality of the loves and beliefs that we hold to.

So while the life is pure in its origin, its manifestation in us will reflect the quality of our mental environment. If that environment is polluted with the fallacies that arise from our senses due to the love of self and the world then, to that extent, our mind remains an image of hell. On the other hand, to the degree that our mind is a product of goods and truths drawn from the Word, our mind becomes an image of heaven. All that is good and true is from the Lord and all that is evil and false is from hell. This is such an important truth because once it is understood, we can be empowered to consciously reject evils and falsities as they arise in the mind and to acknowledge goods and truths as being from the Lord. It is in this act of refusing to attribute anything to ourselves that sets us in a state of true spiritual freedom in which a new heavenly sense of self can be born.

The casting off of the false belief that what we experience as our thoughts and affections as being from us is perhaps one of the greatest struggles in spiritual work. For when we speak of the senses, we often think only in terms of the senses that belong to the body which give form to our experience of an external world and its objects. But we also have a more inner dimension of sensation. We talk of feeling the physical objects of the world around us, but we also feel things within us. We feel emotions and affections, we attribute warmth, coldness, gentleness and violence to them, and sometimes use scents, visuals and tastes to describe them. These things are not felt as outside of us but within us. And to become aware or conscious of feeling anything whether it is on the outer or inner plane of life requires that we have organs able to detect the different qualities of sensation, for there is what is felt and there is the thing which is feeling what is felt.

The organs that detect and so give us the ability to feel emotions, or see the value of an idea or principle, are not physical but mental or spiritual. Now because these senses are spiritual and spiritual things are the things of the mind, our inner senses must belong to our spiritual body. In fact, it’s an appearance of the senses that the physical body feels anything, for what we think we feel in and by means of the body is actually felt by our spirit. Our bodies don’t feel, our minds do. This seems to be contradicted by our usual sense-experience which tells us that the body feels, but we can see from the following teachings for Spiritual Christianity that we are not to trust our senses…

…the majority of people who have not stopped to reflect on the matter do not know that all five senses are located somewhere else than within organs belonging to the body; so they think that when these organs cease to function through death no sensory perception remains, when in actual fact a person, that is, his spirit, then passes into a life of perfect sensory perception. (Arcana Coelestia 4652)

…it is not the body which sees, hears, smells, and feels through touch, but a person’s spirit. That being so, when the spirit sheds its body it retains the sensory powers it possessed when within the body; indeed these are now far keener. For that which belongs to the body, being gross compared with that belonging to the spirit, has blunted those sensory powers; and these have been made even blunter because of the person’s immersion of them in earthly and worldly interests. (Arcana Coelestia 4622)

What we learn from this is that our ability to perceive the things of the spirit is blunted due to the immersion of our senses in earthly and worldly interests. When we move away from what the Word teaches us is real and into what our natural senses try to tell us, we lose our connection with the Lord and those principles that we need to govern our perspective of life. The things of the spirit become less real for us as we look to external life to gratify the desires of the loves of self and the world. The result is that we place all the importance on those things that lack any eternal value, and value what is merely temporary. Earthly and worldly interests encase our spiritual senses in a dense dark world filled with ignorance and doubts. When our sense of ourselves is trapped in this level of life, we struggle to see that the Lord in the Word is fully present with us, looking to enable us in the spiritual goals and aspirations that belong to the internal man. But as long as we are striving from the natural man or mind, His presence will appear distant, if not at times, completely absent.

The ebb and flow of spiritual life is such that we move from natural to spiritual states of life and back again. We experience the Lord as close to us at times and then distant from us. When we feel comforted, confident and at peace we sense in this that the Lord is near. Then there are times when we feel frustration, anxiety, and depression, and life becomes a struggle and, in these times, we feel as though the Lord is absent.

This process of feeling the Lord present and absent is captured very well in this story of the disciples’ struggle with the storm as they look to go towards Capernaum. We receive teaching from the Word, and it satisfies our need on a number of levels, as witnessed in the feeding of the five thousand. The excitement that is present when we come to see truths that have the potential to bring the changes into our lives that we feel we need, is felt as something good. We take hold of these truths believing this feeling of delight yet possessing truths is not what transforms us, it’s living from them, and the natural mind struggles to understand this. And so we must come to see the distinction between knowing and living from truth. But this distinction can only be realised through the experience of being brought to the end of ourselves, through a submitting of the sense of self’s belief in its own wisdom to the authority of the Word and what it teaches.

So we see in the story that the crowd try to take Jesus by force and make Him a king but on seeing this, He withdraws to the mountain.

Therefore knowing that they were about to come and seize Him, that they might make Him king, Jesus withdrew again to the mountain Himself alone.

This is the natural mind’s response to experiencing the delight of seeing truths from the Word. For the natural mind, the natural man, is the crowd in us, the crowd of natural thoughts and affections. And here it thinks that it can take the things of spiritual life and make them serve it as their king. It thinks that it can take the things of religion and look to them to serve natural and worldly aspirations and goals. In extreme forms this tendency expresses itself outwardly in religious fundamentalism, but it takes other forms as well and is something we should become aware of in ourselves. In its more subtle forms, it takes an expression in situations when we insist that we know best and are unwilling to listen to another’s point of view or look to find a meeting ground in the exchange. Whenever this kind of attitude comes to the fore, we lose touch with the Lord, and this is described as Jesus withdrawing to the mountain.

When we begin to act from ourselves and not from the true spirit of the Word, we move away from the Lord which leads to the feeling that the Lord has moved away from us. It’s an important point, because the kind of thoughts that arise from the false belief that the Lord has moved away from us are very different to those based on the truth the Lord never moves. He is always present so if it feels like He is not near then it is we who have moved. The first response leads to us being passive, sometimes offended, if not angry that we have been left. We may even believe something is wrong with us which sees us then falling into states self condemnation and guilt. But if we believe what the Word teaches then our response will be to actively examine ourselves, looking to the Lord to find what needs dealing with and then moving forward with what is revealed to us.

When we act from false beliefs then self interest takes a hold of the spiritual principles that we have been learning and twists them to justify negative emotional states. This is described in verse 16 where we are told that

And when it became evening, His disciples went down on the sea. And entering into the boat, they were going across the sea to Capernaum.

To descend down to the sea is to move into a low state in regard to spiritual life. When we are not looking to apply the Word to our own life but can only see how it applies to others, we set ourselves up as judges and so enter a low state regarding our understanding of the Word. We become trapped in its literal sense, drawing material from it that justifies self righteous attitudes and so we lose touch with the inner sense which speaks to its application to the life of our own mind. The living principles represented by the disciples then enter a boat which corresponds to a natural understanding of what the Word teaches. This boat is what we use to move through life in and are the ideas that we have put together to navigate our way across life’s seas. The fact that Jesus is not present means that it’s a state of living from our own strength in the pride of our own intelligence which is further indicated by the statement that

And darkness had already occurred, and Jesus had not come to them.  

When we are in these states of life, we think that we are right and that the problems and issues which we face are caused by others. We can’t see that the issues and problems that bring us into negative emotional states have nothing to do with others outside of us but are the result of our attachment to false beliefs and conclusions which arise from the senses, and so darken our minds to the spiritual truths involved. The inner winds of these beliefs begin to blow about agitating our mind and increasingly we look to increase our effort relying on our own strength to overcome the difficult feelings we are experiencing. But without Jesus, that is, the Word, in our boat – without recognising that the Word must be Lord and governor over our whole life including our thoughts and affections – our levels of anxiety will only grow and rage as a sea within us.

When the storm becomes too much, we begin once again to turn to the Word as the Lord and in this way, we are brought out of our senses, to our senses. We learn from this experience that we cannot overcome from our own strength. That we have moved away from the Lord by not believing the Word and this is the cause of our inner difficulties. That we are responsible for our states, for what we choose to believe. When, we see this and turn away from looking outside of ourselves for the causes of our condition, then the Lord appears walking on the sea and draws alongside the boat.

Then having rowed about twenty five or thirty stadia, they saw Jesus walking on the sea, and becoming near the boat, they were afraid. But He said to them, I AM! Do not fear.

We are then reassured by the realisation that it is the Word that is our Saviour, the I AM and we need not fear.  In this acknowledgment a desire arises for practise – to apply the truths that He offers as the Word, to take these into the boat which holds all of our ideas about spiritual life and to use these to navigate the sea our life. When we do this, then new land appears for us to journey with Him in.

Then they desired to take Him into the boat. And the boat was instantly at the land to which they were going.

