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READINGS

John Chapter 1:29-36
On the morrow, John sees Jesus coming toward him and said, Behold! The Lamb of God, taking away the sin of the world! (30) This is He about whom I said, After me comes a Man who has been before me, for He was preceding me. (31) And I did not know Him; but that He be revealed to Israel, for this reason I came baptizing in water. (32) And John witnessed, saying, I have seen the Spirit coming down as a dove out of Heaven, and He abode on Him. (33) And I did not know Him, but the One sending me to baptize in water, that One said to me, On whomever you see the Spirit coming down and abiding on Him, this is the One baptizing in the Holy Spirit. (34) And I have seen and have witnessed that this One is the Son of God. (35) Again on the morrow, John and two from his disciples stood. (36) And looking at Jesus walking, he said, Behold, the Lamb of God!

Arcana Coelestia 3994 by Emanuel Swedenborg
Since the Lord is innocence itself which is in His kingdom, everything of innocence being from Him, He is therefore called the Lamb…

Arcana Coelestia #10132
The Lord when in the world was as to His Human innocence itself, therefore the Lord is called the Lamb and the Lamb of God.

Apocalypse Explained 314 by Emanuel Swedenborg
By lamb is signified innocence, which when viewed in itself is love to the Lord, therefore by lamb in the supreme sense is signified the Lord as to the Divine Human, for the Lord as to that principle was innocence itself.

SERMON

We have already seen that John the Baptist represents the Lord in that he corresponds to the literal sense of the Word. Because Spiritual Christianity holds to the truth that the Lord is the Word then all things in it are, in their highest sense, representative of Him. So when it says that John speaks, then what we are being directed to spiritually is a statement about what the Word in its literal sense says concerning itself. So what are some of the characteristics of the literal sense of the Word that we learn from what is said of John? The literal sense contains items of knowledge concerning the Lord and His interaction with the human race. If we are open to the possibility of the Word as having a divine origin or at least of being something more than just an ordinary book of a human origin and from this seek to discover from it knowledge concerning spiritual matters then we won’t be disappointed.

What can we learn from John concerning the use of the literal sense – we learn that the literal sense is principally a witness to the light, that it is from God, and that the purpose of this witness is that through it all might come to believe (Jn 1:7). As a witness to the light we are instructed that the literal sense in itself is not the light – but that it points to the light. In other words the literal sense of the Word is not the divine truth – this is something deeper that has reference to spiritual not historical matters. This is an important distinction we need to have clear in our minds in dealing with the Word – there is a literal sense, this is the understanding we get when we read it naturally and draw a historical understanding from the text. When John says he is not the light we are being taught that the literal sense or the historical context in which the Word is clothed doesn’t constitute the divine truth, which is the true light. But the relationship the historical garments represented by John, and of which the literal sense Word is made up is absolutely essential if we are to come to believe in the Lord.

The words and even the letters that combine to form the literal sense of the Word are from God, for as we read, John is sent from God (Jn 1:6), and what is sent forth from God must be holy and if holy it must be divine. So how are we to understand the statement that John is not the light, if John is the Word as to its literal sense and the Word is divine right down to its very letters then surely John or the literal sense must also be divine. When working with the divine text we need to see that the problem lies not in the form of the letters or the order of the words, this is a divine style and as such is in its essence the fullness of the Divine – the issue for us, and what is being highlighted here in this distinction between John or the literal sense and the Lord as light, lies in how we understand the Word. When we read the Word and see its characters and events within a purely historical context – then we can say that this understanding is not divine, but is a product of natural reasoning which takes what the Word says literally rather than understanding it spiritually. This literal historical understanding isn’t the light, because it doesn’t enlighten the mind in terms of spiritual matters. What it does do is serve as a foundation for being introduced to the light, and it does that when we begin to comprehend what is stated in the literal sense spiritually.

To do that we need to first see that the text is spiritual and that everything mentioned there that has existence in the natural world corresponds to some current spiritual reality within you right now. For example the character John corresponds to the literal sense of the Word, so when John speaks, it corresponds to the message of the literal sense of the Word – when John points to the Lord as “the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” (Jn 1:29) it teaches us that the literal elements of the Word, when understood spiritually, reveals the approaching Jesus as the lamb of God. Now we need to see that if we are to be consistent that this principle must also be applied to the term Jesus when it occurs in the Word. If John is the external aspect of the Word then the term Jesus must also refer to some deeper or higher aspect of the Word. The literal sense points us to the light of the internal sense of the Word and it is this that the term Jesus, which means Jehovah Saviour, refers to. When the external aspect of the Word uses the term Jesus it is pointing us to the internal aspect of the Word, or a spiritual understanding of it, which is able to deliver us from the hellish grip our affections and thoughts find themselves in when we are driven to work to have ourselves as the centre of our world.

