SPIRITUAL LIFE AND THE WORD OF GOD - { PT. 76 }


 { PT.  76 } - To them doing the commandments is loving the Lord. To them the Lord's commandments are the truths in which they receive Him. There is conjunction of the Lord with them, and of them with the Lord; for they are in the Lord because they are in good, and the Lord is in them because they are in truths. This is the heavenly marriage, from which true marriage love descends. ( A. E., n. 995 ). As true marriage love in its first essence is love to the Lord from the Lord it is also innocence. Innocence is loving the Lord as one's Father by doing His commandments and wishing to be led by Him and not by oneself, thus like a little child. As that love is innocence, it is very being ( esse ) of all good; and therefore man has so much of heaven in himself, or he is so much in heaven in himself, or he is so much in heaven, as he is in marriage love, because he is so far in innocence. It is because true marriage love is innocence that the playfulness between a married pair is like the play of little children; and this is so in the measure in with they love each other, as is evident in the case of all in the first days after the nuptials, when their love emulates true marriage love.

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