After these things, Jesus went away over the Sea of Galilee, the Tiberian Sea. And a great crowd followed Him, for they saw His miraculous signs which He did on the sick ones. And Jesus went up into the mountain and sat there with His disciples. And the Passover was near, the feast of the Jews. Then Jesus lifting up His eyes and seeing that a great crowd is coming to Him, He said to Philip, From where may we buy loaves that these may eat? But He said this to test him, for He knew what He was about to do. Philip answered Him, Loaves for two hundred denarii are not enough for them, that each of them may receive a little. One of His disciples said to Him, Andrew the brother of Simon Peter, A little boy is here who has five barley loaves and two fish; but what are these for so many? And Jesus said, Make the men to recline. And much grass was in the place. Then the men reclined, the number was about five thousand. And Jesus took the loaves, and giving thanks distributed to the disciples, and the disciples to those reclining. And in the same way the fish, as much as they desired. And when they were filled, He said to His disciples, Gather up the fragments left over, that not anything be lost. Then they gathered and filled twelve hand-baskets with fragments of the five barley loaves which were left over to those who had eaten. (John 6:1-13)

That “to eat” and “to drink” signify in the Word to eat and drink spiritually, which is to be instructed, and by instruction and living to imbue oneself with good and truth and to appropriate this, consequently intelligence and wisdom, can be seen from the following….In Jeremiah -Thy words shall be found, that I may eat them, and Thy Word be to me for joy and for the gladness of my heart (xv. 16).Here “to eat” manifestly stands for spiritual eating, which is to know, to perceive, and to appropriate to oneself, for it is said, “that I may eat Thy words, and Thy Word be to me for joy and for the gladness of my heart;” the “words of God” signify His precepts or Divine truths …”to eat” signifies in the spiritual sense to receive in the will and to do, from which is conjunction; (Apocalypse Explained 617a{3&4})

We leave off Chapter Five having explored the teaching concerning the Divine nature of the Word and the relationship between the Divine Love or Good called the Father and the Divine Truth called the Son. We also received teaching regarding the nature of the proprium and the natural man’s resistance to heavenly things as illustrated in the Jews response to Jesus’s presence and activity. Now because spiritual life involves learning truths and responding to them as if of ourselves, we enter Chapter Six with the statement that…

After these things, Jesus went away over the Sea of Galilee, the Tiberian sea.

This single statement sets the scene for what is spiritually involved in what is to follow. If we go back to the Greek and render it into a more literal English translation, we can begin to get a better sense of the spiritual meaning being conveyed here. Literally this reads…

From-came the Jesus (to the) other side of the sea of the Galilee of the Tiberius

We have looked at what Galilee corresponds to previously which is the good of life and this state here is said to be of Tiberius. Once we see that Tiberius means good vision, we can get a sense that what is being described is a state of seeing the good in what truth teaches. It is also called the sea of Galilee because this understanding of truth must become expressed in life. So this sea stands as something that needs to be crossed over in order for things to progress. This crossing occurs internally in our own spiritual states every time we move from an understanding of what truth teaches concerning good, to its actual application in our life. The shift in state from instruction to practice is what is meant by Jesus going to the other side. However, it is an appearance of the letter that the Lord as the Word, which is what Jesus represents, moves – for He doesn’t. He is unchanging. What shifts is our understanding of the Word. So Jesus crossing to the other side really speaks of a shift in our relationship to the Word from something that instructs our intellect to something that is to be lived.

To live from our understanding of the Word is a more interior state than merely understanding it. To live from it is to love it because it is a true acknowledgment of its authority in our life, whereas to understand and not live from it is to love one’s self and so give this precedence over what the Word teaches. And so the movement of the Word into a more interior state due to our desire to live from it elevates it in our lives. This elevation is described in the literal sense as Jesus going up into a mountain and sitting with His disciples.

And a great crowd followed Him, for they saw His miraculous signs which He did on the sick ones. And Jesus went up into the mountain and sat there with His disciples.

When we begin to look to understand the Word in relation to our life it provides us with truths which can bring healing and freedom from the instability of the natural mind. For the natural mind, if not ruled by what is spiritual, is steeped in self reliance and pride in its own intelligence and the sense of self that flows out from this is attached to the evils and falsities that are based in the loves of self and the world. In the Word, this mental condition of the spirit is described by all the diseases and sickness that people suffer from but which the Word is able to heal. So spiritually, sickness and disease arise from being disconnected from the Lord who is the source of our life.

When we first come into contact with truths and begin to give them serious consideration one of the things that we notice in regard to our inner states of life is that we become more settled within ourselves. Coming to a place of acknowledging the Lord as God and entering into the security of the truth that His Divine Providence is over all things, as well as many of the other basic truths of faith, brings a sense of peace. Our minds experience a state of being healed from various forms of sickness and dis-ease. And when the truths that Spiritual Christianity offers start to open up an awareness of there being a deeper meaning in the Word which directly addresses the inner states of our mind, there is also a state of excitement. It can be likened to a kind of honeymoon period as new truths, principles, ideas and concepts are gathered. Everything is new and exciting, and this brings a sense of peace and relief as a renewed sense of purpose and meaning, which the opening of a spiritual level to life invariably brings.

This first state of contact with truths and their effect on our mental states are described here as the miraculous signs that Jesus worked in the great crowd. These signs affect us on the level of our intellect and awaken an interest in spiritual truths for they point us to the potential that lies within the Word to bring about spiritual wholeness. But the experience of these signs is external for while powerful and wonderful, they don’t bring true inner spiritual transformation.

Inner spiritual transformation must occur on the level of the will, of what we love, and for this to occur the signs need to provide us with enough motivation to begin to work on the purification of our affections through the removal of evils and falsities. Even in the historical accounts of Jesus’s life, we can see that while many witness the signs that the He performs, only a few were affected enough to make a real commitment to follow Him. Within us there is a great crowd of natural thoughts and affections which get stirred up as we come into contact with truths from the Word. And whilst they all might be seeking to be fulfilled, only a few will be able to serve the Lord in a way that can lead to a real and lasting transformation.

As we look to find a closer connection with the Lord through His Word, many of our thoughts and affections begin to be organised around this new desire. We find that our mental life undergoes a change. Previously, our mental energy had gone into various external secular pursuits with our hopes placed upon the false dreams of fulfilment and happiness that the material world promises. We now start to find that our mind is redirecting its focus to thinking about spiritual things. Where we never sought the Lord before, we now find an inner prayer life developing as we look to the Word to lead and guide us. Things that we had never noticed, are being drawn to our attention. We begin to recognise that certain behaviours and thoughts and emotions stand opposed to spiritual goals and values.

As all this unfolds into our conscious awareness we begin to see in a new way that we are in need of the Lord. We see that we need to better understand the Word not just as ideas, but in terms of the application of them. And so the Word becomes our eyes through which we can come to see spiritually and because it’s the Word that becomes our spiritual eyes and elevates our in-sight, the Scripture says…

Then Jesus lifting up His eyes and seeing that a great crowd is coming to Him.

Which then offers the question … How can the desires and aspirations of the great crowd within the natural mind be met? And the Word which offers this question, also then answers because what then follows is instruction concerning the process by which we can be brought to see that when the Lord is acknowledged then what is perceived to be a little can become much, and is well able to meet any need that may arise.

A natural response to any perceived need is to look at the problem that we are confronted with. This happens because we are used to being self reliant and the fixer of our own problems and the problems of others. But in this story we are seeing the principles involved in moving from being self reliant to becoming reliant on the Lord. Once the honeymoon is over the real spiritual work begins. Therefore, in our story today we see that in Jesus directing the disciples’ attention towards the crowd, we have illustrated the inner principle of having our attention being directed onto the needs of the natural mind’s thoughts and affections.

There is an important lesson here, and it’s this – we are unable of ourselves to sort out our own lives. As long as we remain in an attitude of self reliance, of placing our trust in old habitual ways of responding to conflict in life, we remain cut off from the Lord because we live in a belief that we don’t need Him. The external appearance may be such that it looks as though we have things together, but how are things inwardly? The natural man places it emphasis in externals as a measure of a successful life. But in the spiritual economy it isn’t about externals, it’s about what is internal and it is only as we look to make the Word as the source of our life that the Lord is able to come in and lead us to inner wholeness.

That we need to come to the realisation of our dependence on the Word for our life is beautifully captured in the question that Jesus asks Philip and in Philip’s response…

…From where may we buy loaves that these may eat? But He said this to test him, for He knew what He was about to do. Philip answered Him, Loaves for two hundred denarii are not enough for them, that each of them may receive a little.

The Word can meet all our needs. This is the truth being taught here. And so the Word looks to stretch our faith, to strengthen it, which is what it means to test it. To be tested spiritually has nothing to do with passing or failing – it always has to do with strengthening our connection to the Lord, of making this stronger. Here the Lord seeks to move us away from a reliance on our own ability to sort out our issues. Philip is the intellectual faculty; his name means lover of horses and horses in the Word correspond to the powers of the intellect.

The Lord elevates our understanding so that we can see the complex needs and desires that stir within the multitude of thoughts and affections that make up and crowd our natural man. How can this be satisfied? is the question that the Word seeks to clarify for us here. Philip’s response is as much as an admission that a conventional or natural approach to the problem won’t suffice. For even if two hundred denarii, a large sum of silver is available, it won’t be enough to allow each to receive even a little.

The spiritual issues in our life cannot be addressed by anyone but the Lord and the only way He can do this is by the Word. The way forward will only open as we give up our own efforts to sort things out and look to the Word and the principles for our life that it teaches. Giving up on our self reliance is what is expressed in Philips response and for all intents and purposes, the task appears impossible.

But it is the realisation of this that opens the way for our perception to shift from focusing on the problem to instead connecting with the Lord as the Word who is the solution to every human need. It’s a perception that arises out of our willingness to obey the Word as the authority for our life, which is shown in that it is Andrew who speaks next…

One of His disciples said to Him, Andrew the brother of Simon Peter, A little boy is here who has five barley loaves and two fish; but what are these for so many?

Andrew is described as the brother of Simon Peter, and just as Philip represents an inner mental faculty that the Lord uses in our regeneration so too is Andrew the brother of Simon Peter. Simon Peter represents the truths of faith and Andrew as his brother is the love of those truths witnessed in a life of obedience to them. Thus, it is our obedience to the Word that brings to the foreground this little boy who has five barley loaves and two fish. But there is still doubt that arises from the external appearances of the senses, for the statement is made by Andrew…

…but what are these for so many?