The process works like this, when we look to the Word as a guide for governing our life and use it commandments to begin to remove the evil of self centred living from our external life then our understanding of the Word begins to be transformed. What begins to happen is that this removal of evil from our external affections and thoughts clears the way for the light of truth to begin to shine forth from the Word in a greater intensity. We need to have a clear understanding of the meaning of this word “evil” from a spiritual perspective for, like the word sin which we touched on last week, it is a word that carries a lot of emotional and moral force, although admittedly this has somewhat diminished in a post Christian culture such as our own. The point is this, when the term evil is used in common speech it is more often than not used to refer to the worst forms of human depravity, and this is how it is understood. But this is not how the word is to be used in the context of Spiritual Christianity. Evil in this context refers to self love; so evils are any thoughts, behaviours, or affections that arise from having self interest as the motivating factor at their centre. Why are they evil? Because they shut good out and where good is absent evil remains.

It highly likely that the development of the exclusive use of the word evil for the worst depravities has arisen out of the need for the human race to distance itself from facing up to its state of self centredness. The rationale being “If evil is the worst of depravities then I’m ok as I am…its others that have a problem” When we listen to the voice of revelation however we see that evil is simply living for and from self which by default is to reject the Lord or the Word. Human beings are not evil or good; they are their responses to evil and good impulses that flow in from the spiritual world. The Lord holds every person in freedom so that they can learn what good and evil are and from that knowledge choose the good. Our natural inclination is towards self, but the Lord through providing us with truths in His revelation to the human race provides a way for good to triumph – the outcome for us individually however lies in our responses to the truths we have been given. The challenge of the Word to us is to investigate our selfish states so that we can see the extent of their depravity for ourselves.

John the Baptist as the external aspect of the Word challenges us to clean up our outer life and in this sense is the preparer of the way for the coming of the Lord in the internal aspect of the Word. It is our evils that cloud our perceptions and prevent us from seeing the Lord in the Word, but repentance or the baptism of John – which is being washed as to the external life is what opens the states of spiritual life in a person and is the forerunner of the opening of the spiritual sense of the Word which is what Spiritual Christianity understands by the coming of the Lord. To see the internal sense of the Word or Jesus as the lamb of God our minds have to be restructured through the removal of attitudes that place self first and this only occurs as we make obedience to the Word and its precepts the most important thing in our life. To do this is to love the Lord above all else, because as we touched on last week to love the Lord is to live from the Word.

Let’s now turn to the Word in our reading this morning to see these things we have been discussing come forth from the text…it opens with…

Joh 1:29 On the morrow, John sees Jesus coming toward him and said, Behold! The Lamb of God, taking away the sin of the world!

The phrase, “On the morrow…” is perpetual and is known to be such by us in the negative turn of phrase, “tomorrow never comes”. Here we recognise that correspondentially “the morrow” refers to what is continually approaching. This refers to the nature of those things to do with the Lord and spiritual life. If we are engaged in the spiritual life we are continually drawing closer to the Lord, and will always be doing so for in this state of drawing closer to Him we are being led into ever deeper and more profound ways of beholding Him as the Word. So the statement in our text, “On the morrow…” alerts us to the spiritual fact that what is being described in what follows is a spiritual principle that is in continuous operation and so will never cease and what is this principle? It is this; it is “John [that] sees Jesus coming toward him…”

Let’s take this statement and transpose our understanding of its natural elements for its spiritual ones. John we have seen is the external aspect of the Word, we also understand that John is repentance, or washing, or the cleaning up of the external affectional and mental life in obedience to the Word – all this is John and it is this, when it is occurring in us, i.e. when we are engaged in this spiritual discipline, we see or understand, for seeing spiritually is understanding, the approach of “Jesus”. By “Jesus” we understand the internal aspect of the Word which has the power to save us. Now because we are talking about states of perception or revelation from the Word, by the word “toward” as in “Jesus coming toward John” is spiritually understood an opening of our spiritual perceptive faculties so that we see the Lord in the Word. There is a drawing together in our minds an understanding of the relationship of the external and internal aspects of the Word. The Lord being the Word doesn’t actually approach us as such. This idea of “approach” is a term that applies to an object moving through space, and as the Lord is not in space, so it must correspond and describe a state of revelation or spiritual perception in which He is becoming more visible in our understanding of the Word.

