All Christians know that the Lord Jesus Christ came
into the world to save men. Salvation is a state or condition of the conjunction
of man with God. "If a man love Me, he will keep My words; and My Father will
love him, and We will come unto him and make Our abode with him." (John 14:23.)
"Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it
abide in the vine, no more can ye, except ye abide in Me." (John 15:4.) "I am
the vine, ye are the branches." (John 15:5.)
Salvation is the conjunction of man with God, and this
conjunction is through the reception by man of a new life from the Lord, the
reception of a new life of faith and of love. "I am the way, the truth, and the
life." (John 14:6.) "I am come that they may have life, and that they might have
it more abundantly." (John 10:10.) "I am the resurrection and the life: he that
believeth in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live." (John 11:25.) "He that
loveth his life shall lose it, and he that hateth his life in this world shall
keep it unto life eternal." (John 12:25.)
Conjunction with God is affected through two things,
through faith and through love. Conjunction with God, or salvation through faith
or through believing is taught in the following and many other places: "He that
believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be
damned." (Mark 16:16.) "He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life; and
he that believeth not the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth
on him." (John 3:36.)
Conjunction with God or salvation through love is
taught in the following and many other places: "If a man love Me, he will keep
My words, and My Father will love him, and We will come unto him, and make Our
abode with him." (John 14:23.) "He that hath My commandments, and keepeth them,
he it is that loveth Me; and he that loveth Me shall be loved of My Father, and
I will love him, and will manifest Myself to him." (John 14:21.) "The first of
all the commandments is, Hear O Israel, The Lord our God is one Lord. And thou
shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul and with
all thy mind, and with all thy strength. This is the first commandment. And the
second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. There is
none other commandment greater than these." (Mark 12:29-31.)
The two things by which man is saved or brought into
conjunction with the Lord are symbolized in the Lord's words concerning the
eating of His Flesh and His Blood. "Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man
and drink His blood, ye have no life in you. Whoso eateth My flesh and drinketh
My blood, hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day." (John
6:53-54.) His flesh or His body, which in the Holy Supper is symbolized by the
bread, is His Love, which man must receive. And His blood, or the wine of the
Holy Supper, is His Truth of the New Covenantor the New Testament, which men
must receive from Him. If man receives a new faith from the Lord, and a new
love, he has received a new life from the Lord, and he is then born again, and
is a new man, a son of God, conjoined with the Lord in all things of life.
Christians have long disputed as to what it is that
saves man. Some have held that man is saved by faith alone, and others that man
is saved by love or by good works alone. And both confirm their belief by many
passages in the Scriptures. Swedenborg in his Writings shows that man is saved
through the unition of faith and love, not by faith alone, nor by love alone,
but by their conjunction in man's life. Because the knowledge of this subject is
of the utmost importance to man's cooperation with the Lord in the work of
saving man, we shall in this lecture set forth the teachings of Swedenborg on
this subject.