Who or what is this little boy who has in his possession the solution to the pressing need? This little boy is the newly developing spiritual life in us. Children in the Word are symbols of innocence and spiritual innocence is with those who follow the Lord, who obey His Word. So this little boy is the innocence of a genuine spiritual life and holds a little goodness and truth that when in the hands of the Lord can feed a great crowd. Five barley loaves and two fish…. to the natural mind, the Word appears to be woefully inadequate to meet the pressing needs of the human heart.

Yet here we see that what the natural mind regards as close to nothing can, in the hands of the Lord, be more than enough to meet our needs. This sustenance is released from the Word as we recognise that the spiritual good represented by the barley loaves, and the truths of the Word represented by the fish, are the Lord’s. This is represented in the act of them making their way into His hands so that He might take them and distribute them. All that we have is given from above, and here we see the principle of influx represented in Jesus passing the food to His disciples and they in turn passing what they have received out into the crowd who are said to have received what they desired. This is an important point, for reception is according to state, and so we only receive what will fill the vessel, no more or no less. So the Word can meet our need despite how things appear to us; the question is always – Whose authority will we subscribe to? Will we place our trust in It, or our self?

And you do not have His Word abiding in you, for the One whom that One sent, this One you do not believe. You search the Scriptures, for you think in them you have everlasting life. And they are the ones witnessing concerning Me. And you are not willing to come to Me that you may have life. I do not receive glory from men; but I have known you, that you do not have the love of God in yourselves. I have come in the name of My Father, and you do not receive Me. If another comes in his own name, you will receive that one. How are you able to believe, you who receive glory from one another, and the glory which is from the only God you do not seek? Do not think that I will accuse you to the Father; there is one accusing you, Moses, in whom you have hoped. For if you were believing Moses, you would then believe Me; for that one wrote concerning Me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe My Words? (John 5:38-47)

In heaven there are two distinct loves, love to the Lord and love towards the neighbor, in the inmost or third heaven love to the Lord, in the second or middle heaven love towards the neighbor. They both go forth from the Lord, and they both make heaven. How these two loves are distinct and how they are conjoined is seen in heaven in clear light, but in the world only obscurely. In heaven loving the Lord does not mean loving Him in respect to His person, but it means loving the good that is from Him; and to love good is to will and do good from love; and to love the neighbor does not mean loving a companion in respect to his person, but loving the truth that is from the Word; and to love truth is to will and do it. This makes clear that these two loves are distinct as good and truth are distinct, and that they are conjoined as good is conjoined with truth. But this can scarcely be comprehended by men unless it is known what love is, what good is, and what the neighbour is. (Heaven and Hell 15)

“To believe in the Lord” signifies not only to adore and worship Him, but also to live from Him, and one lives from Him when he lives according to the Word which is from Him; therefore “to believe in Him” is to believe that He regenerates man, and gives eternal life to those who are regenerated by Him. (Apocalypse Explained 815)

“to believe in God” is to know, to will, and to do; but “to believe the things that are from God” is to know, and this is possible without willing and doing. Those who are truly Christians know, will, and do; but those who are not truly Christians only know; (Apocalypse Explained 349)

What is religion except that man may so live that he may come into heaven, and that he may know how he should live? To know this is called doctrine; and to believe it and live according to it is called religion. From doctrine man will know not only what must be thought but also what must be done; for man must think that he may do, but not think what involves doing nothing. (Apocalypse Explained 805)

If we read these words of the Gospel and see them as referring to others, then we won’t be able to see much in them. But if we come to them from the perspective that all things contained within the Word are given for the sake of our salvation then we can begin to search the Scriptures in a way that has a direct impact on our life right now. For there are two ways we can approach the Scriptures; one is through natural reasoning and our own ideas, and the other is to approach them from the Lord. Each will produce very different results.

If we approach them from our natural reasoning, then we will work from the appearances of the letter with a view to confirming self derived beliefs that promote the loves of self and the world. And these will be clothed in the externals of religion to give them some form of credibility. In this way the natural man, the natural mind, takes the Scriptures and makes them subject to the judgement and authority of what it loves and believes to be true. If on the other hand, we approach the Scriptures from the Lord then we approach them from what they testify concerning themselves – that they are the Divine Truth within which is the Divine Love. If the latter is in our focus as we approach the Text, then it will be seen as something that expresses the Divine Love in terms of how it appears to human and angelic consciousness. And if this is the case then we are empowered by the Word to have our natural self-orientated mind made subject to the authority of the Word.

The Word seeks to lead us out of the hell of our selfishness. In order to achieve this, it has to instruct us as to who the Lord is, that we live for ever, and that there is a heaven and a hell. The Word is the means by which these important concepts are implanted in people’s minds. At first, they enter and develop as an external natural view of spiritual things. This is their foundation. The Lord is seen as existing ‘somewhere up in a heaven’ outside of us and both heaven and hell are regarded as places people go to after they die. The Word is read in natural terms and seems to confirm this view on every page. We read of those who follow Jesus and are bound for heaven, and we read of those, like the Jews, who are opposed to Him and are bound for hell. When read in this way, people are seen as either good or evil.

But this is a natural understanding of spiritual things built upon the appearances from the letter of the Word. Its use is to give us some basic foundational concepts so that we can move to a spiritual understanding which takes a very different view. A spiritual understanding only begins to develop when we begin to see that the Word doesn’t speak of others out there in the natural world but speaks of the world within our minds, our psychological and spiritual world. Slowly we come to see that the Lord is not off in some externalised heaven but is in fact the Word itself and that heaven and hell are within us. Heaven is in those things of the Word which we have had worked into our life through obedience to its commandments and hell is the love of self and the world that makes up the proprium, the native sense of self. A spiritual understanding then views the people in the Word that follow Jesus as those aspects within us that are willing to obey the Word and those who oppose Him, as those things that belong to the infernal proprium.

So when the Word speaks to the Jews, as in our reading today, we have an opportunity to be instructed about this proprium and its attitude towards the Divine Truth. It says of it…

You are not willing to come to me that you may have life…I have known you, that you do not have the love of God within yourself…I have come in the name of the Father, and you do not receive Me…you receive another who comes in his own name…you seek the glory of another but not the glory of the only God.

These statements are teachings given to instruct us concerning what stands in the way of the Lord being more fully present in our lives. They are given so that we might see the nature of what we are all too often identified with in the hope that we might take the initiative that the Lord has given us and look to Him for a new life. So it’s not about the Jews in history – it’s about the states of life that the proprium has us bound up in.

To read the Scriptures spiritually is to look to the Lord to have them reveal what is required of us. In other words, our search needs to be made with an aim to respond to what is revealed concerning ourselves. For this to happen, when we come to the Scriptures we need to have it clear in our mind that we are coming to the Lord. The Word is our teacher, and we are its disciples if we are looking to be instructed from it so that we can live our life in obedience to it. We need to learn to put our own agenda’s aside and with humility sit at the feet of the Word so that we might be led by it in the path of life. This is done by being conscious or spiritually awake when reading it and allowing it to instruct us concerning ourselves. It is helpful to read slowly and prayerfully so that we remind ourselves constantly in our reading that it is addressing states in our own life rather than telling us about others.

The doctrines for Spiritual Christianity state that it is the Lord God Jesus Christ who is to be worshiped. But we need to ask ourselves – What do we understand by this name? It’s important because what we connect this name with will have a major bearing on what we understand by worship and how we live our lives. The natural mind’s thought when hearing this name centres on a mental image of a person in history and goes no further. But the doctrines for Spiritual Christianity teach us that the words Lord and Jesus mean the Divine Love and that the words God and Christ mean the Divine Truth.  And also, that when they are presented together in a single statement in the Text then it speaks to the marriage or Oneness of the Divine Love and the Divine Wisdom.

We also learn from the teachings for Spiritual Christianity that the Word itself is the marriage of the Divine Love and the Divine Wisdom. Further to this, we learn that the material human form is how loves and truths are represented on the material plane to our physical senses. A human being then is not a human being by virtue of having a material body but by the quality of the loves and the truths that they live from.

The same applies to the Word. Its letter is the means by which the Lord presents Himself to our physical senses and so serves as His bodily representation on the material plane of creation. The letter is made up of natural ideas taken from the material world. It uses ideas of people and events set in a historical framework. It talks of rocks, and trees and mountains and rivers and seas. Of journeys and geographical boundaries, of wars, of times of famine and times of peace. It is filled with objects from the natural world and of impliments and structures that have be built by human hands. We see the rise and fall of nations and kingdoms and the letter speaks of evils committed, of sin and death and of courage and compassion.

The letter of the Word has a very ordinary human look and feel to it, and on its surface appears to contain many of the same flaws that we find in our own human nature. It appears to be born of this world just as the historical Jesus, who represented the Word on the lowest plane of life, by all external appearances seemed to be an ordinary human being – no different to you and me. In being born into the world the Divine clothed Itself in human imperfections to represent the Word itself. To teach us concerning the nature of the Word and direct our thought little by little beyond its literal sense and into the glory that lies within. The factors and events around Jesus’s birth and life in the world points us to the higher spiritual reality of His birth into finite human minds as the Divine truth.  Here He is clothed time and again within our own imperfect, very human, finite understanding of the Word.

So we are instructed that the Word presents to human consciousness in an imperfect form on the surface. This is why the teachings for Spiritual Christianity are so important; for they enable us to put our own tendency to judge the Word from natural appearances on hold while allowing what is deeper within it, that speaks of those things concerned with living a spiritual life, to shine forth from within its letter.

The letter is for the natural man and serves him by providing the basis for a natural religion. The natural man, the natural understanding, can’t see beyond the letter but the spiritual understanding can. But to see from the spiritual man or mind we need to be instructed in doctrines that can serve as the ground from which we can be born from above. So doctrine is given that we might have access to knowledge about the Word and what it means to live from it. As we put that knowledge into practise we come into a deeper understanding of its application to the life of our mind for the spiritual life is a life of examining the quality of our thoughts and affections.