When we take all this and put it together the statement, “On the morrow, John sees Jesus coming toward him..” spiritually becomes; “It is a continuous spiritual law that as we live in obedience to the external aspect of the Word so its internal aspect and salvation is revealed to us…” The revealing of this salvation is captured in John’s statement…

“Behold! The Lamb of God, taking away the sin of the world!” (Gk “…the one lifting the missing of the system (cosmos)”) Jn1:29

A solid commitment on our part to the Word as the ground for our spiritual growth and development has a transformative effect – we are given new thoughts through which new heavenly affections can be expressed. We have seen that John and Jesus represent aspects of the Word. Thus the term “the Lamb of God” being a reference, in the literal sense to Jesus, must also represent some inner aspect of the Word. To see this we need to think spiritually concerning this statement. So we ask what is this reference to “…the sin of the world”. The first thing we need to grasp is that sin is not a product of the world out there. Sin is a condition found within the human mind and we explored this word in relation to the human mind last week. We saw then that sin means to “miss the mark”, where the mark for human life is to express genuine love, mercy, compassion and goodness, so that sin is to act from self and for self because when we do so we miss the mark or the purpose for which we were created. Spiritual Christianity teaches that the mark is to live from love to the Lord and love towards our neighbour. When we do this we live in the life we were created to live. The world “out there” doesn’t miss the mark or sin in this sense, people do, we do. So “the sin of the world” refers to the sin or missing of the mark in the inner world of our motivations and thoughts and from these the missing that then occurs in our more external actions.

Without a spiritual dimension to our lives in which we are looking to cultivate these loves we live in an inner world that constantly misses the mark, a world of sin and death spiritually speaking. Our inner world needs lifting, if we are to find the mark. Our motivations, affections, thoughts all need lifting if we are to be freed from sin. This idea is in fact what is expressed in the Greek word airo (ah’ee-ro) which is not found in the English translation here. The Greek word airo is translated with the phrase “taking away” as in “The Lamb of God taking away the sin of the world.” The Greek certainly carries this meaning but its primary meaning is that of “lifting” and so when we use this idea and replace the word “sin” with the more literal translation of “missing” the text is transformed into…

“Behold! The Lamb of God, lifting the missing of the world”

So we see that the term “Lamb of God” refers to something in the inner aspect of the Word that is able to lift us out of our lower world of sin or missing the mark, of being driven by selfish motives and a concern for ourselves. It is what is able to lift us into a higher world, a world made up of higher affections and thoughts grounded in genuine forms of love and wisdom. Now everything in the Word corresponds to some aspect of the inner world of our minds. Animal life in the Word corresponds to the affectional life of our minds, just as plant life corresponds to the things of the intellectual, perceptive aspects of our minds. Gentle domesticated animals correspond to gentle loving affections whereas wild ferocious animals correspond to evil affections. We use such terms in our language, sly as a fox, as ravenous as a wolf, gentle as a dove, etc. Such phrases are found in all languages and point to a time when thinking from correspondences was more a part of human thought. It is clear from this that the phrase, “The lamb of God” refers to a gentle affection, and because it is used in reference to Jesus, it refers to an affection the Lord offers us from His Word which if lived from we will see implanted into our life so that we are no longer driven by the lower affections of the lower self life.

The Lamb that comes to us when we look to the Word as the source of our life is an affection for the Word itself and a desire to make it one with our life. The lamb is a symbol of love – the Lord’s own love for the human race and when this takes its form in the human mind it does so as love to the Lord, which is a desire to live from the Word and make it the centre of our life – when this is love is on the throne of our life we are lifted from the world of our missing of the mark and enter more fully into the heavenly life.

Rev 22:1-5 And he showed me a pure river of water of life, bright as crystal, coming forth out of the throne of God and of the Lamb. (2) In the midst of its street and of the river, from here and from there, was a tree of life producing twelve fruits: according to one month each yielding its fruit. And the leaves of the tree were for healing of the nations. (3) And every curse will no longer be. And the throne of God and the Lamb will be in it; and His slaves will serve Him. (4) And they will see His face; and His name will be on their foreheads. (5) And night will not be there; and they have no need of a lamp or a light of the sun, because the Lord God will illumine them. And they shall reign to the ages of the ages.

Amen