Of the natural man or what is of the proprium the Word says this…

You do not have His Word abiding in you, for the One whom that One sent, this One you do not believe.

To be saved from our selfishness we need to have the Word abiding in us, and it can only abide in us if we believe what the Word or Moses testifies concerning itself – that God is the Word. If we believe this then we will approach the Word as our God, with humility in readiness to respond to what it brings up for us in our life. And as we respond, so the Word comes to be in us and we in the Word. The Jews who represent what is opposed to the Word within us, that is, the love of self, can’t receive the Word because there is nothing within it that desires what is of heaven.

However, the things of the Word are able to provide a higher sense of ourselves through which we can be separated from what is lower. The Word, when it passes into our minds, is able to awaken a deeper sense of self that is founded on the remains of what is good and true which the Lord has carefully planted within us over the course of our lives. These form a remnant of spiritual awareness which, once awakened, open us up to the possibility of having our sense of self removed from what is of the loves of self and the world, and joined to loves of a heavenly quality. Our awakening to what is higher though can only occur as we affirm the truths that we are brought into contact with through living from them.

We have said many times before that having the Word doesn’t make us spiritual. What makes a person spiritual is living from it. The natural man can appear to be religious but it’s a religion based on the loves of self and the world. In other words, when the natural man is involved in religious things, self interest is foremost in its motivations. Hence, we see the Lord confronting the Jews, that is our naitve proprium saying…

You search the Scriptures, for you think in them you have everlasting life. And they are the ones witnessing concerning Me. And you are not willing to come to Me that you may have life.

Searching the Scriptures without seeing the Lord within them is a wasted effort. There is an important truth revealed here and it is this, the Lord and the Word are one. The natural man looks to separate them by holding to a mental image of the Lord as one thing and seeing the Word as another. The message of the Gospel of John is one that seeks to bring us to the Word as God. By separating the two the natural man can conveniently hold to the image of the Lord it creates for itself to support his own agenda. From this, the natural man, the natural mind, uses natural reasoning to manipulate the Scriptures to support self-seeking actions and avoid examining the quality of its mental states in the light of truths.

If we are not willing to confront the hold which the native proprium has on us, our identity will remain inextricably woven into its machinations and as the proprium is nothing but evil, we will remain helplessly subject to the influences of the hells. Divine revelation is not given to provide us with knowledge about others; it’s given so that we can know what is in us and how it can be dealt with. The proprium cannot but want to be exalted above all others. The love of self is a love of dominating others and given the opportunity it will work to falsify the Word to put itself in a better light. So the Word must be approached as the Lord for it is the One thing that can set us free. It is Divine truth and the Lord says in the Word…

…you shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free. (John 8:32)

I am able to do nothing from Myself; just as I hear, I judge; and My judgment is just, for I do not seek My will, but the will of the One sending Me, the Father. If I witness concerning Myself, My witness is not true; it is Another that witnesses concerning Me, and I know that the witness which He witnesses concerning Me is true. You have sent to John, and he has testified to the truth. But I do not receive witness from man, but I say these things that you may be saved. That one was the burning and shining lamp, and you were willing to exult in his light for an hour. But I have the greater witness than John’s, for the works which the Father has given Me, that I should finish them, the works which I do, themselves, witness concerning Me, that the Father has sent Me. And the Father, the One sending Me, has Himself borne witness concerning Me. You have neither heard His voice at any time, nor have you seen His form. (John 5:30-37)

The reason why…goods and truths are meant by witnesses, is, that…goods and truths, or, all who are in them, acknowledge and confess the Lord. For it is the proceeding Divine that is called Divine Good and Divine Truth, from which comes the good of love to God and the good of charity towards the neighbour, and thence the truth of doctrine and the truth of faith, which witness concerning Him; it therefore follows that they who are in them also witness concerning the Lord, that is, acknowledge and confess Him. For it is the Divine that witnesses concerning the Divine, and not man from himself; consequently it is the Lord in the good of love, and in the truth of doctrine from that, which are with man, that do this.

Since all acknowledgment and confession of the Lord, and principally the acknowledgment and confession of the Divine in His Human, is from the Lord Himself, and since to witness signifies to acknowledge and confess this, therefore “to witness ” is used in the following passages to denote acknowledgment and confession from the Lord Himself concerning Himself. In John: “Search the Scriptures, for they are they which bear witness of me” (v. 3 9). The Sacred Scripture, or the Word, is the Divine Truth proceeding from the Lord, and the proceeding Divine is the Lord Himself in heaven and in the church, so when it is said that the Scriptures bear witness of Him, it is meant that the Lord Himself bears witness of Himself. Again: “I am he that bears witness of myself, and my Father who sent me, bears witness of me” (viii. 18). Here it is openly declared that the Lord Himself, or the Divine in Him, bears witness of Him. (Apocalypse Explained 635{2&3})

Truth, in order for it to be true, can never be something separate from love or good. The very definition of truth given in these words is that it speaks of love and goodness and of these alone. Now because the Word is the Divine Truth, we can trust it to lead and guide us into a genuine spiritual life. So here in these verses the Lord teaches us what the nature and quality of Divine truth is. Yet how can we be sure that the Word is the truth? If we come at it intellectually and claim it to be the truth because it says so, or that the church teaches it is so, but don’t take it any further then we remain in what the doctrines for Spiritual Christianity call a historical faith which is not a saving faith. You see the Lord gives us the ability to read and understand statements of truth from the Word by giving us an intellectual faculty. But, having merely an intellectual understanding of truth as something in the memory doesn’t make it true in our life. Truth doesn’t become something true in our life until we actually live from it.

We can make the mistake of thinking that because we have truths from the Word in our minds and can think and speak about them, that they are integrated into what we live from. But nothing spiritual is actually part of us until it becomes one with our will, with what we love. This is because our intellect is not where our sense of self lies, it lies in our will. The doctrines for Spiritual Christianity state that a person is their will for the will is the seat of all our desires and loves. So, just as the understanding contains those things belonging to the intellect, the will contains those things belonging to the loves and affections. The will of the natural man, of the natural mind, however, is corrupt to its core and all that is connected with it is opposed to what is spiritual, and so opposed also to the loves belonging to heaven. In fact, the doctrines for Spiritual Christianity teach us that until we awaken to spiritual life, we don’t actually have a proper will. Rather we are driven by an infinite variety of lusts or desires that arise within the mind and compete for gratification.

It’s a spiritual fact that we are all born into the world natural, which means we are all born with our sense of self immersed in the loves or lusts of natural life. This level of life is nothing but selfishness and while it can’t be saved or redeemed, we, that is, our sense of self, can be. The purpose for the giving of the Word, of Divine truths, is so that we can have our sense of self lifted out of the things that the old will delights in and placed into a new will, which the Lord looks to create from our understanding of truths. For it is only truths from the Word which have the power to lift our sense of self out from its identification with the delights and pleasures that flow from the lower, fallen will.

The desire to seek to investigate these truths and to find out what it means to live a genuine spiritual life is built up by the Lord secretly, despite the dire condition of the natural man. Our desire to search flows from what the doctrines for Spiritual Christianity call remains. These remains are impressions of things good and true that we have come into contact with over the course of our life. They can be as simple as a kind word spoken in a moment of need, a look of acknowledgement, an act of empathy, or the gentle squeeze of a compassionate hand. Or they might be a moment of feeling uplifted and inspired by something that moves us in nature, a sunset perhaps. Or something that shifts us out of everyday life into an awareness of something beyond our sense of self and into a connection with that which is ‘other’. These countless simple expressions is how the Lord breaks into the selfish world of human existence. More often than not they are unacknowledged, yet they serve as the little that remains of His presence, urging us on to something higher, where we are able to consciously acknowledge this witness. We have the following statement in the opening chapter of John…

… and the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it. (John 1:5)

We need to remind ourselves, often, that the simple and great acts of love and usefulness expressed around us each day are the Lord impressing a sense of His abiding presence upon our consciousness within the darkness of our states of selfishness and ignorance concerning spiritual life. These acts continue to be expressed despite this darkness and so keeps open the possibility of being lifted into a spiritually meaningful life, indeed as the Scripture states…

The light shines in the darkness and the darkness doesn’t overcome it.

In this chapter we also read…

My Father works until now, and I am working…

The purpose of truth is to bring light to enlighten our mind so that we can more fully appreciate the Lord’s presence with us as the Word. The light shines in the darkness of ignorance, yet it shines in the hope that the ignorance can be dispelled. That all might enter into a sense of conscious co-operation with the Lord in the processes of spiritual recreation and regeneration.

We have seen how the terms Father and Son are to be understood in the Word and these verses from today’s reading extend and reinforce the teaching of their Oneness. In verse 30 we have…

I am able to do nothing from Myself; just as I hear, I judge; and My judgment is just, for I do not seek My will, but the will of the One sending Me, the Father.

These words offer us deep insight into the nature of the Lord’s Human, or the Word. We need to remember that the Divine Love seeks one thing – to raise all into heavenly states of life. But no one can be raised into these states without being regenerated, for it is by regeneration that the mind is recreated into a form that is able to receive what is higher into itself. This process cannot be hurried, and it progresses only to the degree that we allow truths into our life. This is because the application of truths to the life of our mind works to transform it into a form of heaven.

When the Word says…

I am able to do nothing from Myself

It means that everything in the Word is from the Divine Goodness or Love and so is always working to bring about our salvation. The Lord always works with the eternal welfare of all as His objective. This means we can fully trust in the Word in every state of life in which we find ourselves in, that it is in accordance with the plans and purposes that He has for our life. In the words,

just as I hear, I judge

we learn that the Divine Truth hears or obeys for to hear spiritually means to obey or will and so is aligned with the Divine Love.  And likewise, the judgement it effects is also in accordance with what the Divine Love seeks – which is our salvation.

The judgement that proceeds from the Word is just for there is nothing of self interest in it. It seeks only the will of the Divine Love, the Father. And this judgement which the Word makes has nothing to do with the Lord casting a person into hell or admitting them into heaven. This is how the natural man understands judgement in the Word. The natural man uses the letter of the Word to set itself up as judge over it and others. Spiritual judgement is not concerned with such things. Its concern is only focussed on a person’s spiritual welfare, for the Word, the Divine Truth, brings light that we might see the quality of what lies within us. So that the thoughts and affections which are born of the hells might be acknowledged for what they are and cast out. So that our sense of self might become established in what is of heaven.

The Lord’s Human or body is the Word, the Holy Scriptures, because its words act like a body within which is its soul, the Divine Love. On the surface the Scriptures appear very human. They use natural human language, terms and concepts for without these we wouldn’t have anything to connect us with the Lord.

The Scriptures are the means by which the Divine Love works its purposes for our salvation, but we are left in freedom to choose whether we will live from it or not. If we choose to live from the Word, so we will come more and more into a sense of the Divine presence within it as its spiritual sense begins to shine through and illuminate our life. The Glorification of the Lord is the Glorification of the Word for the Word is glorified as our spiritual perception is opened by means of its truths which provide the capacity to recognise the evils in our life, of what blocks our reception of His goodness and truth. The Divine Truth doesn’t act independently of the Divine Love; it acts from it as a body acts from its soul.

But for us to know this we must live from the Word. We must come to know it as a lived wisdom otherwise it will remain as something known in the head but not experienced on a heart level. So we can approach the Word as a book that tells us about a Divine man in history but fail to see that He came into the world to point us to, and so restore to human consciousness, the living Word – as the very presence of the Lord in our midst. The former view is that of the natural man who separates the Word from his idea of the Lord. They are seen as two distinct things – the Lord off in heaven somewhere and the Word here in a book that tells us about the Lord. The latter view is that of the spiritual man who sees the Word and the Lord as One and doesn’t separate them in his thought. For the Divine Truth IS the Word and this IS the Son, and within the Son, which IS the Divine Human, IS the Father. If we separate in our thought the Lord and the Word, we separate the soul from its body, we separate the Divine and the Human.

Whenever this takes place, the Word becomes secondary in its importance to our conception of the Divine and it leads to a denial of the Divinity of the Lord’s Human, of the Divinity of the Word. What remains is an adherence to the letter of the Word and its surface meaning, but its inner meaning or spiritual sense is rejected because this challenges the natural man to its core and demands a response it is not willing to give. This is the natural state of life represented by the Jews of which we read…

You have sent to John, and he has testified to the truth. But I do not receive witness from man, but I say these things that you may be saved. That one was the burning and shining lamp, and you were willing to exult in his light for an hour.

This speaks to having come into contact with what the letter of the Word declares concerning itself, for John represents the literal sense of the Word and so to send to John is to inquire into what the Scripture teaches concerning the Lord. And it testifies to the truth which means that even the natural man, if he is willing, can see that the literal sense points to the truth that God is the Word. And while this can be intellectually acknowledged by the natural man and be held as a belief for a time so that he is able to exult or rejoice in its light for an hour… if the belief has no real impact on how he approaches life, then how can he be saved?

There are two witnesses that must be held together if we are to be saved. The first is to acknowledge that the Lord’s Human is Divine, that the Word is God. This is the witness of John, of the literal sense of the Word and it is an external witness belonging to the understanding and is called the witness from man. The second witness belongs to the will and has to do with our response to what we understand. This is the greater witness, of the living experience of truth operating within and transforming the life of our thoughts and affections.

… the greater witness than John’s, for the works which the Father has given Me, that I should finish them, the works which I do, themselves, witness concerning Me, that the Father has sent Me. And the Father, the One sending Me, has Himself borne witness concerning Me.

So how can we know that the Word is the Divine Truth?

We must live from it.

For in living from it we become first hand witnesses of the power of the Word to deliver us from the evils of hell and to bring us into the loves of heaven.

For the Father loves the Son and shows to Him all things which He does. And He will show Him greater works than these in order that you may marvel. For even as the Father raises the dead, and gives life, so also the Son gives life to whomever He wills. For the Father judges no one, but has given all judgment to the Son, so that all may honour the Son, even as they honour the Father. The one not honouring the Son does not honour the Father who has sent Him. Truly, truly, I say to you, The one who hears My Word, and believes the One who has sent Me, has everlasting life, and does not come into judgment, but has passed out of death into life. Truly, truly, I say to you that an hour is coming, and now is, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and the ones hearing will live. For even as the Father has life in Himself, so He gave also to the Son to have life in Himself. And He also gave authority to Him to execute judgment, for He is the Son of Man. Do not marvel at this, for an hour is coming in which all those in the tombs will hear His voice. And they will come out, the ones having done good into a resurrection of life; and the ones having practiced evil into a resurrection of judgment. (John 5:20-29)

…by “the Father” in the Word the Lord meant His Divine which was the life or soul of His Human, and not another separate from Himself. Nor indeed could He have meant any other. Thus the Divine and the Human in the Lord, according to the doctrine of the Christian world, are not two but one person, altogether like soul and body; as is declared in clear terms in the Athanasian Creed. And as God and Man in the Lord are not two but one Person, and thus are united like soul and body, it follows that the Divine which the Lord had from conception was what He called “the Father,” and the Divine Human was what He called “the Son;” consequently that they were both Himself. (Apocalypse Revealed 613{14})

It is not easy to loosen our minds from thinking naturally or literally when we come to what the Word has to say. In the literal sense it is Jesus speaking but on a higher plane or deeper sense what Jesus spoke was representative of what the Word is continually saying to all people of all generations. In the words of John’s Gospel we find the Lord framed within the very concrete limitations of human language. As the Word, He brings the Divine Good into a form we can hear with our ears, read with our eyes and so grasp with our minds. For the Divine Good as it is in itself is beyond our ability to grasp and so it presents to human consciousness in the form of truths articulated in the words of human language that we can read and study and live from if we so choose.

In its most external form, the Divine Good presents Itself as a human being in historical time and space in the person of Jesus Christ. Now whatever presents on the material plane to the physical senses is merely the effect of something higher, for this physical material world is a world of effects and it is the spiritual world that is the world of causes. This is also true of the Divine presenting in the realm of physicality or materiality. Flesh and blood human beings are how goods and truths and evils and falsities present themselves on this level of life. The person of Jesus Christ is therefore how the Divine Life represents Itself on a material level so that it can be accommodated to the senses of our finite minds in a form that we can connect with.

So the Divine doesn’t choose the material human form over other possible forms. The Divine Life assumes the human form because this is the form that perfectly corresponds to its own Divine Essence when that essence is represented to the finite limitations that our minds exist within. In other words, when the Divine Life meets the lowest level of existence it takes on a material form, and that form is one of a human person because this is how goods and truths can be organised and re-presented to us on the most external level of life. So the Divine presents itself in a representative form and we call that form truth because truth is the form of good that can be seen. Jesus says…

I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life. (John 14:6)

Truth is the means by which concepts or ideas as to what love is and how it operates can be re-presented to human consciousness. What we know from the doctrines of Spiritual Christianity is that truth takes on different appearances by conforming to the quality of the life of those receiving it. We get a sense of this in the teachings for Spiritual Christianity where we are told that celestial angels are in ideas incomprehensible to spiritual angels, while spiritual angels are in ideas far above the grasp of those in the natural heavens, yet these lower angels are in ideas far above our comprehension. The teachings go on to say that there are those on earth who view the Word spiritually and the ideas that they are in are beyond the comprehension of those who view it literally or naturally. So, there are those whose faith is focussed on a person in history and there are those whose focus is on the presence of God as the Word itself.

While all these differing views of the Lord exist due to the differences in the perception each has, all, if they are looking to good, have before them in the image of the Lord they carry, the Lord in His Divine Human. For wherever the Lord presents to human consciousness He is perceived in His Divine Human. So those who are followers of the teachings for Spiritual Christianity have the Lord presented to human consciousness as the Word understood in the light of these teachings. This is what is to be understood by the term Son in the Word.

So rather than thinking of the Son as a person, which is to think from the lowest level of our thought, let’s lift our vision so that we see the term in spiritual light, that is, in the light that the doctrines for a Spiritual Christianity offer us. In this light, by the Son is meant the Word which is the Divine Wisdom that reveals the Divine Love, and the Divine Love or the Divine Good that is beyond finite comprehension is what is meant by the term Father. We cannot experience the Father, the Divine Love, as it is in Itself directly but we can experience the Father or the Divine Good in the Son, the Divine Truth. Jesus, as the Word, makes this clear when He says that the Father, the Divine Love, is in Him the Divine Truth, which is to say  – the Divine Love is in the Word. So it is that the Word says that…

No one comes to the Father but by me…

Natural Christianity comprehends this to mean a person, but Spiritual Christianity understands this statement to mean that if we want to connect with the Divine then the only way this can be possible is through the Word. In other words, good can only be realised through the practise of truth, and for us that truth is the Word understood in the light of the principles of Spiritual Christianity. So it is the Word that brings us to the Lord when we see that it is the Lord present in His Divine Human.

For the Father loves the Son and shows to Him all things which He does. And He will show Him greater works than these in order that you may marvel. For even as the Father raises the dead, and gives life, so also the Son gives life to whomever He wills.

Spiritually, this statement teaches us how the Divine works through the Word to instruct us concerning all that has to do with the spiritual life. Without Divine revelation to provide us with knowledge of these things, no one can be saved. So we read that…

the Father loves the Son and shows to Him all things which He does

So within the Word, the Son, are all things belonging to the Divine Love or Father. The Word holds it all. The Divine Truth reveals the Divine Love; this is why Jesus says of the Word that it speaks only of the Father.

For even as the Father raises the dead, and gives life, so also the Son gives life to whomever He wills.

To be raised from the dead from a spiritual perspective is to have our evils and falsities removed, for it is these that render us dead to spiritual life. We see from this statement that the Word teaches that the Divine power to raise a human being from spiritual death is made available through the Word. Without the Word we have no light by which we can become conscious of our evils and falsities. The Divine Good needs the Divine Truth to achieve its goal for the salvation of the human race. Therefore, we read in the next verse that…

For the Father judges no one, but has given all judgment to the Son, so that all may honour the Son, even as they honour the Father. The one not honouring the Son does not honour the Father who has sent Him.

The Father (Divine Good) judges no one but all judgment belongs to the Son (the Word).

This is because the Word is the light of life and by means of the light of the Word we are able to examine our life, see our evils and seek the Lord’s help to have them removed. This is how the Son administers His judgement. Every time we examine our life, see our evils and seek to have them removed we are experiencing the operation of the Son’s judgement for it is the truths which we have from the Word that enable us to see such things – without these we are spiritually blind. When we live from the Word by applying its truths to the life of our affections, thoughts and behaviour so we honour the Son for the Son, the Word, is honoured when we live in accordance with our understanding of Divine truths. To know truths and not live from them is to dishonour them, but if we live from them, we honour them and if we honour them then we honour the Father, the Divine Good, that presents itself in and through them.

Truly, truly, I say to you, The one who hears My Word, and believes the One who has sent Me, has everlasting life, and does not come into judgment, but has passed out of death into life. Truly, truly, I say to you that an hour is coming, and now is, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and the ones hearing will live. For even as the Father has life in Himself, so He gave also to the Son to have life in Himself.

Again, these words understood as to their spiritual meaning are speaking of the relationship between the Divine and its manifestation to human consciousness as the Word. When read naturally however, the mind becomes bogged down in ideas of persons, of a Divine person called the Father sending into the world another Divine person called the Son. But when a spiritual understanding is brought to the terms, we see that by being sent is meant the coming forth or manifestation of the Divine Good to human consciousness as Divine Truth, these being two aspects belonging to One Divine. Therefore, to hear My Word is to obey it and to believe is to acknowledge that the Word is God. If this is done as a matter of life, by applying the truths of the Word to our life, then we pass out of the death of being ruled by the natural mind and the life that it brings – and into spiritual life.

Can we see this?

The Word declares that…

… an hour is coming, and now is, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and the ones hearing will live…

Do we hear in these words the voice of the Word telling us that it alone is the Son of God?  That we who have been dead to this truth are now brought face to face with this startling revelation? That

even as the Father has life in Himself, so He gave also to the Son (the Word) to have life in Himself?

These two terms, Father and Son are one and the same Divine. The Father is what is within the Son, Jesus Christ, and is His soul and the Son is the manifesting form or body. The Divine Love is within the Divine Truth as a soul is within its body; therefore, the Word is the body through which the Father, the Divine Love, is revealed to us. The Scripture states that the hour of this realisation is continually presenting to us all, and so as it is perpetually or continually coming, we see that it now is. The Word has life in Itself and those hearing it or obeying it will live. This is the good news, the Gospel of Spiritual Christianity.

Do not marvel at this, for an hour is coming in which all those in the tombs will hear His voice. And they will come out, the ones having done good into a resurrection of life; and the ones having practiced evil into a resurrection of judgment.

Don’t think here of people who have died and who are to be raised at some time in the future. This is speaking of a spiritual reality that is active right now. It is the process by which spiritual things are separated within us from that which is of self-love, of the proprium. Truths when they are first heard enter the memory where they sit within the natural mind. But because they are merely something of the memory, they are dead and inert and so they lie there as a body lies in its tomb. The actual Greek word for tomb is revealing in this regard for the word translated tomb, literally means memory vault.

To hear His voice then is to begin to obey these truths through using them to examine our own life and practise repentance. Whenever truths are used for the purpose for which they are given, a resurrection takes place. These truths become elevated in importance and value within our mind. They are lifted out of the memory and into the life. This is what is meant by the resurrection. It has to do with the things of the Word bring raised up out of the mental tomb of mere memory knowledge and into the life. Whenever this resurrection occurs, the mind is lifted out of what is lower into what is higher and so we become conscious of what is going on within us. The Word shines a light on our inner states, and we are given to see what is needed for our movement forward towards a more heavenly life.

So we are given a new faculty for seeing that sits above the natural man, the natural mind, from which we can see those things that support what is evil and false which then opens up possibilities that we had not known before. We undergo a resurrection into the light of a new understanding where all things in our mind are subjected to the judgement and scrutiny of the Word. Those things that lead to good can now be raised to life and those things that are of self interest, can be raised to consciousness for judgement. We see then that the Word is the Life Giver, that even as the

Father has life in Himself so He gives the Son, the Word, to have life in Itself.

For if we can receive it, the Word is the Lord in His Divine Human, and It alone is the Saviour of us all.

The man went away and told the Jews that Jesus is the One making him well. And because of this, the Jews persecuted Jesus and lusted to kill Him, because He did these things on a sabbath. But Jesus answered them, My Father works until now, and I work. Because of this, therefore, the Jews lusted the more to kill Him, for not only did He break the sabbath, but also called God His own Father, making Himself equal to God. Then Jesus answered and said to them, Truly, truly, I say to you, The Son is not able to do anything from Himself, except what He may see the Father doing; for whatever that One does, these things also the Son does likewise. For the Father loves the Son and shows to Him all things which He does. And He will show Him greater works than these in order that you may marvel. (John 5:15-20)

…saving faith, … is to believe in the Lord; and to believe in Him is also to believe in the Father, because He and the Father are one. “To believe in the Lord” signifies not only to adore and worship Him, but also to live from Him, and one lives from Him when he lives according to the Word which is from Him; therefore “to believe in Him” is to believe that He regenerates man, and gives eternal life to those who are regenerated by Him. (Apocalypse Explained 815c)11})

the Lord’s Divine…is…distinguished into Divine Good and Divine Truth – the Lord’s Divine Good being called ‘the Father’, and His Divine Truth ‘the Son’. Yet the Lord’s Divine is nothing else than Good, indeed it is Good itself; but Divine Truth is the Lord’s Divine Good as it presents itself visually in heaven….[2] So essentially the Lord is nothing else than Divine Good, and this applies to both essentials – to the Divine itself and to the Divine Human. Divine Truth however does not exist within Divine Good but flows from it, for as stated above, Divine Truth is the Divine Good presenting itself visually in heaven. Now because Divine Good presents itself as Divine Truth, therefore the Lord’s Divine is distinguished, to enable man to grasp it mentally, into Divine Good and Divine Truth, Divine Good being called in the Word ‘the Father’ and Divine Truth ‘the Son’. This is the arcanum that lies behind the Lord Himself on so many occasions speaking of His Father as though He were separate from and so to speak One other than Himself, and yet at other times speaking of His being one with Himself….’The Father’ is used here, as has been stated, to mean the Divine Good and ‘the Son’ the Divine Truth, both being within the Lord. From Divine Good, which is ‘the Father’, nothing but what is Divine is able to proceed or come forth, and that which proceeds or comes forth is Divine Truth, which is ‘the Son’. (Arcana Coelestia 3704)

The events surrounding the healing of the man at the pool of Bethesda leads us into a block of profound teaching concerning the Word. We now see that by the Jews we are to understand that which is within us which resists the operation of the Lord’s Love by means of Divine Truth. What the spiritual sense of the Word teaches is at odds with how the natural man understands it, for the natural man believes only what is apparent to his senses and regarding the Word, he perceives only what is of the external letter.

The Lord in His infinite mercy has provided the doctrines for Spiritual Christianity and by means of the truths these reveal we are offered a new understanding of the Word in which the mind can rest. They offer us a foundation for beginning to walk in a new way. To the spiritual man the Word says, ‘take up your doctrine and live from it’ which the natural man hears read as take up your bed and walk.

For having access to truths is one thing but acknowledging them in life is another and all who desire a spiritual life, must live from their understanding of truth. There is no spiritual life without the elevation of truths to their rightful place within the mind. The Word is Divine Truth right down to its letter and so must be much more than what its surface presents to our comprehension in its literal sense.

So the Word is the Lord’s Divine Human, through and by means of which every person is able to be saved. The natural man recoils at such a suggestion; can ideas set down on the pages of a book save a person? Well, if they are regarded as nothing more than ‘ideas on a page’ then it remains a closed book.

But if we would consider for a moment that by the living Word becoming flesh and dwelling in our midst in the form of a natural human being, we have the Divine Truth represented to the very lowest level of human perception.  Through this Divine intervention in human consciousness, the human race has restored to it the idea of the Lord as a Divine Man, a Divine Human. At first this was understood only in terms of the historical person of Jesus Christ but with the understanding of these events given through the doctrines for Spiritual Christianity, we can be brought to see that everything surrounding the Lord’s life and ministry embodied on the lowest plane of human perception is a representation of how the Word as Divine Truth operates within the human mind. This incarnation does not end with person of Jesus Christ, this is its beginning, for the Divine Love is fully present with us in the truths of the Word itself. Once this is seen, we are ready to perceive that the Lord is the Word and that this is the Divine in Human form.

The natural man cannot see this and regards it as a blasphemy that flies in the face of natural reason. So be it. Truths stand firm regardless of the natural man’s response, or lack of affirmative response. The Jews said that it is not lawful to lift one’s cot on the Sabbath. This describes the unbelief that issues forth from natural reasoning regarding the Word. The inert, rigidity of natural thought in relation to spiritual things is such that it thinks it has obtained the reality of them, when all it has is the mere husk. It places so much of its confidence in the external elements of religion that when its reliance on these is questioned by what is truly spiritual, it reacts defensively. It goes on the attack hoping to undermine and kill off any impact a spiritual understanding of truths may have on the false security that the proprium creates for itself.

While we are in need of regeneration the Lord works, He never rests. For how can love rest when the mind is bound in the shackles of selfishness? The Lord’s response is emphatic;

My Father works until now; and I work…

Such is the nature of the Divine Love,

Have you not known? Have you not heard? Jehovah, the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth; He is not faint, nor does He grow weary; there is no searching to His understanding. He gives power to the faint, and to him with no vigour He increases might.  Even youths are faint and fatigued, and young men stumbling shall stumble; but the ones waiting for Jehovah shall renew power; they shall go up with wings as the eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not be faint! (Isaiah 40: 28-31)

My Father works until now; and I work. When we read of people speaking or of what they have said in the Word we need to see that these words are what the Word as the Lord teaches. So when we read of what the Jews say, we are given teaching as to the general sphere of thought that flows from the human proprium into the mind. And when we read of Jesus speaking, we are given what the Word teaches. So don’t think of people speaking here, this is to think naturally about the Word. Think of these people and their speech as the thoughts that different qualities of affections within your own inner world give rise to, and you will begin to see their inner application.

My Father works until now, and I work.

What was it about these words that enflamed the Jews? Their response shows how this was heard by them…

Because of this, therefore, the Jews lusted the more to kill Him, for not only did He break the sabbath, but also called God His own Father, making Himself equal to God.

This response teaches us how difficult it is for the natural man to accept that the Word is not just Divine, but that it IS the Divine with us. Let’s look at this dialogue from an inner spiritual perspective. Firstly, we need to drop any idea of person associated with the words;

My Father works until now, and I work.

Spiritual Christianity teaches that the term Father when used to refer to God means the Divine Love. The phrase works until now needs to be understood without reference to time because ideas of time are natural ideas; the spiritual idea is that of perpetuity or continually in the eternal now.

When we apply this to the words we have,

The Divine Love or Father never ceases from its activity, or works continuously for the salvation of the human race.

This is the spiritual meaning behind these words and it’s what the Word teaches. Now in its work, the Divine Love needs the means by which its presence can be received into the minds of people. For if the Divine Love can’t be grasped by us so that we can be brought into an awareness of it, then it can’t fulfil its purpose.

What makes us aware of the Lord’s Love is the Divine Truth. In order for love to work it needs wisdom, for by means of wisdom truths are accommodated to the level of our being so that we can be brought into contact with the Lord on the level of life in which we are in. The reference to this wisdom that love needs is made in the simple statement,

…and I work.

The word I when read from a spiritual perspective doesn’t refer to the Lord as to His person but refers to the Lord as the Word, as Divine Truth. I is a term of consciousness or self reference. We can only use the word I if we have a sense of ourselves as existing. The phrasing in the Greek is

…and I AM working.

The Lord Himself is the only being that is self existing and as such is the only One who can truly use the term I and is certainly the only One for whom the phrase I AM can be applied. He is the only One who possesses a Self and so is truly conscious.

What we see then is that the Word references itself in the phrase …and I AM working. If Divine Love never ceases from seeking the fulfilment of its purposes, then neither does the Divine Wisdom for neither can exist without the other. The Divine Wisdom contains the Divine Love and gives it expression and that love is expressed for us through the Word. What we are saying here is that God is the Word. But the natural man can’t receive this and everything in the natural mind on hearing it rises up in opposition to shield itself from its implications. We read of this in verse 18 where it says;

…the Jews (the native will) lusted all the more to kill Him (Divine Truth)

This is the response of the corrupt will of the natural mind when it’s faced with the truth concerning itself. We don’t have to look far to find examples of this in our own life. Whenever we are faced with something we are in denial about we look to minimise its impact, so we don’t have to face the truth. The native will’s natural response is to kill off that which brings up for us what we feel is too painful to face. The natural man in us uses religion to protect itself from having to confront inner states of life by creating a false sense of spiritually in its adherence to external religious or pseudo-spiritual activities. The Word exposes this tendency in us to conceal our evils through deriving a sense of self merit from external religious activity that are devoid of inner spiritual work on ourselves. It exposes our proprium for what it is, it reveals our selfish tendencies, and brings us face to face with ourselves when we are disconnected from the Lord as the Word.

So the teaching here is clear – if we want to be connected to the Lord then we have to be engaged with the Word. And to be engaged with the Word we must be reading it and living from it in accordance with the understanding that the principles for Spiritual Christianity offer us. To further drive home the point that God is the Word we are offered the following statement…

Then Jesus answered and said to them, Truly, truly, I (am) say(ing) to you, The Son is not able to do anything from Himself, except what He may see the Father doing; for whatever that One does, these things also the Son does likewise. For the Father loves the Son and shows to Him all things which He does. And He will show Him greater works than these in order that you may marvel.

Again, if we think of this statement as the Word speaking to us it affirms the truths on which Spiritual Christianity is founded – that the Divine Love and the Divine Wisdom are One and that these are presented to human consciousness in the Word which is the Lord’s Divine Human, and that this is what is meant by the name Jesus Christ. The Word speaks as the Lord’s desire for our salvation which is what the name Jesus represents, saying

Truly, truly, I AM saying to you…

These words state that the Word is the I AM, for the Word is the Divine Truth and the Divine Truth is the Divine Wisdom, and the Divine Wisdom alone is able to communicate and present the Divine Love to human comprehension.

The Divine Wisdom is called the Son for it is of the Divine Love which is called the Father. Wisdom does only what love seeks to accomplish and so we read that…

The Son (or Wisdom) is not able to do anything from Himself, except what He may see the Father doing (or that which the Divine Love seeks to achieve).

In the literal sense of the story, we see the Jews unable to accept the implications of what Jesus is saying. Likewise, the Jews in us as our natural reasoning processes struggle to see that the Word and the Lord are One. However, everything in the Word points to this spiritual reality. May we come to see more fully that the wisdom that brings love into view is the Son which is the Word, the Saviour and Redeemer of us all.

For the Father loves the Son and shows to Him all things which He does. And He will show Him greater works than these in order that you may marvel.

And Jehovah spoke to Moses, saying, And you speak to the sons of Israel, saying, Keeping you shall keep My sabbaths; for it is a sign between Me and you for your generation; to know that I am Jehovah your sanctifier. And you shall keep the Sabbath, for it is holy for you; the profaners of it dying shall die; for everyone doing work in it, that soul shall be cut off from the midst of his people. Work may be done six days, and on the seventh day is a sabbath of rest, holy to Jehovah; everyone doing work on the Sabbath day dying shall die. And the sons of Israel shall observe the Sabbath, to do the Sabbath for their generations; it is a never ending covenant. It is a sign forever between Me and the sons of Israel; for in six days Jehovah made the heavens and the earth, and on the seventh day He rested and was refreshed. (Exodus 31:12-17)

Then the Jews said to the one having been healed, It is a sabbath. It is not lawful for you to lift up the cot. He answered them, The One making me well, that One said to me, Lift up your cot and walk. Then they asked him, Who is the man who told you, Lift up your cot and walk? But he did not know the One who cured him, for a crowd being in that place, Jesus had withdrawn. After these things, Jesus found him in the temple and said to him, Behold, you have become well, sin no more that a worse thing not happen to you. The man went away and told the Jews that Jesus is the One making him well. And because of this, the Jews persecuted Jesus and lusted to kill Him, because He did these things on a sabbath. (John 5:10-16)

‘And you shall keep the sabbath’ means that the Lord’s Divine Human is to be worshipped. This is clear from the meaning of ‘keeping’, when it refers to what is Divine, as worshipping; and from the meaning of ‘the sabbath’ in the highest sense as the union of the Divine, called the Father, and the Divine Human, called the Son, thus the Divine Human in which that union exists. The reason why ‘the sabbath’ means this union is that by the six days of labour which come before the seventh every state of conflict is meant; for in the spiritual sense ‘labour’ does not mean the kind of labour that people go out to in the world but the kind that those in the Church experience before they enter and become the Church, that is, labour that involves them in conflict with evils and the falsities of evil. Labour such as this that is meant in the spiritual sense was experienced by the Lord when He was in the world; for He engaged in conflict then against the hells, and restored them, and the heavens as well, to a state of order… [2] The time and state when the Lord was engaged in conflicts is meant by the six days of labour; but the state when the union had been accomplished is meant by the seventh day, which is called the sabbath on account of the rest it brings, because then the Lord had rest. Consequently ‘the sabbath’ also means the joining together of the Lord with heaven, with the Church, with the angels of heaven, and with members of the Church. The reason for this is that all who will come into heaven must first engage in conflicts against evils and the falsities of evil; and when these have been separated those people enter heaven and are joined to the Lord, and then they have rest. The like applies to people in the world. It is well known that they must engage in conflicts or undergo temptations before they become the Church, that is, before the goodness and truth which constitute the Church have been implanted in them, thus before they have been joined to the Lord, consequently before they have rest. From all this it is evident why it is that a state of conflict is meant by six days of labour, and rest as well as a joining together by the seventh day or the sabbath…[3] The reason why the joining together of goodness and truth is also meant by ‘the sabbath’ is that while a person is engaged in conflicts truths play the leading role within him; but when the truths have been joined to good, thus when good plays the leading role within that person, he has rest. (Arcana Coelestia 10360)

The Word seeks to make us whole but what is lower within us looks only to what belongs to self interest and in this part of the story in the Gospel of John, this is represented by the Jews’s response to the healing of the man at the pool of Bethesda. So the Jews here illustrate the attitude that exists within our natural man towards Divine Truth, towards the Word. We can see this more clearly when we understand that the words that Jesus speaks represent what the whole of the Word teaches. The statement

Lift up your cot and walk

signifies what the Word teaches concerning the Sabbath. The statement of the Jews on the other hand that,

It is a Sabbath. It is not lawful for you to lift up the cot (or bed)

teaches us what the natural man’s response is to what the Word teaches concerning the Sabbath.

So we see from this that the Word teaches us that if we are to be made whole, we must lift up our bed and walk and that this is done on the Sabbath. The Lord spoke this to convey important spiritual truths to do with what is required if we are to become whole which is what is meant spiritually by the Sabbath. This spiritual understanding however stands contrary to what natural reasoning in spiritual matters would have us believe. To take up our bed, as we saw last time, is to take up, or elevate those truths that we have acquired from the Word and to make them a matter of life. For when the Word says to walk it spiritually signifies to live in the truths that we have through using them to examine our life, identify our evils and seek the Lord to have them removed. To this the Jews, the natural man, says, ‘It is not lawful or legitimate to live from the truths of the Word in this way.’

And so, in these two statements we have contrasted the religion of the spiritual man whose focus is on what the Word teaches concerning living a spiritual life against the pseudo spirituality or religion which the natural man offers as a substitute to a genuine spiritual practice. The genuine spiritual practice that the Word teaches, when understood in the light of the doctrines for Spiritual Christianity, is designed to expose and destroy the hold the natural man exerts over the spiritual man. In this battle it is in the natural man’s interest to offer a substitute religion to blunt the impact of spiritual truths on our life so that the life of the hells can maintain their influence through the selfish loves of our proprium.

And so again we see a contrast between what the spiritual man and natural man offers. A genuine spiritual practice is designed to bring about the death of the self through the spiritual disciplines of self examination and repentance, which is what it means to take up our bed and walk. The pseudo practice of natural reasoning on the other hand looks to avoid inner spiritual work and puts all its efforts into advocating for the justification of the proprium’s love of itself as something acceptable. So where a genuine spiritual practice involves confronting the things of self interest as evils and so as sins against the Lord, the false religion of the natural mind looks to conceal these evils from us with a facade of external good that masks the proprium’s true nature from coming into light.

Once exposed, this tendency isn’t difficult to find but it’s subtle and takes many forms, so we have to be ever on our guard. Essentially it centres on self justification or efforts to justify the self on its own terms. To achieve this, it looks to restrict the practice of its religion to mere externals. Perhaps its main characteristic is that those states in us that are trapped in its grip tend to constantly be in an effort to strive to become better on the one hand but are often plagued with guilt and self condemnation on the other. These states are linked to a self assessment before the standard that we imagine God sets for us. In its harder form it produces a harsh judgemental attitude towards others and is openly antagonistic towards anything that would expose its true nature which can be seen in the Jews response to this man’s healing. The Jews feel threatened by Jesus’s activities and in the same way there are things in us that become very defensive when truth begins to shine its light upon our inner world.

The natural man thinks from externals and so in religious matters places all the importance on what is done externally and sees the inner aspects connected with self examination and inner repentance as being of little importance. A religion that is born of a natural understanding of spiritual things regards the Sabbath purely in terms of a particular day of the week separate from the six other days on which work is to be done. This traces its origin back to a literal reading of the creation story in the book of Genesis. The natural man views this story as an account of how the natural world was brought into being and that God worked to achieve this over six days and on the seventh day He rested.

Spiritual Christianity teaches that the literal sense of the Word represents or points to what is spiritual, for this is the purpose of the Word – to teach us of the things that belong to the Lord, the Church and salvation. Therefore, the description of the creation of what appears to be the natural world in the Genesis account is in fact a representation of the recreation of the inner world of our own mind in its ongoing cycles of spiritual reformation and regeneration. The seven days represent a progression of spiritual states through which we pass in the process of spiritual awakening and rebirth.

Spiritual Christianity takes the view that the stories found in the Bible have a spiritual meaning and application. The reason the number six is used to describe the days on which the Lord works is because this number signifies temptation and struggle. So six days, when mentioned in the Text, are not understood as six 24 hour periods but as states of mind in which self love and love of the world are still actively resisting the advances of the Word in its work of reforming and regenerating our minds, hence the experiences of temptation and struggle.

The number seven means what is holy. So the seventh day corresponds to a state of life in which the mind has become regenerate and because it is regenerate it no longer has to battle with the evils and falsities of the proprium. In other words, it is a state in which a new sense of self centred in the Lord as the source of all that is good and truth is established, a state in which the natural mind has been brought into subjection to the spiritual mind. The higher rules over the lower and the Lord is fully present so that the mind and spirit wills what is good and thinks what is true. A regenerate mind is a mind at rest, or if you like at peace. It is holy state of mind because the inner battle has ceased and so the presence of the Lord has a vessel prepared in which it can come to rest.

Prior to such a state being reached the Sabbath effectively doesn’t exist from a spiritual perspective. The creation story shows us that the Lord works until the true human being is formed. It presents us with a map of how every mind can be made whole. We are born into the world natural and if we want to become spiritual, we must be brought into conjunction with the Lord through the Word.

The natural man is separated from the Lord and when we are separated from the Lord, we are separated from the source of what imparts a true human quality to our life. The human we need is the Divine Human of the Lord and this is found in the ideas contained in the Word when it is understood in the light of the doctrines for Spiritual Christianity. When we live from these, we become a true human being because they are able to fill our understanding with truths and our will with spiritual affections, giving birth to a new spiritual man, a new human. For to love what is true for the sake of what is good is what the human form is.

Spiritual Christianity teaches that it is the quality of our thoughts and affections that makes us human, not our physical characteristics and so to be human we need a human mind, and this is only possible through being connected to the Lord. We are not born human; we’re born into the world natural and are spiritual or human in potential only. This potential humanity is made possible through our affirmative reception of the Word of life into our lives.

When the emphasis in spiritual matters is placed purely on externals, religion takes a subtle but sinister turn. Religious practice becomes a life of striving to gain God’s approval through our own efforts to be good and so contains within it self merit, or self righteousness. It flows from a false idea concerning the nature of God this being the belief that God is a being whose approval can be earned. This of course suggests that if we don’t have His approval, He disapproves of us. In an attempt to balance the register, the natural man looks to external rules of behaviour by which he can determine for himself whether he or others have God’s favour. This kind of attitude is seen in the Jews’s response to Jesus’s healing on the Sabbath. The Jews saw the keeping of the Sabbath in terms of what is done or not done on a particular day of the week, and that adherence to this code of conduct was linked to having the favour of God. Likewise, the natural man mistakenly places his confidence in his own goodness and in doing so is in denial as to what the Word teaches concerning its true nature.

No effort on our part can make the proprium anything other than what it is. All our efforts to be good are worthless if they flow from trying to make the proprium appear as something its not. For the loves of self and the world, from which the proprium of man is formed, can’t be removed to the exteriors of our mind unless truths from the Word are used to identify them. The proprium is, and will always be selfish despite our external efforts to mask this for it is filled with the evils and falsities that constitute hell. Natural religion teaches it is not lawful to carry one’s bed on the Sabbath. Everything within it directs the mind away from having to live from the Word to engage in inner spiritual work and directs it towards winning God’s approval through external conduct by which it can judge itself to be righteous.

The Sabbath spiritually means to cease or rest from our own efforts to be good. To stop working from a principle of trying to win God’s favour through giving the appearance of goodness and to turn to the Word and live from it. Genuine goodness is never done to gain favour or approval. Actions that are done with this in view are always of the self and contain self love at their core. A true religious or spiritual life is not about striving for or earning God’s approval, for God is love itself and this love is unconditional and is equally towards all. The Lord is goodness itself. This goodness is the order of life and flows down towards all. What the natural man can’t see is that a genuine religious practice has nothing to do with trying to be good, for only God is good.

The Jews here represent this false idea of God and the religious life that exists within the natural man. The natural man seeks to justify itself to avoid doing the work of inner repentance because it can’t face the truth that in itself dwells nothing good. Jesus, who is the Word – the Sabbath, says lift up your bed and walk. The Jews say that it is not lawful to lift up the bed on the Sabbath. What the natural man can’t see is that the Sabbath can’t even come into existence for us until we acknowledge the Lord by living from the Word.

The religion of the natural man places the emphasis on being good.

The religion of the spiritual man places its emphasis on the removal of evils so that good can flow.

The efforts of the natural man to be good undoes the teaching of the Word and makes it of no effect. The Word, Divine Truth, is not given to make us good, it’s given to empower us to remove our evils so that the Lord’s goodness can be present in our actions. When this state is reached then we shall know what the Sabbath truly means.

After these things, Jesus found him in the temple and said to him, Behold, you have become well, sin no more that a worse thing not happen to you.